Years back I had a conversation with a highly successful lawyer and we discussed the concept of ‘fun’ at work. By ‘fun’ we meant a wide range of professional positives that we both valued – not funny-fun with colleagues, but types of work that were sufficiently challenging while still within reach, broke new ground, or simply involved doing something we hadn’t done before.

The lawyer made a point that I’ve brought with me ever since, both in my own work and later when leading people. He argued that at most 20% of his work was ‘fun’. The remaining 80% was repetitive, mundane work – things that simply needed to be done.

He didn’t say it with frustration or disappointment. Just matter-of-factly. That’s the nature of professional work.

After that conversation I started doing the same mental exercise myself and reached much the same conclusion. The majority of our work is rarely where our brains are stretched the most or where we get to be at our most creative. Instead, it is the foundation that enables us to break new ground when the opportunity presents itself.

Of course, one person’s mundane work is another person’s exciting challenge. The senior analyst may find the 110th pricing analysis rather uninspiring, while the newly hired analyst cannot wait to get started. But regardless of experience, I suspect most of us would recognize that a surprisingly large share of our work falls into the ‘necessary rather than exciting’ category.

Many people expect work to be exciting most of the time. Personally, I think that particular expectation often leads to disappointment. As leaders, I believe we owe people honesty about what the job actually consists of.

When I worked as a leader, I called that type of work rye-bread work. Growing up in Denmark, rye bread was the most everyday food I knew. Rye bread is not particularly exciting or glamorous. But it’s essential to many people’s everyday life.

The point was never that rye-bread work was less important. Quite the opposite. Without the planning, the documentation, the follow-up, the analyses, the testing and the countless small tasks that nobody brags about or necessarily can distinguish from day to day, the exciting breakthroughs rarely happen.

But now, looking back, I think I missed something. Rye-bread work is not only a category of work. It is also a skill.

Some people are excellent when the assignment is new, visible and exciting. Others are equally good when the work is repetitive, largely invisible and simply needs to be done. It requires diligence, consistency and follow-through.

We rarely talk about that ability. The lawyer understood it years ago. He didn’t expect 80% of his work to be exciting. He simply recognized that doing it well was part of professional excellence.

In my last newsletter I celebrated high agency as a critical skill for making a real and lasting impact. High agency people take ownership, spot opportunities and make things happen. But high agency alone is not enough. Without rye-bread skill, high agency risks becoming a long list of great initiatives without consistent execution.

The people who consistently make the biggest difference tend to possess both. They create momentum when something new needs to happen, and they execute relentlessly when the work simply needs to get done.

Sometimes the biggest impact can be unlocked by mastering the other 80%.