Anyone can get a nickname in the hallway. Earning “the one we can count on” takes years.

Reputations arrive fast and cheap when they are built on a moment, a joke or a haircut. The kind worth having is slow, because it is made of repetition and there is no way around that. People decide you are reliable only after watching you be reliable at times when it was inconvenient.

Choose one thing people could count on you for and hold it for a month without announcing it. Turn up at the hours you said you would. The name follows the pattern, never the other way around.