Why do I just work whatever lands in my queue?

Open your inbox, your queue, your task list. Someone else filled it. You work through it, in order, competently. This isn't laziness — most days it's the sensible thing to do. But you've noticed something: the people who move ahead of you aren't clearing the queue faster. They're deciding what goes in it. Here is the honest difference. You were trained to do well once work arrived. You were never trained to find work before it arrived. Those are not the same skill, and no amount of excellence at the first will produce the second. One is obedience, executed well. The other is judgment, exercised alone, before confirmation. This is not a gap in your knowledge of 'where to look.' You could find ten sources by lunch if someone handed you a list — and that, too, would be delivered to you. The actual gap is this: you have not practiced deciding something is worth your effort before anyone has agreed it is. That is a muscle. It is built by use, not by insight.