It is a fault of excellence that being so much in use it is liable to abuse. Because all covet it, all are vexed by it... The more light a torch gives, the more it burns away and the nearer 'tis to going out. Show yourself less and you will be rewarded by being esteemed more.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
The manille was the trump card played in every hand, and its fate is named: worn out by use, resented by all, valued by none. Offices manufacture manilles constantly: the reliable one who gets every stray task, the fixer added to every failing project, the person whose competence has become a public utility. The pipeline runs from indispensable to assumed to depleted, and esteem falls at every stage, because what is always available is priced like air. The remedy is rationing, not withdrawal: remain excellent, remain willing, but stop being ambient. Usefulness that must be requested, and is occasionally unavailable, is remembered as a favour. Usefulness on tap is remembered as plumbing.
Practice
- Count the commitments that arrived because you never say no; those are manille cards, and each play devalues the deck.
- Introduce honest scarcity: a real queue, real hours, real trade-offs stated aloud ("I can take this, which of my three means less?").
- Route some requests to their proper owners; covering everyone's gaps steals their growth and your value in one move.
Use this when
- Use this when you are praised often and promoted rarely; utilities get maintained, not elevated.
- Use it before burnout arrives, not after; the torch line is a warning about fuel, and fuel does not announce its last quarter.
Ignore this when
- Don't swing to preciousness; scarcity theatre from someone still junior reads as attitude, not value (maxim 58 paces display; this paces availability).
- Don't ration the genuine emergencies; the point is to stop being ambient, not to stop being there.
A picture of it
The colony society's one dependable man wired every festival, chased every leak, collected every fund, for years, thanked in passing and remembered at need. The year his health forced a pause, two things surprised him. The work got done: others rose the moment the utility was off. And his standing rose with his absence: consulted now instead of assigned, requested instead of assumed. He returned on new terms, doing a third of the tasks and valued triple. The torch had learned to be a lamp: lit on purpose, not burning by default.
Air is essential and nobody pays for it. Stop being air.