How to Listen
A friend was reflecting with me after a few weeks of travel that he felt depleted and worn out. I had also been traveling for a few weeks, yet I didn’t feel the same. I didn’t feel drained, I felt energized.
We began tracing the shape of our experiences. Where had he been? Who had he been with? What had his days looked like? His voice softened as he spoke. Beneath the words, a quiet disengagement. It was clear the places hadn’t really felt like his, and the people, though familiar, weren’t those who met him where he was.
Then he asked me the same questions. And as I described the past few weeks, I found myself smiling. I had been in settings that sparked something, new friendships, different perspectives. Even when tired, I wasn’t tired in a hollow way. I was tired in the full way, like after a good workout.
It made me pause. How could two apparently similar circumstances leave us with such different experiences?
We often speak about time. We often think about money. But rarely do we give much attention to energy. And yet, energy seems to quietly guide far more than either of the other two.
Money is easy to measure. Trackable in numbers and statements, visible in balance sheets and budgets. Time can be organized, capacity calculated by blocks in a calendar. But energy, what is that? It doesn’t follow the same rules. It doesn’t sit still long enough to be charted.
And yet, it has been becoming more important. Perhaps that's what begins to change as some of the other questions around money or time become more settled. Energy becomes the third resource. Invisible, unmeasurable, but unmistakably felt.
I notice how much more I reflect on where it comes from and where it leaks. There are no tools for this. Only patterns. Sensations. Recollections. A sense of brightness after a conversation. A subtle exhaustion after another. A sudden alertness when starting a new project. A mysterious fatigue when continuing an old one.
There seem to be three places I look when I try to notice my energy: people, places, projects.
People are often the most unpredictable source. Sometimes, sitting with a friend I’ve known for years feels nourishing, effortless. We don’t even need to say much. Other times, the same connection feels strained, like something between us is misaligned. Often it has less to do with the other and more to do with me. My state, my openness, my capacity to be with whatever shows up. Meeting new people can be thrilling or tiring. It depends not just on who they are, but on who I am when I meet them.
Places hold their own charge as well. Some cities pull something out from within, make a mind race, a spirit stretch. New York did that for me for years. But the same city that once lit me up began to wear me down. Everything required more energy than I realized I was spending. Lisbon, in recent years, offers a different rhythm. A slowness that feels restorative. But even peaceful places can become dull if momentum fades. Sometimes too much calm begins to press into stagnantly.
Projects are perhaps where this exchange becomes most vivid. The joy of starting something new. The spark of excitement when an idea lands and begins to find form. I feel that often these days, particularly exploring things with AI. That current of curiosity that energizes. But projects are not immune to becoming heavy, when they ask for skills I haven’t yet developed, or when the purpose behind them dims. Administrative work, repetitive tasks, uninteresting priorities, all these feel like small but steady leaks of energy.
What makes it more complex is how none of these areas are static. What gives energy today might ask for it tomorrow. The same person, the same city, the same work. Everything shifts in relationship to the season of life I find myself in. The same conversation that yesterday lifted me, today lands differently.
And so I’ve stopped trying to manage my energy. Not because it can’t be done, but because management implies control. And control isn’t what energy seems to need. What I’ve started doing, instead, is listening.
Just noticing. After a day ends, quietly asking: what gave something back? What quietly took something away?
Not always acting on that noticing. Sometimes there are things that require showing up to regardless of the energy they demand. But in the awareness, I find something subtle recalibrates on its own. No need to optimize or restructure or intervene. Just attention. And attention, I’ve found, opens something far better than a plan.
In the end, it was that conversation with my friend that brought all of this to the surface.
There is no spreadsheet for this. No formula, no metric. Just a quiet question that rides beneath experience: does this give energy, or does it take my energy?
And that is how I learned to listen.
