In every job I've ever worked, there's a distinct divider around the two-month mark that separates the "learning phase" of the job from the "full-speed phase" of the job.
That divider is whether or not your to-do list is ever empty.
When you start a job, you don't know enough to design your own work, so you wait anxiously at the gates for tasks, do them to the best of your abilities, and then check them off your to-do list when they're completed. If you're lucky, that list will be empty by Friday, and you can go for a Saturday morning run without remnants of the workday stuck in your head.
When you settle into a job, you start dictating your own work. You know what has to get done, and you have the foresight to know what will need to get done in the future that should be started now. Once this corner is turned, the to-do list is never empty. A truly productive day isn't characterized by checking a lot of boxes off; it's characterized by adding a lot more boxes. Uncovering what needs to get done is immensely productive in itself, and that's something only a settled-in worker can do.
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