A senior developer I mentor was incredibly frustrated last week.
He had closed 45 Jira tickets this month, but was passed over for a Staff Engineer promotion. He asked me to review his work.
I looked at his tickets. He upgraded a minor library. He fixed 10 CSS bugs. He refactored a logging class.
I told him, "You aren't doing engineering. You are playing Side Quests."
When you are blocked on a massive, difficult architectural problem, your brain panics. It craves dopamine. So, you unconsciously find tiny, easy problems to solve to get a false sense of momentum.
You get to fix the problems right in front of you, and you get a quick burst of kudos from your peers. It feels amazing.
But you are hiding from the actual work.
You get social capital for fixing minor bugs. You get promoted for solving business-threatening bottlenecks.
Stop fighting the low-level monsters. Go fight the boss.