The Fire Drill

Who you are

The moment something goes wrong you are visibly in motion — making calls, handing out tasks, doing the thing that needs doing. People can see it happening, and what they see is competence rather than panic. Then it ends, and you want a closed door and no conversation for several hours.

This is a genuinely useful shape. You're the person who is already solving it while everyone else is still processing, and you don't make the situation heavier by needing to be managed through it. Teams tend to form around you in emergencies without anyone deciding that out loud.

The problem is what happens after. You spend the whole reserve in the first hour and then vanish, and because the vanishing is quiet, people assume you're fine. So you get handed the next emergency before you've recovered from the last one, and the only person tracking that cost is you — often not very well.

Say the second part out loud. "I've got this, and I'm off tonight" costs you nothing and stops the next thing landing at 9pm.

You know it's you when…

• You were already solving it while the room was still reacting
• Somebody assumed you were fine because you went quiet
• The next emergency arrived before you'd recovered

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