Column · busy vs needed
Because effort is visible and its direction is not. A full calendar looks like demand, and the feedback arrives late enough that the mistake is expensive by the time it is recognised.
If you stopped, who would notice within a week? The answer is the list of people who need you. Everything else is activity.
Because most work is internal: preparing, improving, coordinating, learning. Useful, but replaceable in the sense that nobody outside would feel its absence immediately.
Not to work less. To aim the same effort at the people on the list, and to lengthen it deliberately by producing something that others depend on rather than something that keeps you occupied.
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