How to see the load you carry that no one else tracks
This is for you if you are the one who quietly catches what would otherwise fall. The load is real, and it never shows up anywhere, least of all to you.
You are not imagining the weight, and nothing is wrong with you. You carry the extra because you see what needs doing and you do it, and that is a real strength. The only trouble is that this kind of work leaves no trace. Over time it goes unseen, first by everyone, then by you.
Your profile has already named it. Open your Anti-Patterns in your Superpower profile. You have two. Read them both, and find the one about carrying or absorbing more of the team's weight than anyone tracks.
It comes in words you did not choose, with an IN PRACTICE note showing where the habit turns up for you. If neither of your two names a load you quietly carry, this read may not be yours, and that is worth knowing too.
But if one of them does, that line is where to start. A load you can feel but never quite say stays invisible. A load with a precise name, in words you did not write, is one you can finally pick up.
Here is the move, about ten minutes. The aim is to see the load's real size for yourself.
- Use the IN PRACTICE note as your map. Go back over your last two weeks and write down the quiet saves: what you caught, covered, remembered, or smoothed that was nobody's job.
- Put a rough cost on each one. Ten minutes here, an evening there, a Sunday of low-grade worry. Be honest, not modest.
- Add those costs into one rough weekly figure, then give the whole thing a single line in your Anti-Pattern's own words. Something like: "I carry more of the team's weight than anyone tracks, about half a day a week of it."
Read that line back. The load now has edges: a name it came with, and a size you gave it. For the first time, the one person who most needed to see the whole of what you carry can see it: you.
You are not correcting anyone, and you are not carrying less today. Seeing the load at its true size is the whole of this step, the one read no one else was going to hand you.
When you are ready to act on it, that named, sized line is where a promotion case starts. The next guide, Make the case for your promotion with evidence, not hope, begins exactly there.
