They don't announce themselves. They're usually a calendar invite, a group chat, and one person who is always "just checking in."
Week 1 of every season opens against the Energy Vampires, and the reason is simple: you cannot build anything on a foundation that is being drained faster than you can fill it.
The mistake most people make is looking for a villain. Energy Vampires are rarely villains. They are usually a recurring meeting that made sense two years ago, a group chat you have muted but still read, and one genuinely lovely person who calls only when something is wrong.
An Energy Vampire is anything that reliably costs you more than it returns, on a schedule. The schedule is the important part. A hard week is not a vampire. A hard week every week is.
Try this: for seven days, write down the moment your energy drops. Not the reason — just the moment. Most people find three or four repeat offenders by Thursday, and are surprised by at least one of them.
Week 1 asks you to name them out loud, which is harder than it sounds, and then to eliminate exactly one. Not all of them. One.
Eliminating one is achievable on a bad week. Eliminating all of them is a project you will abandon by Sunday, and abandoning things is its own small drain. Pick the cheapest one to remove and remove it completely.
The Energy Vampires are undefeated against people who try to fight all of them at once. They have a losing record against anyone who picks one and follows through.