Underneath
What's going on underneath #
Three things that tend to sit under the words.
The phrase also leaves very little to hold on to.
Many people grew up on a clear promise: study hard, work hard, and it will be noticed.
Underneath, a belief can settle: “If I'm not in with the right people, my work doesn't count.”
Reactions
What people often do #
- Watch who talks to whom before every decision
- Stop putting ideas forward, because it seems already decided
- Force yourself into lunches and chats that feel fake
- Work twice as hard, hoping it becomes too clear to ignore
- Go quietly bitter, and keep it to yourself
The deck
The story in 6 cards #
Six short cards, from the moment to letting go.
The lunch and the lost client
Friday afternoon in a Pune office. The email says the new client goes to Rohit, who was at Thursday's long lunch with the senior manager. You had built most of the pitch. At the tea stall downstairs, Arjun shrugs and stirs his chai: “Bhai, it's all about who you know here.” He means it kindly. You nod, and the whole week's work feels suddenly very small.
Outside the circle, my work doesn't count
First, plainly: a decision made in a side chat isn't a verdict on your work, and it isn't the truth about your worth. But a rule can grow out of days like this, and it becomes yours: “If I'm not in with the right people, my work doesn't count.” It sounds like seeing clearly. But look at what it does: every good thing you do starts to feel wasted.
Why we trusted merit
We hold a rule like that because we were promised that hard work would be enough. It is a very human hope, and a common one. Maybe your family's whole plan rested on marks and merit. Maybe you simply believe in doing things the honest way. Either way, wanting your work to count isn't naive. It comes from wanting fairness. That deserves kindness, not blame.
What each side chat takes
Each side chat takes something small. It happens so quietly it can be hard to notice. You hold back an idea because it seems decided. You scan who sits with whom at the team lunch. You turn down a chai because it feels like playing a game. Bit by bit, work you felt proud of starts to feel invisible, and your Fridays go on decoding who decided what.
Is watching the circle worth it?
Ask yourself honestly: has holding this rule ever got you into the room? Or has it mostly kept you watching from outside, and tired? Some decisions do follow who knows whom, and some don't, and your work is real either way. There is no wrong answer here. Take a moment with it, if you like. Is holding this rule so tightly worth what it costs your peace?
My work still counts
Letting go doesn't mean the politics are fair, or that you stop caring about fairness. It means the circle no longer decides what your work is worth. You can see the side chats clearly and still enjoy the pitch you built. It can start small, one moment at a time: one idea said anyway. That's where some peace comes back: your work feels like yours again.
If work ever comes with threats, being shouted at or frightened, being watched, or pay or papers held back, that is not okay and is worth taking seriously.
The flip
The old rule, and a new one to try #
The old ruleIf I'm not in with the right people, my work doesn't count.
A new rule to trySome decisions follow who knows whom. My work still counts.
Three small days
Try it for 3 days #
- Day 1
Name to yourself one person at work who values what you do
- Day 2
When the circle feels loud, take one slow breath out
- Day 3
Notice one piece of today's work you feel glad about
Want to talk it through?
“Which decision lately felt like it was made in a room you weren't in?”
Free and private. No sign-up to start. The chat opens with this question.
Everything this deck knows
Go deeper #
What it sounds like, where it comes from, what it costs, and other ways to see it. Every question opens a chat on it.
How it lands
What was said
A shrug that explains everything #
A decision lands on Friday afternoon: the new project goes to someone who was at Thursday's long lunch with the senior manager. You ask a colleague how it was decided, and he shrugs: “Bhai, it's all about who you know here.” He says it kindly, almost like advice, and goes back to his screen.
The words are meant to make sense of things, and in a way they do. They also quietly say something heavy: that the reports you stayed late for, the clean work, the fixes nobody noticed, may count for less than a conversation held without you.
When did a decision at work last seem to follow who was close to whom, more than the work itself?Talk about this ›
Who was in the room when it was made, and where were you at the time?Talk about this ›
The first few seconds
The tired drop before any thinking #
For some people it is a heavy, flat feeling, as if the air went out of the week. Some feel a flash of anger, then a sharp tiredness. Some laugh along with the colleague and feel the weight land later, on the bus or in the queue at the canteen. None of that is being naive.
