What Taylor Swift can teach you about energy, boundaries, and burnout

By Mark Jones

Taylor Swift doesn’t write books about leadership, but recent form is a great reminder of her business smarts.

Of course this has nothing to do with her ‘End Game’ engagement to footballer Travis Kelce (hooray for TNT!).

I’m talking about other Taylor Swift news this month. Interviewed on the New Heights podcast (a great watch here) she said something profound:

“You should think of your energy as if it’s expensive, as if it’s like a luxury item. Not everyone can afford it.”

Quite clearly she knows the value of her time, her creativity, and most of all, her energy.

The question is: do you?

Energy in the age of polycrisis

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most of us know the cost of using up all our energy. We throw it around like cheap beer, shouting rounds along the way to anyone who asks.

But few of us know its true value enough to protect it for all you’re worth.

The statistics are sobering. In 2025, more than half of working adults report feeling burned out. That’s not just tiredness. That’s chronic stress and exhaustion, the kind that eats away at motivation, focus, and even physical health.

We’re living through what experts are calling a polycrisis: a tangled web of escalating events that overlap and feed off each other. Climate change, wars, natural disasters, economic shocks, social unrest - all happening at once, at speed.

And just when you think you’ve caught your breath, along comes the dizzying acceleration of artificial intelligence, reshaping industries, jobs, and entire ways of working. No wonder so many of us feel our glass is drained.

Against this backdrop, your energy isn’t just nice to have - it’s one of your most valuable assets. As critical as your time. As precious as your money. As priceless as your brand.

I’d argue we’ve been trained to think about managing our time, but not our energy. And it’s costing many of us, everything.

Spending vs renewing energy

Good personal energy management is about more than how you spend it - it’s also about how you save, and renew it.

We know the basics of self-care, right?:

• Sleep well

• Eat well

• Exercise well

Well as I’ve been researching my new book coming out soon, The Story Code, it strikes me we should urgently add, “talking to ourselves” to the list. Not in a clinically questionable way, but in a healthy, positive self-talk, rewriting the script on our inner critic kind of way.

It’s time to turn down the polycrisis narration inside our own minds. It’s costing you.

Every day, you narrate your lives to an audience of one - you. Sometimes those words push you forward, other times they hold you back.

But unlike sleep or diet, this “talking to ourselves” self-care pillar is less obvious to the world outside. Yet it’s just as powerful when it comes to preserving and renewing energy.

The inner critic and your energy account

Think about your inner critic. That nagging voice whispering ‘you’re not good enough’ or ‘just give up’ or ‘it’s not worth it’ or ‘I’m not interesting enough’.

That kind of talk doesn’t just hurt your self-confidence. It actively saps energy you might otherwise use to positively impact your world.

Think about a $1.6 billion powerhouse like Taylor Swift. She reportedly lost 144,200 Instagram followers after being booed at the Super Bowl in February. Imagine if she’d given up, the last straw, curled up, ‘they hate me’, ‘I’m done’, ‘It’s not worth it’.

That’d be the story if she parked her Ferrari 458 Italia in the middle of a political street protest. But she doesn’t. Because she knows its value. Like she knows her own.

Can I be direct?

The only guardian of your inner voice, is you.

Click on the image below to watch my video👇

The flip side? When you rewrite that story - when you replace, ‘I’m failing’ with something like, ‘This is tough, but I’m capable and learning every day.’

You top up, or at least halt the energy drain.

This isn’t just positive thinking. Neuroscience backs it up. Research shows that when we adopt empowering narratives, we increase our cognitive capacity, focus, and resilience.

In other words, a stronger story equals stronger energy.

That’s why in my upcoming book I focus so much on the discipline of mastering your inner critic. Because in the end, your energy isn’t just drained by your workload or the global headlines. It’s drained - or renewed - by these inner stories.

The way forward: your inner coach

Big lifestyle changes are important, but so are the small, daily choices that recharge us.

My ‘Flip the Script’ approach basically teaches you how to unplug audio on your inner critic, and turn the lights up on a new lead character, your inner coach.

What do great coaches do? Look, I was in the music classroom more than the sportsfield, so you’d have to ask Travis Kelce. But I’ve watched enough Ted Lasso to know that coaches call out your best self - they know what you’re capable of and remind you of it.

From a self-storytelling perspective that means recalling previous successes. Stories from your own career and life where you know without doubt you succeeded - it’s a story about the very opposite thing your inner critic has been saying.

For example, ‘I’m still failing as a leader’ can become, ‘I’m growing as a leader. I managed a tough situation like this last year.’

Of course, there’s much more to it but the key insight is to reach back into your memory and recall positive stories that you know are true - and promote them to take active parts in your inner script.

The Taylor Swift test

So here’s a challenge: what if you treated the stories you tell yourself as a luxury item, just like energy?

What would change? Would you call time out on your inner critic?

Every day you have a choice: to let your inner critic tax your energy, or to flip the script and remind yourself you’re capable, resilient, and learning.

Energy, after all, is finite. But when you protect it, renew it, and invest it wisely, it pays compounding returns.

So lean in close, ‘cause you’ll not hear me say this again: listen to Taylor Swift. Guard your energy. Treat it like a luxury item. Spend it where it matters. And just as importantly — supercharge it with positive self-talk, and you’ll be off and racing like a Ferrari.

Feeling burnt out?

Burnout is a very real, shared human experience right now. Maybe things look good on the outside, but on the inside,

• You feel burned out and exhausted

• Your inner critic says, 'You're just faking it!'

• You feel stuck or at a crossroads in your career

Join a 4-week peer-based executive coaching program - September and October places still available, $995

I’ve created a neuroscience-informed process that shifts your identity, not just your habits, with a proven framework for rewriting your story based on decades as a Financial Review editor, brand strategist and master storyteller, author, CEO and Certified Professional Speaker (CSP).

Ready to FLIP the SCRIPT and re-fuel your energy?

Onwards!

Mark

Hey, you got to the end! Nice work.

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