Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I'm addicted to being useful

seangoedecke.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 322 posts

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#181

Post by brailsafe »

duhprey wrote: post #138

So insightful! This idea that some people just like the puzzles and some people like the control struck me. I get why Factorio is addictive but I can't really stand to play it much. I'd rather be refactoring something useful. And the idea that the same mentality covers forum mods. This is incredibly helpful to understand some of my friends and colleagues a little better.

> I'd rather be refactoring something useful.

Ya, that's the thought I have sometimes too, and then bugs attack my coal train and I have to accept I won't be useful for another 10 hours

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#183

Post by brandonmb »

choonway wrote: post #72

I was like the author of the article, then I realized that I was solving problems that were created by other peoples' incompetence. Sure they were challenging, fun but they didn't bring anything postive overall. The incompetent people are still there - causing more problems. So I decided to find a worthwhile problem that deserved my talent. And I did. And I am now even more happy than before.

This is exactly where I am now. I had fun solving problems for the sake of solving them for the first ten years of my career. But the last couple of years have burnt me out as I realize this is not worth my time. I’m in the process of trying to find a worthwhile problem to solve, but it’s difficult to not just be jaded.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#184

Post by hinkley »

tclancy wrote: post #7

> I don’t mind the ways in which my job is dysfunctional, because it matches the ways in which I myself am dysfunctional As a fellow traveller, I offer one caution: learn to turn this down in personal relationships as it can be counterproductive. It took decades for my wife to finally get through and explain not every problem she voices is something that needs a solution. Some times people just want to be heard. It b…

It becomes more challenging when the person is Carrie Fisher from When Harry Met Sally, “processing” the same information for years at a time. This is not a surprise. That he’s never going to leave her. You know the solution. You are the architect of your own stress. You’re torturing yourself for who? An audience of me?

I’ve watched that “you have a nail in your forehead” video again with the benefit of another ten years of life and it’s interesting how I saw what the women were saying the first time I watched it but on a rewatch it’s clearly making fun of her at least as much as him. You’re in the middle of a medical emergency and you want to just talk about it instead of calling 911. That’s a bridge too far.

And to think I always hated that trope in action and scary movies where the person wants to ask questions while being chased by a psychopath or a dinosaur. Compartmentalization is good - in appropriate doses.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#185

Post by hinkley »

Aurornis wrote: post #59
tclancy wrote: post #7

> I don’t mind the ways in which my job is dysfunctional, because it matches the ways in which I myself am dysfunctional As a fellow traveller, I offer one caution: learn to turn this down in personal relationships as it can be counterproductive. It took decades for my wife to finally get through and explain not every problem she voices is something that needs a solution. Some times people just want to be heard. It b…

> It took decades for my wife to finally get through and explain not every problem she voices is something that needs a solution. This can become toxic in itself, though. Some times venting and being angry is what someone wants to do, but in a workplace environment that’s not a good thing to implicitly condone and support. I’ve had some team members who just wanted to vent but not discuss solutions and (again, in a w…

We all know that person who is borderline Munchausen’s Syndrome, railing against an unjust world they have mostly manufactured for themselves. Or the person who has no life skills and blames all their problems on “bad luck”. Fortune favors the prepared mind.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#186

Post by hinkley »

hypeatei wrote: post #110
Aurornis wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It took decades for my wife to finally get through and explain not every problem she voices is something that needs a solution. This can become toxic in itself, though. Some times venting and being angry is what someone wants to do, but in a workplace environment that’s not a good thing to implicitly condone and support. I’ve had some team members who just wanted to vent but not discuss solutions and (again, in a w…

Venting all the time can actually be quite harmful to the venter. Negative energy drives change and if all you're doing is offloading then you're going to get stuck in a loop of feeling bad -> vent -> repeat while the underlying problem doesn't get solved.

The next trap is loudly announcing how you’re going to get yourself out of that situation, getting the neurotransmitter hit that comes from the announcement, and then never doing it.

