As I worked under the summer sun, pulling up stubborn, persistent horsetail and bindweed and wrestling with overgrown grass, I kept thinking about entropy. It’s a concept I first encountered in my teenage physics class that has stuck with me ever since. Essentially, entropy is the zeroth law of thermodynamics, and it states something profound about our world: the natural order is disorder and chaos.
Think about that for a moment. The universe’s default setting is mess, not order.
This means that everything you see around you that’s organised, structured, or functioning smoothly exists because someone, somewhere, is constantly expending energy to maintain it. Your healthy body requires daily effort through exercise, nutrition, and rest. Your tidy home needs regular cleaning and organising. Even my little allotment plot demands consistent attention to remain productive rather than reverting to wilderness.
Standing there yesterday, surveying the work I’d done and knowing it would all need doing again in just a few weeks, I had an uncomfortable realisation. I wondered if all this energy I was investing in maintaining order was actually worth it. By the time I return from holiday, this carefully tended plot will likely look like a jungle, requiring even more concentrated effort to restore.
But here’s what struck me most: this is exactly what you face every single day as a leader.
You wake up each morning to an inbox that’s regenerated overnight like weeds after rain. The strategic priorities you clarified in last week’s meeting have somehow become muddy again. Team dynamics that felt stable last month are shifting. Projects that were on track have mysteriously developed complications. The systems and processes you put in place to create efficiency are already showing signs of decay.
Is it any wonder you feel exhausted at the end of each day?
You’re not just managing your workload. You’re fighting entropy itself. You’re expending enormous amounts of energy simply to maintain the status quo, let alone move forward toward your bigger vision. Every email you answer spawns two more. Every problem you solve reveals three new challenges. Every process you streamline eventually develops inefficiencies that need your attention.
The women leaders I work with often feel like they’re running on a treadmill that keeps speeding up. They wonder why they can’t seem to get ahead, why they feel constantly behind despite working longer hours and pushing harder. They question whether they’re cut out for leadership when everything feels like such an uphill battle.
Here’s what I want you to understand: you’re not failing. You’re facing a fundamental law of physics.
The solution isn’t to fight entropy harder or exhaust yourself trying to control every variable. The solution is to become more strategic about where you invest your energy. Just as I had to decide which parts of my allotment were worth the ongoing maintenance effort, you need to identify what truly matters in your leadership role and protect those areas while letting other things follow their natural course toward disorder.
Some battles with entropy are worth fighting because they align with your bigger purpose and impact. Others are energy drains that keep you busy but don’t move you closer to what you’re really trying to create.
The key is learning to distinguish between the two. When you do, you stop feeling like you’re constantly swimming upstream and start directing your finite energy toward the changes that actually matter.
Your exhaustion isn’t a personal failing. It’s physics. And once you understand that, you can work with it instead of against it
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