The work you love finishing may not be yours

The podcast was due out on Tuesday, and by Sunday I had not released anything, because September had been the kind of month that takes everything you do not actively protect.

I did the sum: record, send it to an editor, wait for it to come back, and everything after that. There was no version that fit inside two days.

I had been watching what AI could now do turn up on my feed, so I asked what would happen if I did the whole thing myself. The thought did not come first, though. The first thing I told myself was that I needed to record.

Here is what you already suspect about your own diary: some of the work you finish with the most satisfaction was never yours to do. It was available, you were capable of it, and it gave you what your real job rarely gives you before the end of the day, the feeling of a thing being finished.

A couple of months ago I spent about three weeks, and a ridiculous amount of tokens and time, building an AI video studio to edit my podcast and social videos. My editing team of nearly four years had gone and I had no replacement. It was not great, and it was not my zone of genius.

Meanwhile I had stopgaps from Upwork, people I could rely on who were not at the level I wanted. When my system failed I went back to them and kept watching what became available.

Then I recorded on the Sunday. My mind went straight to the edit, and the worst case was clear: release it unedited, because there is nothing wrong with that. The second question then arrived on its own, which was how I could use AI.

By Monday I had almost 34 pieces of content from that one recording, a long explainer animation, a vlog-style video and basic Instagram reels, all within 24 hours. An editor would probably have taken two to three weeks and cost a couple of thousand pounds. That capability came from engineers working in their zone of genius, while I had spent three weeks outside mine.

It felt invigorating, like being a kid in a candy store. There was no bottleneck or excuse, and I literally had to peel myself away from my office.

The first time, I lost three weeks trying to make something work. The second time, it worked so well that I did not want to stop. The outcomes differed, but the pattern underneath looks the same to me, because the satisfaction of doing something makes it hard to recognise when you have done enough.

I see this in organisations as much as in founders, and it rarely looks like micromanagement. It looks like a leader who has noticed the doing is suddenly within reach: a new tool, a slow hire, a task that takes an hour to do and forty minutes to explain.

Right now that pull is hard to resist. You are navigating AI, organisational change and cost pressure while being asked to deliver more with less, and because you can now do something yourself, sometimes faster than the people you depend on, the question is whether being able to do it means you should.

You can tell it is happening when you end a day pleased with it and cannot name a decision you made, when you call the work quick, and when you are learning the tool far more than the problem.

Your people will rarely say it, but they see where your energy goes and read it as what matters. If you are deep in work two levels below your seat, they conclude the real work is down there. Some wait for you to come back up, and others stop bringing the harder questions.

Sometimes what comes back will not look how you imagined. If it delivers what was agreed, the gap between your preference and their approach is something you have to live with. Accepting poor work is not trust, but agreeing what good looks like and then letting people deliver is. Otherwise you have handed over the work and kept ownership of every decision.

When the system does catch up, lean in, as I did, and then ask what you are leaning in on, because being invigorated is not evidence the work is yours. That is the intention gap in its most respectable form: where you meant to put your attention, and where it went, with a good reason attached.

The question is not whether you can do the work. It is what being capable of it is costing the people who need your attention elsewhere.

If you thought of work you are holding that is not yours, I would like to hear about it. Working with me is a partnership, not a programme, and the first conversation is simply the two of us looking honestly at where your time is going.

You can start that conversation here: [Book A Conversation Here]

• What piece of work did you take on this month because you were capable of it, rather than because it was yours?
• If your team could see where your attention actually went last week, what would they conclude is the most important work in the building?
• Which decision has been waiting longest for you, and what have you finished in the meantime?