A Brief Reflection on Personal Heroism
A Brief Reflection on Personal Heroism
In today’s world—whether in teamwork or society—it is inevitable to encounter “liability teammates.”
For those who have the capability to lift a team, improve efficiency, or shoulder responsibility,
a sense of personal heroism naturally emerges:
“If others are too slow, I’ll do it myself.”
“If I don’t step in, the whole thing collapses.”
Is Personal Heroism a Bad Thing?
Let’s start with its advantages.
You gain control over time, work with high autonomy,
and often reduce communication costs
(which ironically are also part of the frustration).
It sounds good—on the surface.
However, once you are juggling multiple tasks under limited time,
the cognitive burden becomes another invisible problem.
Risks: Why Heroic Behavior Carries Hidden Danger
When “being the hero” becomes your default state—
or when it becomes a habit to shoulder everything alone—
the risks begin to surface.
Several aspects are worth noting.
Cognitive Load & Attention Distribution
Taking on multiple roles doesn’t just increase workload;
you must constantly switch between planning / executing / communicating / coordinating.
This isn’t “doing two things at once.”
It is task switching, and switching carries hidden costs.
Over-reliance on a Single Individual Reduces Team Resilience
If a team becomes accustomed to you “saving the day,”
teammates lose growth opportunities.
Responsibilities blur,
and the equation becomes:
hero fails = entire team fails.
Long-Term Cost: Efficiency in Appearance, Inefficiency in Reality
Even if you are faster in the short term,
without building team capability, systems, or shared mechanisms,
the model becomes unsustainable.
You end up becoming the only pillar—
and eventually, pillars crack.
In short:
“I’ll do it myself” may work occasionally,
but long-term heroism drains you and suppresses the team’s potential.
Multitasking & Cognitive Switching — What It Does to the Brain
Discussing heroism means discussing how the brain handles overload.
When we take on too much and switch rapidly between tasks,
we are actually damaging cognitive resources.
A consolidated paper in PubMed Central, “Multicosts of Multitasking,” highlights:
Human brains cannot run multiple attention-heavy tasks simultaneously.
Most “multitasking” is actually rapid switching—
and this switching comes with measurable cost.
Additional research findings include:
- Stanford University found that frequent media multitaskers performed significantly worse on memory tests.
- Other studies show high multitaskers have lower gray matter density in regions like the anterior cingulate cortex.
Key points from these studies:
- The feeling of “doing many things at once” is often an illusion of efficiency.
- Task switching consumes more attention and memory than sustained focus.
- Long-term patterns can alter brain structure and cognitive performance.
How to Make “Heroism” Healthy—and Make the Team Sustainable
Define what you should handle vs. what the team must handle
If a task is clear, linear, and you can execute quickly,
starting it yourself may be efficient.
But if it requires collaboration, consensus, and back-and-forth communication,
share it—
otherwise you will always be the one who “jumps into the fire.”
Build workflows that minimize switching costs
When switching is unavoidable,
set task blocks instead of responding to interruptions on demand.
One task → finish a chunk → shift.
Not task → interruption → task → crisis → shift.
Use tools and shared platforms
so progress is transparent and no one depends solely on your explanations.
Develop team capability—make sure the hero isn’t only you
After every “heroic intervention,”
follow up with teaching, passing knowledge, and clarifying processes.
Heroism helps today;
capacity building helps forever.
Self-monitoring and rest
Notice when you fall into “hero mode + switching mode” often.
Observe your fatigue patterns, your energy dips,
and the decline in your deep-work ability.
Remember:
The brain is built for focus, not fragmented multitasking.
When to Stop Being the Hero, and When to Become the Coordinator
Hero mode is powered by
“I’ll do it / I can pull this off.”
But long-term growth lies in another direction:
designing systems, shaping processes, distributing responsibility.
When your skill is no longer just “doing things well,”
but “building teams and frameworks that allow things to be done well,”
that is the real transition—
from hero to architect.
