Monday Musing #5 - I'm back

On learning to be effective, not just indispensable

Nov 10, 2025

I’m back. Had a week out, I lost all motivation to write. I tried a few ideas but nothing stuck and I was feeling a little like I was grasping for my last couple of posts, so I didn’t write but here I am on a Friday afternoon, in Shoreditch feeling like I have something to finally write about.

I have been thinking about being useless a lot recently. Kind of figuratively but also the stark change in structure, tasks and output. My path here is not a conventional one, but conventional is somewhat dull, so I’ll get started.

Feeling useless. When you’re not the name on the tip of everyone’s tongue.

I have long felt like I am the one named when something needs doing, needs fixing or generally when no one else wants to do it. For a long time, it gave me purpose, relevance and made feel important, whether I was or not is a completely different question.

Largely, I have been this person because I have always been the first ops focused person wherever I have worked, which ultimately meant I didn’t have a brief, I just did what needed doing. I hustled, hard and partied even harder but I’ll leave that here for now and maybe write about that another time. Being the “person” and for those Grey’s Anatomy fan outs there, not in the Christina/Meredith way, gave me purpose, it built character, I got to work with new people and learn - a lot, but it also becomes the drain; I took too much on, operating in the ambiguity is relentless, I lived in a perpetual resilience hangover. For context, this often resulted in a literal hangover too, I found that the mental and physical pressure had to be quelled and this was often partying harder than I had worked. The cycle was vicious, I would get to the end of week being a shell of myself. The only time I found solace was travelling, which I did often as I could predominantly solo, as I found peace in having to navigate on my own, no time commitment, pressure or expectation.

Don’t get me wrong, operating in ambiguity and chaos can be exhilarating, constant learning and exposure to new things, it creates great generalists (I feel like we’re becoming a rarer bunch these days), but there is a difference between being over utilised and operating in ambiguity. For too long, I was a yes person and quite possibly still am - why? Largely this stems from my crippling imposter syndrome and if I say no, I am admitting weakness or an inability to do something. Has this been exploited in the past? yes. Do I let it happen? yes, yes I do. But I am working on it, I am more protective of myself, my time and what I want to get involved with.

What has changed? Well, largely, I got a taste of not having to do everything myself. I got freed from the downward and upward pressures of management, I learnt the art of delegation but also empowered other people to grow and learn. At first, I felt like a spare part, really not helped by already feeling like I shouldn’t be there but this change in mentality and approach to work has helped me focus on being the leader that I actually want to be. Finally, I’m finally understanding that it’s not how much I do, it’s what I do that makes effective use of my time. For too long, my crippling imposter syndrome has encouraged me to do more because it feeds my compulsion to do but actually it is largely counterproductive as it means I failed to be effective.

Unintentional Leader

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