The hidden cost of being the go-to person and how to fix it.

There’s a point in every career where commitment quietly becomes something else. You start by stepping up, lending a hand, closing a gap. And poof! Suddenly you’re the one everyone counts on.

Somewhere along the way, your job turned into something bigger than the job.
A dozen side duties. A few quiet favors. And a whole pile of “I’ll just take care of it.”

At first, it feels good. Purposeful. Necessary.
Until one day you realize your to-do list is longer than ever, even after another 12-hour day.

The cost of holding everything together on your own is that your organization doesn’t see the cracks. And the longer you keep propping it up, the more invisible your effort becomes.

Sound familiar?

When Hard Work Turns Into Enabling

It often starts with the best of intentions.

Have you ever told yourself:

• “I don’t want to dump more work on my already overworked team.”
• “It’ll take less time if I just do it myself.”
• “If I don’t, it won’t get done—and it has to get done.”

Let’s call this what it is: overfunctioning.

You may not be wrong about the workload but you’re wrong about the math.

Because every hour you spend proofreading, posting, and pushing projects across the finish line is an hour stolen from the high-level work only you can do. The strategy work of system-building, coaching, cross-departmental influence, and future planning all sit untouched.

And when that becomes your routine, it’s not a workload problem anymore, it’s a leadership blind spot big enough to conceal a Mack truck.

The Fear Beneath It

Most overfunctioning rarely comes from distrust. It comes from fear.

You can’t just sit there and watch something fail or go undone, so you do it yourself. But here’s the part that gets lost: people tend to rise to the level of trust and responsibility they’re given.

When you invest in your people, coach them through early stumbles, and hand them real project ownership instead of just tasks, you’ll usually see their pride, commitment, and performance rise to meet the opportunity.

Will they always match your level of drive? Maybe not. But that’s not the standard. Your job isn’t to make them you, it’s to help them grow into themselves.

That’s how capacity builds. That’s how trust happens. And how you stop being the one always holding the line.

Sometimes You’ll Still Work Late

There will always be seasons that demand more: major campaigns, crises, important deadlines, big launches. And you’ll roll up your sleeves to do what has to be done.

But if every week feels like crunch week, that’s not a work ethic issue, it’s a systems issue. A well-run team can endure (and even rock) short sprints because the marathon pace is sustainable. Continual sprints? Not so much.

Your goal isn’t to eliminate long days forever. It’s to make sure they’re few and far between.

The Resource Trap

Lean teams and tight budgets are real. But perpetually covering for a broken system teaches leadership that your personal time is an acceptable substitute for institutional investment.

When you make the pain visible – things like missed opportunities, project bottlenecks, dips in performance – you create pressure to act.

If something truly matters, institutions will find the resources to fix it. What they won’t do is fix what they can’t see, especially if you keep patching it with your nights and weekends.

Good news. There’s hope. You can wrestle back those hours of extra, unseen tasks and get that work-life teeter-totter a little closer to level.

Here’s where the Jeff Method comes in: See it. Shift it. Sustain it.

How to Break the Cycle (and Build a Healthier System)

SEE IT:
Expose the Invisible Work

Get honest about what’s really on your plate.
List every task that eats time but isn’t leadership work—cleanup, follow-up, fixing, finessing, chasing, redoing.

Then mark them:

• Mission-critical — things that truly require your expertise.
• Systemic filler — things that could be simplified or delegated.
• Hero work — things that exist only because you keep saving the day.

If your list is full of systemic filler and hero work, you’re not managing the system. You are the system. And that’s not sustainable.

SHIFT IT:
Turn Control into Coaching and Advocacy

When something breaks, don’t fix it. Name it.
Teach; don’t rescue. It’s slower up front and faster forever.
Let people stretch. Let them fail a little. Then help them steady themselves. That’s how they learn and how you stop being the bottleneck.

And when the issue is bigger than your team’s bandwidth, take it up the chain and show the math. Quantify the broken process costs in staff hours, opportunity, and burnout. Then show what fixing it would look like.

Build Systems that Outlive You

Silence doesn’t scale, so document your workflows, clarify ownership, and open up your dashboards.
If only you know how something gets done, it’s not job security, it’s risk.

Invite your team into the process and ask how to make it easier to hand off or maintain.
You’ll be amazed how many unsolvable problems suddenly get solved when the people closest to the work have permission to fix them.

SUSTAIN IT:
Redefine What Good Leadership Looks Like

Stop rewarding stamina. Start celebrating sustainability.
If your team equates long hours with loyalty, they’re following your example. Make it safe to say, “This isn’t sustainable.”

Make it normal to audit workloads and processes. And when someone surfaces a better way, shine a light on it.

Model the healthy behavior you want to see in others. The real mark of leadership isn’t how much you can personally handle. It’s how strong the system becomes when you step away.

Your institution doesn’t need another hero. It needs a strategic, confident (and healthy) leader.

See it. Shift it. Sustain it.
Because the best way to shorten your to-do list isn’t to work longer days. It’s to build a system that doesn’t depend on them.