There is a biological reality to burnout. If you work 18 hours a day, skip sleep, and ignore your body’s limits, you will crash. No amount of ‘mindset work’ can override your natural physiology.

But I sometimes see leaders who are not working 18-hour days, who are getting 7 hours of sleep, and yet are on the edge of burnout.

Conversely, I see leaders navigating high-stakes crises, working intense hours for weeks, who emerge tired but strangely invigorated.

This suggests that while workload is a factor, it is not the only factor.

So I want to offer you a distinction between two types of exhaustion: Fatigue and Friction.

Fatigue is the natural result of high energy expenditure. It is what an athlete feels after a game or what a founder feels after a successful product launch. It is physical and mental depletion. When fatigue happens, it is important to rest, sleep, eat healthy, stay hydrated, disconnect, and you will bounce back.

Friction is not caused by the motion of work; it is caused by the resistance to it. In physics, if you push an object across a smooth surface, most of your energy turns into motion. But if you push it across a rough surface (resistance), a huge percentage of your energy is lost into heat. That loss is also a kind of burnout.

Understanding Friction

Friction here is psychological resistance. It is the subtle, subconscious voice in your head that looks at the present moment and says, “This should be different.”

Now, this is where many high-functioning leaders get stuck. You might wonder: “But if I don’t look at reality and say ‘this should be different,’ how will I ever improve anything? Isn’t dissatisfaction the driver of progress?”

We must distinguish between Intent and Resistance.

Intent looks at a failing project and says, “This is broken. I am going to fix it.” This is clean. It acknowledges the starting point (the brokenness) as a fact, and directs energy toward the solution.

Resistance looks at the same project and says, “This shouldn’t be broken! Why is this happening to me? They should have done better.“

Do you feel the difference? The first one (Intent) uses reality as raw material for creation. The second one (Resistance) argues with reality, wishing the past had gone differently.

Acceptance is not resignation; it is the prerequisite for effective action.

Many leaders are driving their careers with the handbrake on. They are generating massive output, but they are doing it while internally arguing with reality.

• You are in a board meeting, but you are internally screaming that it is a waste of time.
• You are dealing with an angry client, but you are resentful that they are so unreasonable.
• You are fixing the problem, but you are ruminating, “This shouldn’t be happening, I hired them to prevent this.”
• You are writing a strategy deck, but you are anxious that it won’t be good enough.

In all these scenarios, the resistance costs much more energy than the work.

So on top of the work, you might also be depleted from the friction. This is why ‘Time Management’ often fails to cure burnout.

You can clear your calendar, but if you fill that free time with internal resistance, worrying about the future, regretting the past, or resisting your own restlessness, you will still end the day exhausted.

Vacationing or Waking Up?

This is why so many of us return from vacation just as exhausted as when we left.

Vacation fixes fatigue. It repairs the body and gives you a temporary opportunity to focus on different things.

But vacation does not fix friction, because this internal resistance is a habit of mind. If you somewhere think it is a good idea to resist reality, to constantly judge the present moment as wrong, you will begin burning out the moment you come back from your vacation, or sometimes even before, as you start thinking about it.

To navigate this, we must stop treating energy solely as a time-management problem. We must treat it as an acceptance problem.

The human system is designed for massive output. We are definitely very resilient. But what we are not designed for is chronic internal conflict.

The antidote is Structural Integrity with the moment. It implies a radical acceptance of what is. When you reclaim the energy that was being wasted on the argument, you can direct that toward creating what you would appreciate.

What you would then experience is Flow, which is simply action without the friction of a self-conscious narrator resisting the experience.

If you are feeling burned out, ask yourself:

If it’s fatigue, consider prioritizing your health. If it’s friction, only waking up to what is happening can help you.

Awakened Leaders know this: You can work hard and be healthy. But you cannot fight reality and win.