Fairness at work matters to most people in a deep, quick way. When the rules seem to change depending on who you are friends with, the body notices before the mind has worked anything out. The questions, “should I be doing more lunches?”, usually come a little later.
What did your body do when you heard how it was decided?Talk about this ›
Did you feel angry, tired, or suddenly outside something?Talk about this ›
What might that first reaction say about what you had hoped your work would count for?Talk about this ›
Why it lands
It suggests the work was never the point #
Most people go to work believing that effort and skill will be what counts. When decisions seem to follow friendships instead, that belief takes a knock. The sting is the feeling that the game you had been playing well was not the real game.
The phrase also leaves very little to hold on to. A bad review can be worked on. A closed circle feels harder to touch, and the mind can start to wonder whether anything you do will matter if you are not in the right chat, the right lunch, the right car home.
That is why one shrug can sting more than a hard piece of feedback.
If the decision had less to do with your work than with who knows whom, what does it actually say about your work?Talk about this ›
The voice inside
When the shrug starts speaking from inside #
Hear it often enough and it can move in. “Why do I even try here?” “I'm just not one of them.” “People like me don't get picked.” It can switch on when a side chat goes quiet as you walk past, or when a meeting invite arrives already decided.
The colleague who said it has moved on by Monday, but the sentence keeps running, and now it sounds like your own voice. That is what makes it hard to spot: it no longer feels like his opinion about the office, it feels like a plain fact about you.
Whose voice does it use when it puts you on the outside?Talk about this ›
Is it yours, or one you picked up somewhere else, in a school, a building, a group where you once felt you didn't belong?Talk about this ›
Where it comes from
Where it can come from
For many people, merit was the deal #
Many people grew up on a clear promise: study hard, work hard, and it will be noticed. Ranks were read out, marks were compared, and the effort seemed to lead straight to the result. For some, that promise was the whole family's hope.
Some people also grew up watching others get ahead through contacts, a relative's call, a word in the right ear, and the reasons vary. What stays is what a child quietly concludes. Some conclude that the honest way is the only respectable way, and that anything else is cheating.
When did you first learn that good work alone should be enough?Talk about this ›
Who taught it to you, and how does that promise match what you see at work now?Talk about this ›
The belief under it
A quiet rule that can form underneath #
Underneath, a belief can settle: “If I'm not in with the right people, my work doesn't count.” Some people carry a stiffer version: “I shouldn't have to know anyone. If I have to, the whole place is unfair.”
Beliefs like this rarely feel like beliefs. They feel like simply seeing how things work, the way the floor feels like the floor, which is exactly why they are worth taking out and looking at in daylight now and then.
Some people trace a rule like this back to early years; some don't. Either way, it can be looked at: if only the circle counts, my work is wasted outside it.
Which rooms does it still fit, and which rooms has it never quite fitted?Talk about this ›
What it costs
What it costs
What the outsider rule can cost #
It can mean holding back ideas because they seem decided already, avoiding colleagues you could easily like because they seem part of the circle, or reading every invite list for signs. Some people stop enjoying work they are proud of, because it feels like it will never be seen.
There is a quieter price too. When every decision looks like politics, it gets hard to trust any good news. A win can feel like luck, a kind word like strategy, and the ordinary friendliness of the office starts to feel like a game you never agreed to play.
Not out of weakness. It is tiring to keep watching the circle from outside.
What has it cost in the last year: an idea kept back, a friendship not started, an evening spent working out who said what to whom?Talk about this ›
If it stays as it is
Five more years of watching the circle #
Picture one ordinary Tuesday on a day when “if I'm not in the circle, my work doesn't count” is loud. What is in it: the meetings, the lunches, the ideas kept back? It's only a picture to look at, nothing to fix.
Perhaps a good idea held because the decision seems made, a lunch invite turned down because it feels fake, a quick scan of who sat with whom at the team dinner. Maybe a piece of work you feel proud of, done quietly and never mentioned.
