What you do when there’s no paycheck, no grade and no audience is the most honest résumé you have.

Behavior that gets rewarded tells you about the reward, not about the person. Take away the grade, the pay and the audience, and what is left is what you actually care about: the thing you read when nobody assigned it, the person you help when it earns you nothing, the practice you do on a day off.

Look back at the last month and find the hours nobody paid for or graded. Write down what you did with them. If the list does not look like the person you say you are, that gap is the most useful information you will get this week.