Put on a pimpin’ show

There’s a task – a presentation, a report, it doesn’t matter – and no one wants to do it because it looks tough. You were stuck with the job. Surprisingly, because of your unique badass skills, you managed to finish the job in an hour without breaking a sweat. Do you:

a) Tell your boss about it so you’ll be rewarded for your exceptional skills, and maybe even promoted.
b) Boast to your colleagues about how quickly you finished the job, so as to lower their self esteem.
c) Sleep.
d) All of the above.

Whatever you do, don’t do (a), (b), or (d).

Because if you overperform at work, odds are your boss will always dump the toughest jobs on you. Plus, you’ll be expected to do them really fast. Before you know it, you’re doing stuff that your colleagues are supposed to be doing.

You’ll be raising their expectations of you, which will force you to outdo yourself every time.

I’m not saying don’t overachieve at work. What I’m saying is, if you did something really well and did it in a short amount of time, don’t make it look easy. Appear as if you worked really hard to get it done. Because you did work hard. You probably invested several hours years ago learning the skill that helped you complete your project. You probably read a lot about it, or did a lot of research that just happened to be useful right now.

Instead of “It only took me an hour!” say, “I put a lot of research and analysis into this.”

Instead of “It was super easy! I can’t believe the others thought it would be astronomically hard!” say “I can understand why most people would shirk at this kind of project, but I found the challenge interesting and motivating.”

That way, you still get the credit you deserve and the respect of your supervisors. But they won’t be dumping unusual amounts of work on you. You’ll also be motivated to perform equally well, or even better, next time.

Of course, this does not apply to something that even monkeys can do, such as stapling files.