Drained, tired or energized
How you empty the cup matters
How is it possible that when I stay up late into the night to work on something, I wake up the next day more tired, but also more energized?
The 6 types of Working Genius
In the story Patrick Lencioni tells in The 6 Types of Working Genius, Bull Brooks is an entrepreneur who thrived at a marketing agency until he was promoted. The promotion pulled him into different work, and he found himself struggling. Bull eventually concludes that he needs to have his own company to have more control, and therefore be able to shape his work. After starting his own company, however, he finds that he enjoys his work even less. With further reflection, he realizes that it’s not “marketing” that he doesn’t like, but rather the specific types of tasks he’s called upon to perform while doing “marketing work”.
As an entrepreneur, Bull had been naturally drawn into what Lencioni identifies as “implementation” work, which requires a great deal of attention to detail and minutiae. This is something Bull had become good at over time, out of necessity, but it was not fulfilling or satisfying.
Bull’s realization was simple and clarifying: being good at something and being energized by it are not the same thing.
Lencioni’s framework gave me language for something I had already experienced but could not explain.
Not just filling the cup
The way I’ve come to better understand this distinction is through the cup imagery. We often say that we can’t “pour from an empty cup” to invoke the imagery that our energy fills a cup, and that throughout a certain period of time, we pour energy from the cup in order to go about our work. Regardless of how full the cup starts, it empties. And an empty cup cannot pour.
With that analogy in mind, and Lencioni’s insight, let’s reconsider my initial question.
How is it possible that when I stay up late into the night to work on something, I wake up the next day more tired, but also more energized?
Because being tired is about the capacity of the cup. Being energized is about how the contents of the cup were used.
When you work on something you care about, you are still using energy, and you are still pouring from your cup. But you are pouring into something that grows every day and helps you put the next day’s cup to better use.
Imagine two cups. They are the same size and they contain the same amount of water.
One cup is in the sun, sitting idly. No one is using it, no one is actively pouring water from it. It may seem that nothing will happen to it. And yet, that water slowly evaporates and disappears into thin air. Eventually, imperceptibly, the cup empties. Where did the water go? What did it become?
The other cup is in the kitchen. You use it to water your plant throughout the day. The plant uses the water and the daylight to grow. At the end of the day, this cup is also empty, but you know where this water went. You know what the water contributed to. Your plant has grown and brings you joy.
Both cups started with the same amount of water. You start your morning having slept the same amount of time regardless of what you did the previous day. But the water in the first cup just evaporated into thin air - time wasting away during the day as you go about activities that do not nourish you. The water in the second cup contributed to the growth of a plant that brings you joy.
Finding your plant
When we think about energy, we focus on rest, because rest refills the cup. But what you wake up to determines whether you are energized. A cup that empties without destination does not just empty. It drains. We do not just need to sleep. We need to plant.
If you have a plant, tend to it every day. If you do not have a plant, make finding one a priority. It gives your energy a destination. And a destination makes the difference between a cup that empties with purpose and one that simply evaporates.