For me, I find there are peaks and valleys - there are times when I'm so overwhelmed with coding tasks I feel like I'm drowning and other times when there's a l

For me, I find there are peaks and valleys - there are times when I'm so overwhelmed with coding tasks I feel like I'm drowning and other times when there's a lot to do, but all of it's blocked waiting for somebody else to make a decision/finish doing something/approve a budget/etc. When I first found myself in the "wait" state, I figured the logical thing to do would be to proactively find something to improve: documentation, unit tests, performance improvements, etc. I've found consistently over my near 3 decades in this business that that sort of proactivity is either frowned on or outright prohibited. What I've taken to doing with myself when I either have no "approved" work or am blocked on everything is reading documentation - recently I read through the O'Reilly Hadoop book and clarified a lot of things that I'd been confused about before. I do feel the same as you, though - I'm always concerned somebody's going to put me on the spot and say, "what have you done for me lately?" I will say, I've been doing this a long time and that's never really happened. I go through the performance review song-and-dance every year and I can point out quite a few things I actually have done when the time comes, and so far it's made them happy.