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Last Tuesday, I did everything "right" when I returned to work after a vacation. Morning catch-up, a few meetings in the early afternoon after a check-up with my surgeon, a 30-minute buffer before my next meeting, and plenty of open time to allow me to just catch up on what I missed while out.
By 4pm I was useless.
The 1:1s themselves were fine. The buffer existed. The catch-up time was useful. But all I managed to do was catch up on my Slack and email.
If you'd asked me on Monday whether Tuesday would be too much, I would've said no. The math worked. There were no double-bookings. There was a lunch. It was honestly a lighter day, even with a doctor's appointment. I had blocked my day like a person who knew what she was doing.
The day still ran me over, because time wasn't the constraint. Energy was. I keep relearning that those two need different tools.
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For most of my career, "manage your time" was good enough advice. The work had a consistent shape. A two-hour block was actually a two-hour block, because the thing I was doing at 9am was the same kind of thing I was doing at 11am: mostly 1:1s. Same lane, same load, same amount of gas in the tank when I started.
Now, every block on the calendar carries a different weight. A 30-minute 1:1 where someone is considering leaving is not the same 30 minutes as a 30-minute project sync where everything is on track. A 15-minute Slack thread can drain you for the rest of the day if it's the wrong 15 minutes. The calendar tells you where you'll be. It doesn't tell you what shape you'll be in when you get there.
So if you're sizing your day by time blocks, you're going to keep being surprised that "light" days end heavier than "heavy" ones. The mismatch isn't your schedule. It's that every block costs something different, and you're treating them like they don't.
What's helped me, slowly, is asking a different set of questions when I plan a week. Not "do I have time for this?" but "what's already in that part of my day?"
A few I actually use:
Which 1:1s give me energy and which ones take it? (Honest answers only. It varies by person, not by meeting type.)
After a hard conversation, what's next? If it's another hard conversation, I've stacked the day badly.
If I want to do real thinking on Thursday, what does Wednesday afternoon look like?
Where am I quietly assuming I'll "just push through"?
I apply these same strategies to how I approach my meals for the day. I'm in eating disorder recovery, which means I have a dietitian who makes sure I'm eating balanced throughout the day. And that might mean eating a snack before a meal if I know I'm going to be busy.
To be honest, there's a version of me, usually on a Sunday night, who looks at the week and thinks Tuesday will be intense, but I'll push through to Wednesday's strategy time. Tuesday-me does not care what Sunday-me committed Wednesday to.
The things that have actually changed how my weeks land:
Pair depleting work with restoring work. After a tough performance conversation, I try to follow it with a 1:1 where the energy goes both ways, or a stretch of writing. Not another hard thing back-to-back. That used to feel like indulgence.
Stop treating open blocks as available real estate. A free 30 minutes isn't the same as a 30 minutes that fits. If a meeting "fits," I still ask what's already in that part of my day before I say yes.
Build recovery into the calendar. Fifteen or twenty minutes after a high-context conversation is strategic. I used to feel guilty about needing it. I don't anymore.
Notice the work that doesn't show up on the calendar. The Slack message you're drafting in your head while you're in another meeting. The decision you're sitting with overnight. That's all energy spent, and it appears nowhere in your calendar.
Most of us, when we're tired in a way that better time blocking isn't fixing, treat it like a personal failing. I should be able to handle this. I should have more capacity. Other people seem fine. So instead of changing how we plan, we white-knuckle through another week and tell ourselves we'll do better next time.
The leaders I respect most are the ones who know what kind of work they can do in what state and plan accordingly. They're honest about it with themselves, and eventually with the people they manage. That's the version I'm trying to be, and I'm not always there.
It also helps to say the obvious: what depletes me doesn't deplete the people on my team. I've watched engineers come alive in the kind of meeting that would exhaust me, and the reverse. Energy management isn't a one-size template. You need to apply self-awareness that can then translate into how you build the week.
You don't fully control your calendar. Incidents happen. Someone resigns. The week you planned is the week that gets blown up first. Fine. But on the weeks where you do control it, the question isn't "did I have time?" The question is "did I have the right kind of attention?"
So if you're an EM and you're tired in a way that more discipline isn't fixing, that's probably why. It was for me last Tuesday. It's always a Tuesday for me.