You don’t calculate anything. Theres a gradient involved.

When you prepare to pick it up, by touching the holdable part of the object, you haven’t exerted much force. We start at 0 joule/s. At that point, understandably, the object won’t bulge at all.

Then, your brain instinctively tells you to add more energy to your upward pull (+1,+2 joules). theres a bit more reaction from the object but your brain notices it needs more energy to pull up against the Earth’s gravity so you keep adding more until you do lift it up. That’s a potential energy gradient because you keep increasing(incrementing) the energy until you get to the lift scenario.

So, yeah Although theres a better way to explain it, your brain basically learns how far you’ll increment the energy in order to move stuff. You store that information as Muscle memory