The Case for Getting Ahead By Doing Work That Feels "Too Easy"
Why work that feels easy to you is usually your competitive edge, what research says about expertise blind spots, and how to spot the skills you're not giving yourself credit for
Welcome to Reframed! Work is complex, career advice shouldn’t be.
I’m Ashley Rudolph and I write this newsletter for ambitious people who are ready to step into the next level of their careers. People have said that I share the kind of “real talk” that you only get from a close friend. Advice that feels actionable and helps improve their relationship to work.
It’s MLK Day here, so if you’re in the US, enjoy your holiday!
I spent this past weekend with friends in a sprawling cabin on the Connecticut River, watching the Vermont snow create a very specific kind of magic outside the window.
I was so analog this weekend that I didn’t even need to Brick my phone to stay off it.
My friends Jen and Romaine were our incredible hosts for the weekend. Jen shares her Vermont cottage life and culinary genius on TikTok. Her toks are addictive (and calming!). The weekend was filled with oysters and champagne, fondue, a beautiful roasted chicken, and games.
It was restorative in every way.
CLIENT STORIES
Why Your “Easy” Work Is Your Biggest Career Asset
There’s a theme that’s been dominating my coaching calls recently, particularly as we hit the “New Year, New Me” cycle. High achievers want to push themselves; they want more challenge and more fulfillment.
I love that energy, so I lean into it with them. The thing that shocks them is the realization that sometimes the quickest path to the next level isn’t developing new skills; it’s capitalizing on what already comes “easy” to them. I don’t mean this as an invitation to be mediocre or lazy, that’s not what we do here on Reframed! It’s about recognizing that your natural strengths are your highest-leverage assets. When you focus ruthlessly on what comes naturally to you, you aren’t taking the “easy way out”. You’re identifying the most efficient way to stand out and get ahead.
Take me, for example. Pattern matching comes incredibly easy to me. Specifically, the ability to do things like look at an org chart, assess talent, understand an organization’s goals, and see exactly who needs to be where to win. It’s why I was a great operator and it’s how I scaled teams so effectively. It’s my unfair advantage and leaning into it is what also makes me an excellent career strategist.
Recently, I coached a client through identifying her edge and using it as leverage. I want to share that with you all.
Two weeks into her new role at a growing tech company, Maya called me feeling uncertain.
“I think I might be overthinking this,” she said. “Everything they’re asking me to do feels...straightforward.”
Maya had just landed a strategic operations role after years of project management experience. When she arrived, she discovered teams were operating without basic coordination frameworks. There were smart people everywhere working in silos, missing deadlines, and generally unclear on who owned what. The kind of situation that is simultaneously an operators worst nightmare (if it persists) and their dream problem to solve (if they’re empowered to fix it).
So Maya did what felt natural: she created a simple project management template that teams could actually use.
“I literally made a basic framework,” she told me.
“When I showed it to the head of finance, he said ‘Where have you been all my life?’ But Ashley, this was just standard project management.”
I want to pause here for a second and address the obvious question: how do we know Maya wasn’t just doing something actually simple that anyone could have replicated (lol)?
Recent research from HBR offers some insight. When testing experts versus novices, researchers found that genuine expertise actually prevents people from “overclaiming.” True experts are more accurate about what they know and precisely because they know it so well, they often undervalue its complexity.
Maya’s ten years of project management experience allowed her to quickly assess what was missing, synthesize a solution, and implement it effectively. What felt "standard" to her was actually sophisticated pattern recognition. And that simple tool enabled teams to work in ways they weren’t able to previously.
Easy for you, game-changing for them.
I loved hearing this scenario from Maya. It was a signal to me that she’s somewhere where she can make an impact and her repeatedly doing what she’s good at is going to be consequential for her career, in all the right ways.
THE RESEARCH
What Gallup's Management Research Gets Right About Professional Growth
If you created professional goals for 2026 - I want you to check in on them. How many of your goals are hinged on your natural gifts, the things you do incredibly well?
Sometimes we forget them. Self improvement and professional development culture is so oriented around patching up our "weaknesses" and closing all our gaps. And while I do think those things are important, your real leverage will come from doubling down on your zone of genius - the things that feel “easy” for you.
My POV was shaped by my experiences and influenced by the core philosophy behind tools like CliftonStrengths: your greatest potential for growth lies in your areas of natural strength, not your weaknesses. We even chatted about it briefly in our interview with Babba Rivera on our podcast last year.
Gallup’s research on management confirms this as well. The highest-performing teams aren’t the ones who fix every individual’s weaknesses, but the ones who obsessively sharpen their “genius” skills. You will always get a higher ROI by taking a strength from a 9 to a 10 than by dragging a weakness from a 3 to a 4.
THE FRAMEWORK
Find Your Hidden Competitive Advantage With These 3 Simple Questions
So let’s dig into yours. If you haven’t done this type of reflection, you’re probably thinking “well, what am I good at?”. If you feel stuck, try starting here. Reflect on things like:
What have you done at work recently that feels “obvious” to you, yet consistently elicits a visceral “thank goodness you’re here” response from your peers or even your manager?
When you’re working on a project and things aren’t going as expected, where do you focus your time and energy first?
What types of problems do you look to solve time and time again at work? For example, do you instinctively focus on the people, the process, or the data?
Take a few minutes to jot down the answers to the above questions today. Save it on your phone, your computer, or keep it pinned to your desk. The next time you catch yourself saying, “I literally could have pulled this off the internet,” I want you to look back at that list and shift your energy.
The internet has the information, but it doesn’t have your judgment.
It doesn’t have years and years of pattern recognition that allowed you to know which information on the internet mattered to your unique situation.
It doesn’t know how to apply that information to a room full of complex teams all operating in your specific context.
But you do.
At a certain point in your career, you’re being paid for the years it took to know exactly which template to build. And that’s not cheating. It’s actually the highest form of mastery.
Good luck! See you on Thursday.
Ashley
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