How to Be Useless
psyche.co
psyche.co
They aren't useless. They are perfectly capable of accomplishment, but know that taking on more responsibilities or assisting will make them miserable in the long run.
I've seen this with some of the highest ranking & paid engineers/PMs in big tech. I usually give the benefit of the doubt that everybody:
1. Has a sense of autonomy 2. Has a sense of competence 3. Has a sense of relatedness
If at anytime any of these are put into jeopardy, a wonderful tactic is to "be useless". There's many bullshit jobs out there that use you and your abilities for the bullshit job holder's personal gain. This is one of the best tactics to take a stand for yourself in corporate America.
At every reasonably well-run company I've worked for, the "useless" people were steadily sifted out of the company, either through PIPs or routine layoffs.
That doesn't mean you had to monotonically increase your workload forever until you were crushed, but it did mean that management routinely did basic performance management and would look deeper into people or groups that weren't really doing anything (including maintenance, upkeep, and routine tasks that don't necessarily involve new features).
Another common technique is to periodically restructure and shuffle teams around. It may be easy for someone to wiggle into a position where they can be useless while fooling their manager, but it's much harder to maintain this state across multiple teams and even divisions.
This phenomenon of bragging about laziness or how little you work smells similar to the "I barely got any sleep last night" of yore.
Considering how much we take from society (you can look at your pay as that, or the fact we reap the benefits of centuries of technological progress, or that we have extremely physically easy jobs compared to the majority of the world's population), I think we have a duty to contribute back. It's pretty disappointing to see people in the software industry advocate for laziness considering how plum our jobs are and how much potential we have to contribute to the world.
"To do the kind of real good physics work, you do need absolutely solid lengths of time. When you’re putting ideas together which are vague and hard to remember … it needs a lot of concentration—solid time to think. If you’ve got a job administrating anything, say, then you don’t have the solid time. So I have invented another myth for myself—that I’m irresponsible. “I am actively irresponsible,” I tell everybody. “I don’t do anything.” If anybody asks me to be on a committee to take care of admissions … “No! I’m irresponsible. … I don’t give a damn about the students!” Of course I give a damn about the students, but I know that somebody else’ll do it! … because I like to do physics, and I want to see if I can still do it. I am selfish, okay? I want to do my physics."
I think Bill Gates (and Von Moltke before him) brought to public consciousness the value smart, lazy people bring to an organisation, and as a result, some people make a point of appearing lazy, either as a 'full disclosure' signal or to indicate the kind of role they aspire to.
That's not even close to reality. Some totally incompetent or disinterested would get the boot, yes. Often with people doing most of the hard work but under-appreciated and not into self-promotion.
But the more useless (or even harmful) that are good into office politics and self-promotion are usually the ones promoted.
As for the regular useless (detached) as implied by the article, the kind of performance theater metrics you've mention are the easiest to game.
I was just saying that top performers who I respect are very skilled at "being useless" when they need to maintain their autonomy, competence, and relatedness within their career in big tech.
I don't know what you're seeing on reddit / hn, but there's also plenty of people talking about automating their "useless"/bullshit job and feeling guilty about it.
These three I think are the pillars to a happy job!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory#Basi...
EDIT: Found the video: https://youtu.be/u6XAPnuFjJc
Another tactic that works wonderfully is pacing yourself. For engineers, if you finish your "sprint goals" early, you run the risk getting assigned more. So don't do that. Use that free time. Your work still gets done on time and everyone's happy.
Corporate life today has this idea that we should always be doing more. Side hassles, taking on more. Putting in extra hours, etc.
There's beauty in knowing when enough is enough and stepping back and making time for yourself.
I too have this idea that corporations should always be doing more. Paying employees more. Offering more benefits. Paying more taxes.
Recently I found a page by Derek Ling[1], which shifted my perspective. I now think the point is closer to _balance_ than idleness. When it comes to goals, it means that you can have them... but don't expect to reach them. Goals give direction to your efforts. But in order to avoid suffering when life inadvertently gets in the way, hold them loosely.
