Exhaustion at Work Is Often Load, Not Lack of Capability

“Exhaustion at Work Is Often Load, Not Lack of Capability” - Estelle O'Callaghan

There's a common misconception that if you're exhausted at work, you must be managing your time badly or you're not as capable as you used to be. For mid-career women, and especially for women returning to work after long leave or stepping up into leadership, that belief is costly. It sends you looking for a better planner or an earlier start, when the problem is how much unrecognised work you're carrying.

If you feel exhausted, it's often load, not lack of capability. That's where this month starts: with acknowledging and naming what you're carrying.

WHAT INVISIBLE LOAD IS

Invisible load is the work you carry that isn't recognised. It's necessary work, but it's often unmeasured or unevenly shared, so it rarely appears in a position description or comes up in a performance review. It tends to fall into five types.

Tracking. This is remembering, anticipating and following up, often on behalf of other people. It's the running list in your head of who's waiting on what.

Deciding. This is making decisions for others and holding choices that haven't been resolved. When a question has nowhere else to go, it often comes back to you.

Absorbing. This is managing relationships, tension and emotional responses so the work keeps moving. It's the conversation you have before the meeting so the meeting goes smoothly.

Translating. This is connecting teams, context and organisational history. If you're the person who explains why a decision was made two years ago, you're translating.

Switching. This is moving repeatedly between priorities and digital channels. Each switch takes a little attention, and a day full of them takes a lot.

Because none of it looks like "real work" from the outside, it's easy for you, and the people around you, to underestimate what it takes. You'll probably recognise yourself in more than one type.

WHAT IT COSTS WHEN NOBODY SEES IT

Invisible load often attaches itself to capable people. Reliability can become a magnet for unfinished work: if you've always been the one who remembers the follow-up or spots the missing piece, it keeps finding its way back to you.

For example, you might be the person who notices a report hasn't gone out, reminds the owner, answers the questions it raises and adjusts the agenda so the meeting still works. Each step takes a few minutes. Together, they take a sizeable share of your week, and none of them appears on your list.

When that load stays invisible, it costs you in three places.

Your bandwidth. Every item you're tracking in your head takes attention you'd otherwise use to think clearly and lead well. That's why the tiredness can feel out of proportion to anything you'd call a big task.

How you see yourself. When the effort doesn't show, it's easy to read your exhaustion as a sign that you're slipping. For women returning to work after a long leave, that can turn into doubt about skills you worry you’ve lost.

How the work gets shared. Work that nobody can see rarely gets discussed when roles and workloads are set. It stays with whoever has always picked it up, and the imbalance quietly grows.

Reliability can become a magnet for unfinished work.

WHY THE USUAL FIXES DON'T HELP

The usual response to exhaustion is to try harder. You might write a longer list, a tighter schedule, another late night catching up. Those fixes ask you to carry the same amount more efficiently, so the load itself never gets smaller. Wishing for more capacity while carrying everything in the same way rarely changes the week. Your aim is to measure progress in a way that fits your real life, and that starts with seeing what you're carrying.

WHY NAMING IT HELPS

You can't manage what you can't see. Once the load has a name, it stops being a vague sense of being stretched and becomes something specific you can look at. It also changes the conversation you can have with your manager or your team, because you're describing work rather than describing a feeling. Naming the type matters too, because tracking asks for a different fix from absorbing or switching. Naming it early also makes it easier to notice when one type is growing, before it shows up as exhaustion.

WHERE TO START THIS WEEK

Your first step is small, and it takes about ten minutes.

Pick the type that's heaviest. Look at the five types above and choose the one that describes most of what you carried in the last week. Go with your first instinct rather than analysing it.

Write down three examples. Note three specific things from the past week that belong to that type. For example, if you chose tracking, it might be a follow-up you chased, a deadline you remembered for someone else and a reminder you sent that wasn't yours to send.

Ask whether each one is recognised. For each example, ask, "Does this appear anywhere in my role, my goals or the team's plan?" If the answer is no, you've found part of your invisible load.

That's all this week asks. Next Monday's blog looks at how to map the rest of your load and choose where to act.

WHAT NAMING IT DOESN'T MEAN

Naming invisible load isn't a case for caring less about your work or the people you work with; it's a way of seeing clearly which parts of that work should be yours and which should be shared. The skills you've built are still there, and seeing the load clearly is the first step to bringing them back to the surface.

WHERE TO TAKE THIS NEXT

If you've recognised yourself in these five types and you'd like support to lighten what you carry, join the Ghanvey Digital Library: a room as well as a library of resources, with a live session and an Implementation Lab each month, plus scripts, templates and challenges. Membership is $49 a month with no lock-in contracts.

Join the Ghanvey Digital Library

Warm Regards

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