Why reliable doesn't get you promoted
Picture this: It’s 5:36 on Friday, and you’re finally closing your laptop. You loyally sat in front of your keyboard for 8+ hours a day, all week, and still feel like you accomplished nothing - just emails, Slack, status updates. What happened to raising fresh ideas, strategizing, and taking big projects over the finish line? Is this really what your career is going to look like?
If this sounds like your typical week, you may be falling into the “always busy, but rarely impactful” trap at work. Here’s how to get yourself out.
What Busy Actually Looks Like
Busy looks like responding to every notification immediately, no matter what you’re in the middle of working on. It looks like a to-do list filled with tasks that have been assigned to you, like execution with no involvement in strategy, planning, or decision-making. Busy is reactive - if you’re always responding urgently to problems that could be anticipated, instead of proactively solving for them, you’re being reactive and simply keeping busy.
The closer you are to entry-level or admin-focused roles, the more likely it is that you are operating like a task-rabbit. While being a reliable employee who completes what’s assigned to you is important, once you’ve proven yourself as reliable, you’ll have to adjust your approach if you want to move up. Reliable is important, but reliable alone does not get you promoted.
What Impactful Actually Looks Like
Impactful is making the switch from task rabbit to strategist. Strategic thinking is a skill - one that helps solidify authority when you hone it. Impactful work is work that does more than keep the wheel turning - it can look like identifying problems and solutions before they become urgent, prioritizing work that connects to the bigger strategic picture, and consistently demonstrating forward-thinking in the ideas you bring forward and the work you make most visible.
The 3 Questions That Separate Busy from Impactful
Still not sure how you can shift from task rabbit to potential future leader? Use these questions to evaluate your daily work and begin practicing the skill of strategic thinking:
- Does this move something impactful forward, or just maintain it? Maintenance tasks keep things running. Strategic tasks change outcomes. You don’t need to stop doing maintenance tasks, especially if they’re an expected part of your job, but you can re-prioritize and move them lower on your list.
- Would my manager/leadership notice if I didn't do this? Again, lots of necessary small tasks happen behind the scenes to keep things running, and if your boss is operating like a strategic leader, they likely don’t keep tabs on all these little tasks you do. But if the answer to this question is no, move this task lower down your list or eliminate it altogether if it’s not necessary.
- Am I capturing the impact of what I'm doing, or just doing it and moving on? This is where most high performers leave value on the table — they do great work and never make sure it's visible. The easiest way to start shifting your focus is to pay attention to how you’re spending your time, so you can start lowering the amount of time you spend on busy tasks, and you can prove it later.
The Visibility Problem
So, how do you do this? Our Work Accomplishments Tracker makes it easy - it helps you do two things at once: see where your time is actually going, and capture the impact in real time so you're never scrambling to remember what you did when review season comes around.
Here's how it works: each month has its own tab, broken into four weekly sections. For every task you log, you're not just writing down what you did — you're tagging it with the time spent, the priority level, the stakeholder or team it touched, and most importantly, the Primary and Secondary Impact (think: Delivery/Execution, Operational Efficiency, Quality/Accuracy, Risk Reduction). That last part is the shift. When you have to label the type of impact a task had, you start to see patterns fast, and you start to notice how much of your week is maintenance versus momentum.
At the end of each month, the tracker has a built-in Monthly Review section where you pull your biggest wins, log feedback you received, and note any new responsibilities or initiatives you took on. Over a quarter, those monthly snapshots stack into a picture of your growth. By the end of the year, you will have an undeniable record of everything you moved forward.
The So What
Here’s your concrete action to take this week:
- Step 1: Identify. Before you open your inbox on Monday morning, write down the three things that would make the week genuinely successful and meaningful, not just busy. These should not be "respond to emails" or "finish the report."
- Step 2: Protect. Then protect time for those first, before the reactive work takes over. This can look like blocking time on your calendar for these items, starting each day working on them, or not starting any other tasks (unless truly urgent) until these are done.
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Step 3: Monitor. Track this in the Work Accomplishments Tracker. Bonus points if you track how much time you spend on these three items. Do this for four weeks and notice what shifts.
- Are your 1:1s with your manager less focused on you regurgitating your to-do list?
- Have you accomplished something you’re proud of?
- Do your days feel more meaningful and truly productive?
She's A Lot Lately
Lately, I'm listening to the audiobook Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter on the Libby app through my local library.
A speaker at a women's conference I attended last year put this one on my radar, and I finally picked it up. The core idea: leaders are either multipliers who grow their team's intelligence and capability, or diminishers who shrink it — and we all have tendencies of both. As a young leader and new manager, I want to be intentional about this phase of my career and who I’m becoming as a leader. This book is my first step in that direction! Once I’m done, I’ll be sharing my thoughts and takeaways over on TikTok.
Wishing you a rich life,
Lora at She's a Lot
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