It starts as a compliment. Someone a couple of years behind you starts sending the "quick question" messages, and you answer them, because you remember exactly what it felt like to be stuck on something everyone else seemed to already know. Then it's three someones. Then it's a standing thing, and your name gets handed around the team as the person who'll actually sit down and explain the Power Query error nobody else will decode.
And you don't want to stop. That's the trap. You're not being put-upon by people you resent; you're being useful to people you like, in the part of the job that feels most like the colleague you wish you'd had. But every "got a sec?" lands in the middle of your actual work, and your actual work is the only thing on your review. Nobody is counting the afternoon you spent unpicking someone else's broken refresh.
The usual advice is "set boundaries" - block your calendar, learn to say no, protect your focus time. It isn't wrong, but it treats the problem as a willpower failure on your part. It isn't one. The reason this keeps happening is structural, and you can't boundary your way out of a structure.
The work that helps everyone except the person doing it
Every team runs on a layer of work that makes the group better without showing up as any individual's output. Onboarding the new hire. Answering the questions. Being the institutional memory for why the model is built the way it is. It's real and it's valuable and it's nearly invisible by construction, because the better you do it, the more it looks like things are simply running smoothly on their own.
The asymmetry is the actual problem. Helping is rewarded instantly and socially: a grateful colleague, the small hit of being the one who knew, the genuine pleasure of watching something click for someone. Your own deliverables are rewarded slowly and formally, on a cycle, in a document, by someone who wasn't in the room. So the incentives quietly tilt you toward the thing that doesn't count and away from the thing that does. You feel busy and helpful and somehow also behind, because you are.
And it compounds at exactly the point the feedback post a couple of weeks back was about - once you're senior enough that your output stops announcing its own quality. The more you become the person who answers, the more your week fills with work that no review cycle was ever designed to see.
Make the invisible work leave a trail
Answer once, in public. The next time you get a question you've answered before - and most of them are repeats - don't answer it in the DM. Write the answer somewhere findable: a Teams channel, a short doc, a pinned message, a two-minute screen recording. Then send the link. You've still helped, the help now scales past one person, and you've left behind a thing with your name on it that outlives the conversation. The third time you field the same question is a sign you should have written it down the second time.
Batch it instead of bleeding it. Always-on availability is what turns mentoring from a contribution into a tax. The cost was never the ten minutes; it's the context-switch that wrecks the hour around them. A standing slot - "I keep Thursday afternoons for questions, drop them in here and I'll work through them" - converts a stream of interruptions into a block you can actually plan around. Async by default. Urgent is the exception, not the format.
Put it where it gets counted. People skip this one because it feels like bragging. It isn't bragging, it's reporting. In your one-on-one, name it: "I'm spending roughly a day a week supporting the newer analysts - here's what that's unblocked." Keep a running note of who you helped and what shipped because of it. You're not asking for a gold star. You're making a structurally invisible part of your job visible to the one person who decides what your job is worth.
This week
One move. The next time someone asks you something you've explained before, resist the reflex to answer it again in the chat and move on. Write the answer down somewhere reusable, send the link, and keep the link. That's the whole assignment. You're not renegotiating your relationship with the entire team this week; you're starting the paper trail that turns invisible help into something with your fingerprints on it.
Because the next problem in this arc is the one all of this builds toward. You've been doing the senior work, the glue work, the mentoring nobody logged - and at some point you have to sit across from someone and turn that into an actual promotion. That's the conversation almost nobody gets prepared for (26 Jun).
Frequently Asked Questions
What if I actually like mentoring and don't want to do less of it?
Then don't do less of it - do it in a way that counts. The goal isn't to help less; it's to stop helping invisibly and uncredited. Document it, batch it, and make sure it surfaces where your contribution is actually measured. Enjoying the work and being recognised for it are not in tension.
How do I say no to a junior colleague without being cold?
You rarely need a flat no - you need a redirect. "I can't look at this right now, but I'll get to it in Thursday's session" or "I wrote this up here, start with that and tell me what's still stuck" both help the person and protect your focus. A no that comes with a route forward doesn't read as cold. It reads as organised.
Isn't writing everything up more work on top of the work?
Up front, slightly. Over any reasonable stretch, no. The questions you get are heavily repetitive - the same five Power Query errors, the same confusion about filter context. Writing the answer once and reusing it ten times is less total effort than retyping it in ten separate DMs, and the written version is better because you weren't answering it in a hurry.
What if my manager doesn't see mentoring as real work?
That's exactly why you report it instead of assuming it's noticed. Frame it in outcomes, not hours: not "I spend a lot of time helping people" but "three of this quarter's deliverables shipped on time because I unblocked the people doing them." Managers who shrug at "helping" tend to pay attention to "shipped."
Should I ask to make mentoring an official part of my role?
If it's already a day a week, then yes - that's not a favour anymore, it's scope. Naming it explicitly ("I'd like this recognised as part of what I do, and reflected in how my role is described") moves it from something you quietly absorb to something you're credited for. It also gives you something concrete to point at when the promotion conversation comes around.
What if I'm the junior in this situation - how do I ask without being a burden?
Do the thing this whole post is asking the senior person to want: make your questions cheap to answer. Search first, show what you've already tried, ask one specific question instead of "can you help with this," and batch them rather than pinging across the whole day. The people worth learning from will always make time for someone who clearly respects theirs.