The Art of Worldly Wisdom
Do, and be seen doing
Half the work is being known to have done it
The Art of Worldly Wisdom, maxim 130
The maxim is uncomfortable coming from a priest. What it argues is not vanity but arithmetic about whose ledger your work sits on.
What actually happened?
Maxim one hundred and thirty is its own title: do, and be seen doing. Gracián is blunt about the reason. Things do not pass for what they are but for what they seem; to be of use and to know how to show it is to be twice as useful; what is not seen is as if it did not exist. From a Jesuit this grates, but he had watched able men outranked by visible ones. Elsewhere he is just as firm that reputation without substance does not survive. He is describing a ratio, not a substitute.
On someone else's ledger, unseen work was never done
Your own ledger records what happened. Everyone else's records only what they saw. Promotions, partnerships and trust are drawn against those other ledgers. Quiet work is not unrewarded through unfairness. It is held in an account nobody else can query.
The engineer who took uptime from ninety per cent to four nines lost the review to the one who handled a single visible outage.
Showing is a craft, and it is not shouting
Being seen is not self-praise. The craft is in the carrier: a write-up colleagues pass on, a tool whose users say your name, an accurate crediting of your team when you report upward. The strongest version has somebody else doing the saying.
A note on what went wrong that circulates all year beats a line in a status report claiming a hard problem was solved.
Two ways the ratio kills you
All substance and no visibility buries the work and eventually sours the person doing it. All visibility and no substance clears to zero the first time anyone checks, and someone always checks. The healthy ratio keeps the claim half a step behind the fact.
A firm that describes itself as slightly less capable than it is beats expectations on every delivery. The reverse pays down debt on every one.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: you have done real work and find promoting it distasteful.
Ask first: whose ledger does this exist on right now? Apart from you, who could look it up?
Where it goes wrong: letting showing become boasting, which spends credit you have not earned; or building the reputation first and waiting to be checked.
Lines to keep
Do, and be seen doing.
What is not seen is as if it did not exist.
Same situation, other people are asking
I said it and not one person took it seriously.Maybe I just don't have it.I did the work and somebody else got the credit.How many people would I actually need before this pays for itself?Nobody is looking at my work · all 6 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.