Some career rules have been around so long they’ve started to feel like truth. Familiarity can keep outranking the evidence your career has already given you.

You can spend hours learning, researching, and staying current while becoming less clear about what deserves your attention. Useful information can quietly start directing your career before you’ve decided what deserves action.

If you’re the person who can make almost anything happen, you may have gotten very fast at responding before you’ve decided. This Vignette looks at the career reflex hiding inside that efficiency.

Being known as “the one who figures it out” sounds flattering until you realize how much sophisticated work that phrase can flatten. If your value mostly lives in other people’s memory, your career record is thinner than your contribution.