Nothing here needs an answer yet, and the picture can be put down whenever you like. What, if anything, do you notice when you look at it?
Another way to see it
Another way to see it
Who you know, and what you do #
Relationships do shape decisions in most workplaces, sometimes unfairly and sometimes simply because people trust what they have seen up close. Both can be true at once, and neither is a verdict on the quality of your work.
Sometimes it really was a lunch. Sometimes it was timing, a skill nobody mentioned, or a manager's comfort with someone familiar. Knowing which is far easier to live alongside than one big story about the whole place.
Ask: what, exactly, did this decision turn on?Talk about this ›
Another way in: if a friend said their office ran on who knows whom, would you tell them their work was wasted?Talk about this ›
What would you want them to notice about the people who already know and value it?Talk about this ›
Noticing it sooner
What shows up when people look closer #
When people look slowly at the decisions that stung, some notice not all of them were politics. A few were, clearly. Others had reasons that were simply never explained, and the shrug filled in the gap with the most tiring story.
Others notice the people who already rely on them: the junior who comes to them first, the teammate who trusts their numbers, the client who asks for them by name. Those relationships are real too, built quietly through the work itself.
Who at work already knows what you can do, and what would they say about your work if someone simply asked them?Talk about this ›
Making peace with it
No need to win the whole game #
Making peace doesn't mean agreeing that it is fair, or pretending side chats don't decide things. It means the circle gets less say over how you see your own work, and over how much of your week goes on watching who is in and who is out.
Some people find it lighter once they stop needing the whole office to be fair before they can enjoy their work. Waiting for a fair system is tiring, and it keeps the circle in your head long after you leave.
What would it be like to set that wait down?Talk about this ›
What would it be like to keep doing good work because it is yours, and let the politics be one part of the weather rather than the whole sky?Talk about this ›
A truer sentence
A truer sentence to keep nearby #
If “my work doesn't count here” has been on repeat for months, there's no need to fight it head on. Some people keep a truer sentence ready instead: “Some decisions here follow who knows whom. My work still counts.”
It doesn't have to feel natural yet. It only has to be more accurate than the old one, and some people find that, said quietly and often, it takes up a little of the space the old shrug used to fill.
What would a truer sentence be in your own words, one that is honest about the politics without letting it decide what your work is worth?Talk about this ›
What to let be
Some of it can simply be put down #
Not every side chat needs to be decoded, and not every decision needs a theory about who influenced whom. Some of it can be noticed, felt for a moment, and put down, the way you leave your ID card in the drawer at the end of the day.
That isn't giving up on fairness. It's choosing where your energy goes, and some people say it leaves more room for the work they enjoy and the colleagues they actually like, whichever circle those colleagues are in.
Putting it down for the evening doesn't mean it was fair, or that it's settled. It only means Friday's decision doesn't have to travel into the whole weekend.
If it loosened
And if the rule loosened, even a notch #
Imagine, only as a picture, the rule a notch quieter. The politics are still there, but they feel like one part of the office, not the measure of your work. What is the first thing that feels different?
Small things can be enough, such as an idea said out loud anyway, a chai with a colleague just because you like them, or a Friday evening that isn't spent working out who decided what. What would your first small thing be?
Nothing here needs to be said to anyone. Whatever comes up is yours, and worth noticing. If you'd like to look at it properly, a chat is one tap away.
Small things to try
Something to try
A few small things people try #
- Name it in your head: “that's the who-you-know story again”
- Ask yourself quietly: what did this decision actually turn on?
- Think of one person at work who already values what you do
- Notice one piece of work this week you feel glad about
- When the circle feels loud, take one slow breath out
Small, private and all optional. Try whichever feels doable.
Pick a question
Talk it through #
Tap one. A chat with Dr. Thoughts opens on that question: free, private, no sign-up to start.
- Which decision lately felt like it was made in a room you weren't in?
- Who first promised you that good work alone would be enough?
- Does the circle bother you more for the unfairness or the outside feeling?
- On an ordinary day when the rule is loud, what would you still be holding back?
- If it eased a little, what would you notice first?