Every office, shop floor, and boardroom has its own dialect. Not the jargon in the handbook, but the small sentences we use to justify, explain or defend the choices we make. They surface in conversations, meetings, and responses, before we commit to anything. These lines are not written anywhere official, yet they show how we make decisions, the type of decisions we make, how we take risks, and how we recover when things do not go as planned.
Here are the words we live by, and what they really mean:
It’s just how I work
You usually say this after someone questions your approach. Not immediately, but once you have heard them out and decided you are not changing anything.
It is a way of ending the back and forth without turning it into a long explanation. What you mean is simple: this works for me.
At work, that carries weight. You might say it when you choose to collaborate in a space where others are focused on themselves, or when you stick with an idea people are unsure about. Not every decision needs to be justified step by step. Some are based on what you know you can deliver.
“It’s just how I work” is how you stand by those decisions. Sometimes you make a call because it suits your strengths, solves the problem, and gets the result, even if it is not how someone else would have done it.
That’s not in my job description
It is a way of saying no without saying no. A polite boundary that points back to what was originally agreed, instead of directly refusing what is being asked. It redirects the request to scope, role, or responsibility, rather than personal willingness.
In practice, it is used when a task falls outside what someone was employed, contracted, or expected to do. It keeps the response factual rather than emotional, even when the pressure behind the request is not.
You are simply saying this is outside what was expected of me, and I am not taking it on just because it has been placed in front of me.
Let’s circle back
It is a way of holding space on a decision without fully committing to it in the moment. You use it when something has been raised, but the timing, clarity, or information is not quite there yet. Rather than closing the conversation or forcing an answer, you set it aside to return to later.
That simple phrase gives room to think properly, to get more context, and to see how other priorities play out before locking anything in. Entrepreneurs use it when an idea needs testing before investment. Chief executives use it when a decision touches too many moving parts to rush. Even in everyday working environments, it is a way of protecting decisions from being made too quickly just to keep things moving.
We’ve always done it this way
The oldest line in the book. It is another way of saying if it is not broken, do not fix it. A line that appears when a process that has been around long enough is challenged.
Every innovation in your workplace was once someone else’s “we do not do that here”. The line is not wrong. It is just incomplete. The full sentence is “We have always done it this way, and it got us here. The question is whether ‘here’ is still where we want to be.”
I just threw this together
It is the workplace’s favorite half-truth, said casually while the shared drive or presentation still shows traces of the late-night revisions that came before. It is the line that hides effort and makes the deliverable appear effortless. But that is exactly the point. Nobody ever just “throws” a strategy, report, or pitch together. It is what you say when you have spent hours refining details and testing ideas. It is a way to appear efficient, making the work seem more natural and seamless.
It is what you say when your analysis aligns perfectly with stakeholder needs without making the hours of preparation obvious, or when your recommendation happens to land at the right time. It is a charm that keeps professional life balanced. Because half the satisfaction of strong delivery is appearing as though it did not take that much effort, when even the most effortless work takes real effort.
Work does not run on only tasks and outcomes. It runs on agreement, disagreement, timing, hesitation, and the small phrases people use to manage all of that without making it heavier than it already is. Some lines smooth things over, some draw lines, and some keep things moving when a decision is not yet made.
Written by Aliyah Olowolayemo
