Just Do Your Dang Job

The other day I was chatting with a new friend. Let’s call her Anya. She’s still on the traditional path in law but starting some creative ventures on the side.

We were talking about her next steps when Anya joked that she was just going to “phone it in” until it was time to jump ship.

I laughed, but then I sat with it. I don’t know her well, but her resume reads like a highlight reel of late nights, weekend emails, and missed milestone moments. I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

I know the type.

And I’m pretty sure Anya’s version of “phoning it in” still looks like doing her job fully, responsibly, competently.

In the words of my fifth-grade math report card: she meets expectations.

Remember how much that used to sting? To get a “meets expectations”? For the record, I was tracked for “regular kid math” in 5th grade and I’m still not over it. Somehow it felt like failing.

This image barely meets expectations but I’m going with it

And then we carried that mindset with us into high school, college, jobs, relationships. It was never enough to be good enough.

Sure, there were external pressures. But it ran deeper than that. Somewhere along the line, many of us picked up the belief that we had to prove we belonged.

Our tools? Overachieving. Overdelivering. Outperforming. We didn’t want to meet the mark. We had to crush it.

I burned myself out doing exactly that. My employers were thrilled with the effort, but they didn’t actually need it. Looking back, their “whoa, that was amazing” probably carried a silent “this chick is intense” or “cool, but… totally unnecessary.”

And while I got to feel like a “hero,” no one really cared. Deep down, I knew that. Which is probably why I’d eventually start to resent the job, the coworkers, the (often self-imposed) expectations.

As much as I liked to think of myself as fiercely self-driven, the truth is, some part of me wanted someone else to set the rules of the game. To tell me what mattered.

It’s much easier to excel at execution than to take a beat to think about what you really want from this precious life, and then actually prioritize that.

And in law firms and other high-intensity environments, the machine is happy to offer you a set of “priorities”, and then enforce them through bonuses, matter assignments that ensure you’re always underwater (because, you know, some of those will definitely die), and semi-public yelling.

Here’s a shameful story from my BigLaw days: when I was a third-year associate, I missed my now-husband’s aunt’s funeral to attend my first client pitch. Some angle of my background was supposedly indispensable. No one around me blinked. And I knew, even then, that it was wrong.

But the only one to blame is me. I was the one pushing everything else aside. At worst, the partner would’ve been annoyed. Maybe she’d never staff me again. Maybe she’d tell the other partners that I wasn’t “committed.” Maybe I’d drop a notch in their esteem but I wouldn’t lose my job or anything.

Meanwhile, I was betraying my own values. Feeding my growing dissatisfaction like a dark ouroboros, my insecurity the snake eating its own tail, consuming itself in its hunger for validation.

Just little ol’ me, betraying my values and priorities for a gold star and pat on the head

I was trying to fill an esteem-shaped hole in my psyche.

I don’t know Anya well, but I’m proud of her. She’s doing the brave thing I never quite managed. I sucked at boundaries. I stretched and stretched, pulling rabbits out of hats to get the deal done, deliver the analysis, unblock the team, grow the business.

But I always stretched myself thin, giving my all to the job and leaving my loved ones with tattered shreds of presence.

My new friend, Anya, seems to be trying something different.

She’s putting her dreams on equal footing with what’s being asked of her.

She’s meeting expectations, likely beautifully for the record, and saving the rest of her energy for herself.

So friends, please: just do the dang job.

Keep the rest for you.