Why do I feel more tired after a full day of meetings than after focused work?

You're not tired from effort. You're tired from fragmentation. A meeting pulls you into someone else's context, their urgency, their timeline. Then another meeting pulls you somewhere else. Your mind spends all its energy switching—not thinking, but *reorienting*. That's exhausting in a way that leaves nothing to show. Deep work is different. Hard, yes. Tiring, sometimes. But there's a coherence to it. You're not fragmenting yourself. You're flowing in one direction. That takes energy, but it generates something—a feeling of having *moved*. Not just been moved around. This is one of the paradoxes Laozi understood: effortful action that's aligned feels less draining than passive action that's misaligned. A day of meetings where you're constantly reacting, people-pleasing, context-switching? That's wu wei inverted. You're flowing with everyone else's agenda instead of your own. No wonder you're exhausted. The physical tiredness is real, but it's often masking something deeper: you didn't do *your* work. You did everyone else's. So you feel depleted instead of spent. Next time: notice the difference. One afternoon of actual deep work, then observe how you actually feel. It might hurt differently. But it won't hollow you out.