The Work We Hide Behind

What if the work we're hiding behind just... disappeared?

I wrote a book. Then I scrapped it. Rewrote it. Scrapped it again. Rewrote it again.

What drove the rework wasn’t an issue of the quality of the manuscript. It was because the book was almost done and done meant becoming visible.

Being visible meant having my work exposed to every person who might read it and confirm the thing I was most afraid of: Maybe I’m not good a writer.

So I did what any self-respecting creator does when the finish line gets too close.

I found more work to do.

I fixated on the cover. Spent hours on fonts, color palettes and mockups — work I should have outsourced to a designer weeks earlier.

Then I moved to the formatting. Margins. Line spacing. Headers.

The kind of work that feels like progress because you can see it changing on the screen. Then I hired an editor. I told myself this was the move and once the editor revises it and signs off, I’ll feel confident enough to publish. In other words, once someone with credentials validates my work, the fear will quiet down.

The editor completed her review and revisions. She loved it. She said the stories were compelling and my voice was strong. Her revisions were light — a few notes in the margins, some tightening. It was the kind of feedback that says your work is ready.

I should have felt happy, but I didn’t. I actually felt worse because I no longer had an excuse to hide. The editor said it was good. The formatting was done. The cover was designed. Everything I’d been hiding behind was gone and I was standing at the finish line with nothing between me and the publish button.

So you know what I did? I went behind the editor and started revising again.

Can you believe that?

I paid an expert to tell me my work was ready. She told me my work was ready and my response was to undo her work because if she was right, I’d have to actually finish.

That’s not perfectionism. That’s not high standards. That’s hiding and the work I was doing — the cover, formatting, and revisions-after-the-revisions was the hiding place.

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The Work that Keeps You Safe

Here’s what I’ve learned since then, and what I now see in almost every woman I talk to who writes, teaches, or speaks. We all have work that keeps the engine running.

• Formatting slides.

• Updating a website.

• Reorganizing files.

• Tweaking a lesson plan for the fourteenth time.

• Building the system instead of using it.

• Perfecting the pitch deck instead of sending it.

Most of the time, that work feels productive. It looks productive. You can point to it at the end of the day and say: See, I did something.

But productive and progressing aren’t the same thing.

Productive means you moved.

Progressing means you moved toward the thing with your name on it — the book, the talk, the course, or the pitch. The work that requires you to be seen.

The gap between those two? That’s the trap.

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Why We Choose the Hiding Place

This isn’t a discipline problem. It’s not a time management problem.

It’s a pattern and the pattern has a name. In behavioral science, it’s called avoidance reinforcement.

Here’s how it works:

You have something that scares you. Publishing. Pitching. Presenting. Anything that puts your expertise in front of people who might judge it. So instead of doing that, you do something else.

Something that feels productive. You format. You organize. You revise one more time. The moment you choose that task over the scary one, the anxiety drops. You feel relief.

Your brain registers that relief as a reward. So you do it again…and again... and again.

The loop: Fear of being seen → choose a safer task → anxiety drops → brain rewards the choice → repeat.

Every time you pick the formatting over publishing, the organizing over pitching, the revising over releasing — you’re not procrastinating.

You’re training your brain to avoid the finish line and the worst part about it is that hiding work gets easier and more automatic over time.

While the real work of untrapping your expertise feels more and more difficult.

What if the hiding place disappeared?

That is the question that changed everything for me.

• Not “how do I get more disciplined?”

• Not “how do I manage my time better?”

• Not “what’s the best productivity system?”

But: What if the work I’m hiding behind just... wasn’t there anymore?

• What if someone else handled the formatting?

• What if the website updates were automated?

• What if the slide deck built itself?

• What would I have to face then?

The answer, if you’re honest, isn’t “I’d finally be free to do my real work.”

The answer is “I’d have no excuse left and that terrifies me.”

That’s the real fear. Not that you can’t finish.

It’s that you can — and then people will see it.

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My goal with this post isn’t fix anything nor am I going to pretend that a mindset shift is enough. I’ve done mindset work. I’ve journaled. I’ve affirmed. I’ve told myself I’m worthy of being seen and still opened my laptop only to spend three hours reformatting a slide deck instead of sending my pitch.

Awareness alone doesn’t break the loop… a system does.

So here’s what I want you to do this week. Look at how you spent your time over the next five days. All of it. The meetings, the admin, the emails, the content creation, the organizing, the tweaking, and revising.

Next, ask yourself two questions:

1. Which of these tasks actually require my expertise (my presence, insight, and lived experience)?

2. Which ones just made me feel like I was doing something productive?

Don’t judge what you find. Just look at it. That honest look is the first move towards getting untrapped.

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If you’ve been looking for something that could help you untrap your expertise so you can publish, pitch, or present without negotiating with fear at the finish line — I’m building it and if you’re a free subscribe, you’ll be the first to know.

In the meantime, tell me:

What would be most supportive for you in releasing your work to the world?