Low doses in homeopathy are indicated by a p nummer, like p13, meaning 10 times diluted, 13 times. Which brings it into individual molecules per tube territory.
I'm like OP, I feel like I paddle along, minimal effort, then sometimes I take some strong strokes and get many of the people that work "the wrong way" to paddle the right way for some strokes and I can continue on momentum for another couple of months.
When I'm not 100% sure I'm paddling the right way or management wants me to paddle the wrong way, I don't really peddle, I complain and start playing around with fun tech that I think is the right way. Then when the time comes, I makes some powerful strokes again (aided by the new knowledge from playing).
This is going to sound cocky but I feel that I'm pretty good at determining what the right way is, and that is the reason I get away with it. It's like I'm slowly walking by a wall, feeling where it is weakest for months on end, then I make one big push, it falls, things change, I make noise, people appreciate it and understand this is the right way. Lead by example it's been called.
To be clear, I consider the wrong way usually the ineffective way. Ie in our org many people write many one-off scripts, I always try to focus on creating re-useable assets following global standards. I promote innersource because it's fun but also because it enabled other devs to make my CI/CD pipelines. I'm lazy but I think in a good way.
I fully agree, yet here I am with many friends that swear their kids stop having gum aches after applying some stuff that contains 0.5 molecules per tube of whatever. I tell them it could be their attention, the actual rubbing, just the fact that the kid thinks he's being helped. Yet none of them is up for rubbing the kids with water in a double blind way and making structured notes of the effects. "It obviously helps, everybody happy". Yeah, especially the manufacturer of said half molecule*.
(* I get that it means there is just 1 molecule in every 2nd tube, or more likely some tubes have 0, some 1, some 2, some 3, we have to take counting statistics into account.)
I think an important lesson is, from all comments here, that you can work a lot less and get away with it but you need to excel in areas other than productivity.
What are those areas? Imho: Vision, providing direction, knowing when to be productive at the exact right time, identify well in advance what won't work, identify who is doing the same as you and working together or leveraging that work. Perhaps you can do very little until you finally identify that one core important thing and be praised for those couple of hours. It's a skill as any other.
Same here, I really recognize this. There are times I really peak. Most times I really don't do much. I don't lie in startups really, maybe I'll say I'm working on something when I just opened a doc and glanced at it. Which is lying, ok... But I do often finished the work in time, but just in very intense sprints.
I wouldn't say people like us are lazy, I'm like OP but I feel like I'm rather good at peaking when needed and then identifying useless things nobody ever asks about anymore and just not doing them and getting away with it.
I have a pretty rare skill set, combining deep genomics knowledge, system administration (from my hobby) and software development/data science. This means I often understand our full stack which is super rare as a biologist/bio-informatician, at least where I work. Just by interest I listen to a lot of tech podcasts. So I have an informed, strong opinion on how things could be, and it's easy to fake it until I make it by echoing the podcasters whom I respect a lot.
Sometimes I feel like somebody is on to me which is uncomfortable, but it may just be imposter syndrome. I mean I did build nice things that I'm proud of and at the rare times that I am really engaged with what I'm building I find it difficult to stop and even relaxing to work on. So maybe at those time I make up for it? I spend a lot of time avoiding boring stuff and seeking out fun things. Also I do a lot things around the house during work times (laundry, taking a shower etc). I just can't focus for very long when I consider something to be not fun. When we were still in the office I used to take pretty long walks or go and talk to people in other offices around campus.
I'm also a huge procrastinator, ie, for my bachelors and my PhD theses I skipped 2 nights (or slept 1-2 hours) in the weekends before they needed to be finished and I just wrote non-stop. Pretty stressful.
I get very good reviews, and I like to think that it is because I indeed do the most useful things at the right time and provide direction and vision where needed. Also in about half or less of the time my boss thinks I work. I start a lot of new things but hardly ever finish, but one of my previous managers said they like that, they had a lack of new ideas and enough people to grind it out. So there's that. I find it easy to call people in my company in other departments and get them to do things or set something up together, that doesn't really feel like work, I think that also helps, most of my colleagues hate doing this. But if someone did something remotely similar to what I am about to do they can save me a lot of time that I can spend not working.
Recently I started working with someone who I feel like is like me, but does work 100% (or maybe it only appears that way!). I find it a bit jarring how well he can estimate my productivity and skills. Then again, maybe he really does underestimate me and I'm having some imposter syndrome, I've never not-delivered when it mattered.
Btw, nice topic, I often felt like starting something like this.