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Posted by swah 11 hours ago

I'm addicted to being useful(www.seangoedecke.com)
377 points | 191 commentspage 2
nusl 9 hours ago|
I wonder if this sort of thing can lead to faster burnout or such. I've sorta over time leaned toward guarding my own space/time since somehow I get more tired out, and over time more burned out, if I don't.
Ronsenshi 9 hours ago|
I probably have a very similar "dysfunction" as OP. Can't say how it is for him, but I do get burned out somewhat regularly if I push myself too much for too long. However it usually takes few days to a week at most of low-effort activity or travel to recover.
rednafi 6 hours ago||
I find it kinda amazing how these vaporware equivalent nullprose keep on hitting the front page.
niedbalski 6 hours ago||
Computers were never a job to me. They were curiosity, play, obsession. Until, quietly, they became work.
iamflimflam1 10 hours ago||
Can definitely relate to this. But I have found that, when running a team, it can be very counter productive.

If you constantly solve all the problems that come it can be stifling for the people you manage.

drekipus 9 hours ago||
I see this as "my problem is to grow these people" so I don't solve anything for them

I think it's just a case is perspective

poszlem 10 hours ago||
Strongly agree with this. It may sound good in theory, but in practice, especially with real people, it can come across as overbearing, stifling, and exhausting for others. This isn’t meant as a dig at the OP. it’s just an observation based on personal experience with someone like that in my own family.

edit: I am not critiquing enthusiasm itself, but a compulsion that can be productive and unhealthy.

vjerancrnjak 8 hours ago||
This internal compulsion is just learned behavior. The society conditions you to work instead of play.

Nothing wrong with that, I have that compulsion as well.

Having a compulsion to play, purely for the sake of playing is a much healthier view. Useful, not useful, hard problem, easy problem, should not matter, you're playing.

Sometimes you can't be useful, yet you can always play.

All stems from inability to have systems without labor. Work, work.

I like how Pope John Paul II flipped the narrative and said work exist for the person, as a way for person to express itself. Made me realize how even communism stays trapped in labor mentality.

carlosjobim 3 minutes ago||
As we mature mentally, we need more interesting games to play, more interesting challenges. Work is many times the result of this.

It's the same with romance. When we are children we have a crush on somebody, become pretend "boyfriend and girlfriend", and as we mature the game becomes more interesting as it becomes real.

But it's all a game throughout life.

So perhaps it is those who enjoy work who has elevated their spiritual level, and not the other way around?

deepvibrations 4 hours ago|||
Was about to comment the same till I found your comment.

I have this compulsion too, and did some deep-diving at some point through therapy. I found that really it's just likely conditioning from family/society.

If you are generally praised for helping out whilst growing up and this is when you receive a lot of love/attention, it's natural to build pathways that favour this and thus behavioural patterns.

alphawhisky 8 hours ago||
I like this thought. It is interesting to look at our current societal/economic systems on the earth and realize none of them will survive the death of scarcity.
jwHollister 6 hours ago||
I have something similar to this need to be useful but perhaps a different twist that is causing me problems. It's not so much a sense that I want to be useful but a feeling that I HAVE to be or bad things will happen. Lately it's a constantly running internal narrative that everyone around me is useless. Which breeds an anxiety that if I don't do everything then something important will slip through the cracks. That yields a sense of dispair and eventually anger because of this constant weight that I expect I'll have to carry indefinitely.

I've been in therapy off and on through the years and I think this stems from a childhood with neglectful parents. I need to start seeing someone again. Thanks for the reminder!

carlosjobim 54 seconds ago|
> something important will slip through the cracks

Unless you work with life-and-death situations, what's so fucking important?

myself248 10 hours ago||
If this resonates with you, I highly recommend picking up a copy of Tracy Kidder's 1981 novel The Soul of a New Machine. You'll be hooked by the end of the introduction.
tclancy 9 hours ago|
And if you like that, the good news is you will probably like most every Kidder book. Or at least House. His works tend to be inquiries into how systems work, just at different scales.
anp 6 hours ago||
Anyone who finds this relatable (like me) might benefit from learning more about the last couple of decades of research on emotional regulation, trauma, and the nervous system. I have a great “trauma informed” therapist and over time this tendency of mine feels much less compulsive and more like a choice I can make because I know I’m good at something. At least for me having a calmer internal life has made it way easier to pick my battles and it usually means I end up feeding my desire to be useful on more satisfying and impactful things than I would have chased in more obsessive times in my life.
harryday 10 hours ago||
Help is the sunny side of control.
Ronsenshi 9 hours ago||
Interesting quote and certainly can apply to some people, but this behavior could also be considered as "acts of service" type of "love language". You can take any endearing and genuinely good behavior and make a toxic version out of it.
inanutshellus 7 hours ago||
Helping people is 100% my love language.

My SIL queues up household tasks when I come over. "Hey I got this new thermostat, can you help me put it on?" kinda stuff that she could do herself but she knows that's what makes me feel fulfilled.

Point being: GP - calm down bud. ;-)

clcaev 4 hours ago|||
Someone who stops at road side, and helps a stranger with a tire iron, likely has no reason other than it just feels the right thing to do; the recipient's smile being the most precious payment they could possibly receive.
ambicapter 8 hours ago||
An extremely toxic mindset.
rawgabbit 5 hours ago|
The article’s title is awkward. In it, he says he is addicted to being useful to his management queue. He avoids “time predators” and dismisses Jira ticket jockeys.

That is the author’s real intention is to assert engineers should deliver what their bosses ask.

nlawalker 4 hours ago|
I don't think that's necessarily the case, it could just be that, in the author's role, the only people that articulate a need for help from him is his management chain.

I've had roles where my job satisfaction came from largely ignoring my management chain and helping people outside of my org for whom I was the point of contact for a set of services offered by my team's internal platform, and this piece really resonated with me.

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