I left work on time. Nobody rang.
I left work on time last week.
Laptop closed. Out the door. Not a single "just one more thing."
Nobody noticed. Nothing fell apart.
I sat in the car for a minute in case someone rang.
Nobody rang. Bit insulting, honestly.
I posted that on LinkedIn as a throwaway, slightly embarrassing confession. It's now been seen more than 16,000 times. It's the most-read thing I've ever written there.
About leaving on time.
Make of that what you will. I know what I made of it.
Available isn't the same as valuable
Somewhere along the way, a lot of us did a quiet deal with ourselves.
If I'm always there, it will count for something.
So we stay a bit later. We answer the email at nine at night. We say yes to the extra thing, because we're good at it and it's quicker if we just do it.
And sometimes that pays off. Being reliable matters. People trust you.
But often it adds up to something else. You become the person who's always there. Lovely. Dependable. Slightly taken for granted.
Which is not the same as being the person who gets picked.
The hours nobody sees
Here's some quick maths I do with people.
Five years in the same role is roughly 9,000 working hours. Thousands of hours of good, solid work.
Now count how many of those hours anyone senior actually saw. The presentation. The project update. The one meeting where the slides froze.
Twenty, if you're lucky.
Promotions tend to be decided on the twenty. Not the 9,000.
That isn't a reason to work less. It's a reason to think about where the effort goes.
Boundaries aren't about doing less
When people hear "boundaries," they often hear "do less, care less, be less available."
I don't think that's it.
A boundary is a decision about where your best energy goes. Some of it goes to doing the work brilliantly. Some of it should go to making sure the right people know about it. And some of it, frankly, should go home on time.
Most good people over-invest in the first and under-invest in the other two.
Three small things to try this week
Nothing dramatic. Ten minutes each.
1. Leave on time once, on purpose. Not because you're finished. Because you've decided. Then notice what happens. Usually: nothing. That's useful information.
2. Swap one "just one more thing" for one "thought you'd like to know." Instead of quietly polishing something for another hour, tell someone senior about a result. Two sentences: what happened, and why it matters to them. Then stop talking. That's the hard bit.
3. Look back at last week. Which of your hours would anyone senior have noticed? Do a little more of those next week. And a little less of the hours that only you will ever see.
Nobody rang
I still think about that minute in the car.
Part of me was offended. I'm clearly essential. Surely someone needed something?
The other part was relieved. And a bit curious about what else I'd been doing out of habit rather than because it mattered.
That's the question worth sitting with. Not "am I working hard enough?" You almost certainly are.
But "is anyone seeing the work that matters?"
Dee x
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