I have a person who has distanced themselves from me because I don’t provide the feedback they crave when they do this for the eleventieith time. I only have so many spoons and that passion play feels like throwing them in the garbage disposal. I just can’t for my own well being. Sorry.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#187

Post by lo_zamoyski »

Aurornis wrote: post #148
n4r9 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I quite like the definition on Wikipedia: > Emotional validation is a process which involves acknowledging and accepting another individual's inner emotional experience, without necessarily agreeing with or justifying it, and possibly also communicating that acceptance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_validation It sounds perhaps like your family member's former partner was going further than validating the e…

I understand the academic concept, but the word "necessarily" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that definition. In real human conversation, when someone is expressing an emotion they aren't looking for other people to confirm that they are indeed experiencing that emotion. That's not even a question up for debate. They're looking for people to share in that anger, sadness, or frustration and confirm that it's a val…

> They're looking for people to share in that anger, sadness, or frustration and confirm that it's a valid response to the situation.

Which is what the whole "empathy movement" of recent years seems to emphasize. The problem is that when empathy is unmoored from the objective good, this can become scandalous (not in the sense that it causes outrage, but in the older sense that it encourages evil). Not every response is a valid response. You must be able to identify whether something is good, you must refrain from actively enabling things that are bad, but you must discern whether to correct, and if so, how to correct. Not every problem is yours to correct. Busybodies think they are.

(N.b. the Catholic Church, drawing on ethical distinctions, makes distinctions between moral principle, the objectively moral status of particular acts in light of moral principles, and the pastoral needs of particular persons. So, e.g., while prostitution as a practice is roundly condemned as a matter of principle, particular prostitutes may be treated gently. This is especially true if he/she expresses remorse for the way he/she has lived his/her life (the parable of the prodigal son comes to mind).)

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#189

Post by n4r9 »

vacuity wrote: post #169
n4r9 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be a challenging skill to apply, and you need to use your judgement to discern whether the other person is in a place to engage with what you say. One comment I'd make is the difference between "valid" and "rational". Emotions and feelings are always "valid", in the sense that they are a natural consequence of events and prior conditioning. But feelings are rarely "rational" - they often don't reflect the comp…

Other people have given good insights, so I'll instead describe one of my pet theories. Given by how we talk about emotions, I think they are "rational", but operate under a different set of rules than we normally apply to "rational" thinking. In fact, feelings are deeply intertwined with our supposedly "rational" thinking, to the point where I don't think there is a significant boundary. The lack of information is p…

Yes, I'd agree with that. The way I think of it is that emotions are somewhat "mechanistic". I don't directly control them, but they follow certain principles. For example, fear often arises in response to a perceived threat (physical or otherwise). My boss calling me to an unexpected meeting might make me panic. And even once the peak of the fear subsides, I am more vulnerable to experiencing it again for some time. E.g. I get home and my wife's car is gone, then suddenly I'm scared that she's been in an accident or something. None of this is a rational response. There are some hand-wavey evolutionary-psychology arguments for why they operate that way. But the main thing is that there are principles that make sense out of it, and those principles are (perhaps) surprisingly consistent across humans.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#190

Post by coryrc »

jadbox wrote: post #118
bradley13 wrote: post #17

I feel the same way. I retired last summer, but that only means that I found a place that needs me, where I can work part time without worrying too much about money. I remember, decades ago, reading an article about some African politician visiting the UK. He was given a tour, which included some of the social housing. The UK bragging about how they took care of their people. He saw people sitting around with with th…

I'm skeptical of this perspective as most social housing in the UK and the USA have stiff REQUIREMENTS that housing residents be either either employed OR be showing proof of interviewing OR enroll in a job placement program (which requires active training participation). If you fail these, you are generally kicked out of these social housing programs. Maybe there are some exceptions here and there, but it's generall…

Because you aren't familiar with UK policies pre-Thatcher.
Post reply on HN