Somebody thanked you properly
for something that took you
about fifteen minutes.
You felt slightly fraudulent.
You explained that it was nothing,
and you meant it,
and that is the problem.
You price your own work by effort,
because effort is the only part
you can feel from the inside.
Strain is the meter.
So the things you do well
register as nothing,
since doing them well
is precisely what stopped them
from hurting.
The skill went automatic,
the sensation went away,
and the sensation
was your only evidence.
Now watch where that sends you.
You start steering towards
work that is hard for you,
because hard feels like growth,
and away from the thing
people actually come to you for,
because that feels like coasting.
You spend years
becoming adequate at something
while being quietly excellent
at something else
you have never once
put on a list.
You do not teach it, either.
Nobody writes down
what they think is obvious,
so the most useful thing you know
stays inside you,
and the next person
has to work it out
the slow way.
There is a simple correction.
Stop asking yourself what was difficult.
Keep a note, for two weeks,
of what people interrupt you for.
Who came to your desk,
what they asked,
and what they would have done
if you had not been there.
That note is a price list,
written by other people,
using the only currency that counts,
which is what they could not do
without you.
Most of it will be things
you would have described as nothing.
Reading a log properly.
Saying the uncomfortable sentence
in a room where nobody else would.
Making a frightened person
stop being frightened
so they can think.
Show that note to somebody
who has worked beside you a while.
They will not be surprised by any of it.
You are usually the last person
to find out what you are for.
You are allowed to be valued
for the part that does not hurt.
Difficulty is how you got here.
It was never
how the work is priced.
– Serguey Asael Shinder
