Josh, you have my sympathies. IME, in 'our culture', whatever that is, people like to boldly ignore limits to emotional energy. 'Just Do It', 'live with no regr

Josh, you have my sympathies. IME, in 'our culture', whatever that is, people like to boldly ignore limits to emotional energy. 'Just Do It', 'live with no regrets', and all those slogans. If you say you're not doing something due to a lack of emotional energy, people will call you a wimp, sometimes to your face. And so it's a mistake that everyone, it seems, ends up learning from hard, scarring experiences. There really are limits and they are just as real as limitations to how fast you can run and how quickly you can code. Often I see consequences that are similar to Josh's - you fail others because you didn't take emotional energy into account when you made serious promises to them. A failed Kickstarter is no big deal, those are expected to be risky; I see failed marriages; people neglecting or otherwise hurting their kids; people failing their employees, partners and investors; and people losing their family's and friend's money and good faith. IMHO, if you want to be honest with others you need to be honest with yourself; you need to know yourself and your capacity. Also, you can then learn to manage and increase your emotional energy, to spend it efficiently, and to use it to your advantage as the powerful, irreplaceable capability it is. Ignoring it is like ignoring any constrained resource, such as cash flow for your business. It might help if we taught people these things as children. EDIT: A few additions