Help that transfers something, and help that keeps people needing you

Whom does my system leave dependent, and what would it take for them to become owners?

Question 8 of the Index

Nobody sets out to build dependency. It arrives as a side effect of doing the thing well: you were competent, you were there, and over time the arrangement settled into a shape where you are load-bearing. Everyone involved would describe you warmly. That is not evidence in either direction.

The distinction is not between helping and standing back. It is between help that transfers something and help that supplies something. Supplying is faster, more visible and easier to fund, and it produces a clean result every time. Transferring is slower, looks worse in the first year, and its success is measured by your own removal, which no reporting cycle has ever rewarded.

So the useful question is not whether you are generous, because asking that will always return yes. Ask what a specific named person would have to be given, decided or owned for your involvement to become unnecessary, and then look for that item in the plan. If it is not there, the arrangement is not accidental. It is designed by default, and a default is still a design.

The last part is about you rather than the work. Being needed is a real good. It organizes a week and it answers the question of whether the day mattered, and handing something over takes it away. If imagining the handover produces a small drop rather than relief, that is worth knowing before you conclude it is not yet the right time, which is the sentence this situation reliably produces.