Digital creep
The digital jobs you’re doing that were never in your job description
I set up Midday to offer practical, grounded support for people whose digital responsibilities have grown and become harder to manage.
You probably don’t think of your digital work as fragmented. But if you step back and list what you actually deal with in a typical week, it rarely fits under a single heading.
You might pull together numbers for a board discussion, respond to queries about paid media, tools, suppliers, or how AI is starting to affect content. Each task makes sense on its own, but together they consume more headspace and time than expected.
Recently, you haven’t sat down and said, ‘Is this my role?’ The work arrived because the business needed answers, and you do digital stuff. That is how digital responsibility creeps.
If this creeping job expansion stays unnoticed, the problem is not just personal overload. The business can lose focus on outcomes.
Boundaries blur and work stalls because responsibility sits informally with you rather than explicitly with the organisation. You spend more time reacting and less time thinking about what actually moves the business forward.
Over time, your attention shifts from outcomes to activity. The digital work keeps growing, but its impact becomes harder to define.
To manage this, pause and name your expanded responsibilities. Could you write down your day-to-day digital work and score it for what truly matters to the business? For example, digital work that delivers sales revenue scores higher than tracking vanity metrics.
To support your reflection, I’ve put together a short Digital Responsibility Checklist. It’s a thinking aid and prompts you to look at areas such as your website, tools, data, and supplier relationships, and to notice where responsibility has quietly landed with you. Use it if it helps.
Please take a few minutes today to complete the Digital Responsibility Checklist and go over your current digital duties. This gives you a practical starting point to prioritise what deserves focus—and what you can set aside.
Reflective questions
What digital tasks are unnamed but on your plate?
Where is digital work busy but unclear in impact?
How would things change if focus matched responsibility?
I hope this helps.
Adam
UK-based. In person, where possible.
Digital Responsibility Checklist
A practical checklist to help you see where digital work has accumulated — and whether it contributes to clear business outcomes.
Check the items that currently sit with you.
Website and content
☐ Deciding what changes are made to the website
☐ Being responsible for whether the website supports sales, enquiries, or credibility
☐ Explaining website performance or behaviour to others
Consider:
Does the time spent here clearly contribute to revenue, pipeline, or customer understanding?
Paid media and channels
☐ Overseeing paid activity or spend
☐ Reporting on performance or justifying results
☐ Deciding whether activity continues, changes, or stops
Consider:
Is this work driving measurable commercial outcomes, or is it maintaining activity without a clear return?
Tools and platforms
☐ Choosing or renewing digital tools
☐ Owning problems when tools fail to deliver
☐ Explaining tool value or limitations internally
Consider:
Do you think this tool will earn the time and attention it requires through clear business value?
Data and reporting
☐ Producing numbers for leadership or board discussions
☐ Interpreting metrics or answering follow-up questions
☐ Maintaining reports that influence decisions
Consider:
Do these numbers change decisions, or mainly provide reassurance?
Suppliers and partners
☐ Managing agencies or external specialists
☐ Translating business goals into briefs
☐ Carrying responsibility when delivery falls short
Consider:
Is this relationship improving outcomes, or increasing coordination overhead?
Direction and judgement
☐ Being asked to take a view on digital priorities
☐ Making decisions where ownership is unclear
☐ Holding risk for outcomes that affect the business
Consider:
Is the value of this judgement recognised, or assumed?
Final check
Looking at what you’ve ticked:
☐ Most of this work clearly supports business outcomes
☐ Some of this work absorbs time without clear value
☐ Responsibility has grown faster than focus
The purpose of this checklist is not to optimise or fix anything.
It is to make visible which digital responsibilities genuinely move the business forward.
Once you can see that clearly, better decisions tend to follow.
Subscribe if you want thoughtful, practical guidance for managing digital work without unnecessary pressure, noise, or sales agendas.