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I'm addicted to being useful

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Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#81

Post by darkwater »

lazide wrote: post #39
sdoering wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I tend to need to solve All The Problems before I can do any self-care I can so relate. I once read something that shifted my perspective a bit and helped me start the work of learning to better care for myself. It was basically somebody talking/writing about the safety instructions when taking a flight. They tell you that in case of an emergency, when the o2 masks drop down to first put your ownmas on, before help…

One pattern I’ve noticed, however, is that if you’re really good at doing this - and the situations being created are artificial - you might run into a situation where someone cuts or poisons your oxygen mask first. I would have said ‘no way is someone that evil’, but uh…. Ask most men in their 40’s or 50’s.

> I would have said ‘no way is someone that evil’, but uh…. Ask most men in their 40’s or 50’s.

WDYM with the last sentence?

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#82

Post by showsover »

mcv wrote: post #77

Is this not something everybody wants to some degree? Maybe not to the extreme of Akaky, but of course I like being useful. I like solving problems. I like making things that people use, and love to use. It's not always healthy; at my current job (started 8 months ago) I see tons of issues to fix. Some of them are explicitly mine to fix, some close enough to my area of responsibility, but some of them are well outsid…

Seeing things being broken but not being fixed is a real source of frustration. The tricky thing in my experience has been figuring out which are issues that nobody bothered to fix and which are issues that seem simple but require huge changes to fix.

The day-to-day gets so much better when you can do a few of these fixes every so often, after a few months it really adds up when you compare to how things used to be.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#83

Post by agumonkey »

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…

could this be a difference in male/female brains ? talks implies action for men, while women want to communicate most and maybe plan to act ? just curious, it's an issue that has been mentioned everywhere all the time

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#84

Post by jebarker »

I get stuck on asking “why am I solving this problem” too much. I am surrounded by technical problems that it would give a dopamine hit to solve and I’d feel the pleasure of helping my fellow man, but 99% of them feel like they shouldn’t even exist and solving them doesn’t really lead to any meaningful progress beyond providing me job security and money. (How) do people deal with this?

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#85

Post by Aurornis »

n4r9 wrote: post #71
Aurornis wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they're actually trying to process those feelings: to understand where the feelings are coming from, to be validated, and to be able to take a broader perspective. If you’re speaking to a rational person with good intentions and good self-management this can help a lot. If the other person doesn’t have good emotional regulation and is prone to catastrophizing, exaggeration, or excessive self-victimization then vali…

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…

> Emotions and feelings are always "valid", in the sense that they are a natural consequence of events and prior conditioning.

If “validating” someone’s emotions comes down to simply saying that, yes, I agree you felt that way, then I suppose that’s true.

But when people talk about validating other people’s emotions it implies that they’re saying the emotional response was valid for the circumstances.

I have someone in my extended family who has a strong tendency to catastrophize and assume the worst. When she was in a relationship with someone who constantly validated her emotions and reactions it was disastrous. It took someone more level headed to start telling her when her reactions were not valid to certain situations to begin stabilizing the behavior.

There’s a hand wavey, feel good idea where we’re supposed to believe everyone’s lived experience and emotions are valid, but some people have problems with incorrect emotional reactions. Validating these can become reinforcing for that behavior.

I’m not saying we should start doubting every emotional reaction or white knighting everything, but it’s unhealthy to take a stance that validating other people’s emotions is de facto good.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#86

Post by pdimitar »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #65
dmichulke wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. Tangentially, you could ask: Are you addicted to being useful or to being recognized as useful. One is your own need, the other often a covered contract where you lash out or silently resign if you don't get the recognition that you think you deserve.

In my case, I really do want to be of use. In fact, I often tend to stay well in the background, and deliberately eschew credit. That said, I do tend to get upset, when I’m taken for granted, but that’s really my own fault. I know it, rationally, but my inner brat still wants to throw a tantrum.

Well if none of the measures you already tried to stop that did not work, then maybe one thing that can help you is asking yourself whether you are not feeling drained after interacting with those people?

I, like yourself, cannot override my engineering mindset. I ALWAYS WANT TO HELP. But at one point I reframed it as an energy budget problem and how efficiently are my time and energy spent... and then it clicked.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#87

Post by rammy1234 »

One of thing I have noticed of good software engineers is while they are trying to solve problems, they also communicate with clarity to upper management chain. The clarity they bring to the table was always appreciated and also puts them in the career growth path easily.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#88

Post by hydrogen7800 »

agumonkey wrote: post #83
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…

could this be a difference in male/female brains ? talks implies action for men, while women want to communicate most and maybe plan to act ? just curious, it's an issue that has been mentioned everywhere all the time

>could this be a difference in male/female brains ?

Maybe socially, but I'm not sure about naturally. It took me a long time to get where the GP is, realizing that some just like to he heard rather than offered solutions. Now I notice that my family are "fixers" and any problem or difficulty is countered with "did you do this" or "you should have done that" or "why don't you.." I now realize I don't like being second guessed in a moment like that, in contrast to the gender stereotype.

Re: I'm addicted to being useful

#90

Post by Aurornis »

tayo42 wrote: post #75
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…

The advice to surrive the workplace is to not act like a human lol

Treating workplace relationships with the same techniques as romantic relationships is a bad idea, IMO
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