You see injustice. You spot inefficiency. You notice dysfunction. And because you’re capable, caring, and competent, you feel compelled to fix it.
So you engage. You speak up. You offer solutions. You take on the fight.
But here’s what you don’t realize: some battles aren’t yours to win. And when you try to fight every fight, you end up losing the ones that actually matter.
I learned this lesson during a period when I was working myself to exhaustion trying to fix everything I could see that was broken. Our project management processes were inefficient, so I volunteered to redesign them. The communication between teams was poor, so I started facilitating cross-department meetings. Our client onboarding was confusing, so I created documentation to streamline it.
I felt productive, valuable, necessary. I was the person who stepped up when others just complained. I was solving real problems that genuinely needed attention.
But after six months, I was struggling, behind on my actual deliverables, and frustrated that despite all my efforts, new problems kept emerging faster than I could address them. That’s when my manager pulled me aside for a conversation that changed how I think about energy allocation.
“You’re one of our most capable people,” she said. “But I’m worried you’re becoming unfocused. Your core work is suffering because you’re trying to fix everything else. Not every problem needs your solution.”
This is the energy trap.
It looks like responsibility, but it’s actually poor resource management.
Good people fall into this trap more often than others. They see problems clearly. They have skills that could help and care about outcomes. So when something’s broken, you naturally want to fix it. But every system has multiple problems. Every organization has dysfunction. Every team has issues. If you try to solve them all, you’ll exhaust yourself solving none of them well.
The people who last and make real impact learn to choose their battles strategically, not emotionally. They understand that just because you’re capable doesn’t mean you’re responsible. Just because you care doesn’t mean it’s your fight. Just because you can help doesn’t mean you should.
Your energy is finite, your credibility is limited and your time is constrained. When you spread these resources across too many battles, you become less effective in all of them. The trap is thinking that because you can see the problem clearly, it’s your job to solve it.
But the goal isn’t to fix everything that’s broken. The goal is to excel where you can make a real difference and let others handle the rest. That’s not selfishness. That’s strategy.