The same goes for this story, I think. Not being useful is not going to get you anywhere, but being too useful isn't either.
An informative comparison of Tao Te Ching translations can be found here[2]. It shows how differently the same verse has been interpreted by different people.
[1] https://truetao.blogspot.com/2010/04/sage-has-no-goals.html [2] https://ttc.tasuki.org/
I think I learned more about eastern philosophy by taking a taichi class than I ever did reading about it or listening to lectures. Taichi is not Taoist but good luck finding a good instructor who never mentions it. I've never met a group of martial artists so unanimous about the idea that there are some things you cannot learn from a book or videos. Both assert that there are some things you can know that you cannot put into words.
Western psychology is coming at this from the opposite direction: Intellectualizing won't fix all of your problems. But by god are we (especially CS folks) gonna die trying.
Most CS folks are just modern age plumbers, though, who love to think of themselves as intellectuals.
Yes. Before Covid I did some lessons too. Very humbling experience when you've only intellectualized so far. When Covid hit, I did some Qi Gong in the morning and it did wonders for my meditation.
i.e if the goal is 'I will do this' then you add 'if all goes well' to the end of it, avoiding any form of attachment, giving the sense of direction but understanding that there are things outside of your control and you might just not get lucky.
I think in this sense it's good to have goals to give you the direction when you do want to do some work, but not tie your entire being to it, so that you can also just enjoy life too and sometimes that might mean not hitting a goal but that is okay too.
As said below though, practice is an entirely different thing from intellectual understanding.
Don’t laugh but there’s an excellent comic book version of Zhuangzi’s writings: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691008820/zh...
I have seen what you say firsthand in myself over the years. Concepts about treating yourself like a business and over emphasizing your "brand" are part of this. I'm not demonizing those concepts, just they can be overdone or overemphasized.
(Or more prosaically, mistaking the how for the what or the process for the goal)
I tend to enjoy challenging myself by attempting to overachieve. Sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn't, but each time, lessons are learned. Although, I've asked myself why I bother when something doesn't work out. Then, this article was shared with me:
https://www.earlytorise.com/spend-more-time-with-this-destru...
I think it's better to be conscious of these different perspectives, and tread between them as necessary.
I'm trying not to be cynical but when I read this sort of advice I can't help but think "it's easy to say this, but we all need money, and life's costs tend to go up". It seems like a lot of the folks talking about living simply or with less anxiety, etc, are already wealthy (but of course that is selection bias).
How do you reconcile the need for money with the need for youth to not secure their careers?
what future is a future defined by a career? that may be satisfying for some, but for many others, it's not what life's all about.
And there is a scale of quality in all of those areas. There’s good food and bad food, cheap basic housing and nicer upgrades, good schools and bad schools with parents who don’t care about their kids’ education. The doctor who graduated at the bottom of his class and practices once a week is a doctor, but not as good as a the person who is the best in the world at neurosurgery.
Resources are scarce, and there are not enough to go around, especially in a sustainable way, to provide what some would consider a “dignified” life, because some people view “dignified” as equal, and others view it at all different levels. Ask 10 people and you will have 10 definitions. Almost none of them will be sustainable for 7 Billion people. In fact, it would mean that the US drops its standard of living and starts providing charity to the rest of the world.
But that charity would require work, which again “may not be satisfying for some or what they think life is about”, so good luck there.
A future defined by a career is very dark if that career is not a vocation or if the person doesn’t view it as a vocation and has nothing else in their life. But I’d argue one doesn’t have to let their career define them (and if someone lets a minimum wage job define them, it’s not healthy. They should find other work that adds greater value to someone so that they can attain a level of income to support a life that they deem dignified.
But that’s it, right? The pursuit of happiness is protected in the US, but not guaranteed. We can’t guarantee that, or some other vague changing metric, because when we deal with 300m people it’s very, very hard to come to an agreement.
There will always be edge cases, disabilities, and people who truly need the governments support. But if someone is mentally and physically able to work and contribute to society, they should reap what they sow.
I do think it’s governments’ role to make its best effort to put people in a position to contribute to society (through education opportunities) and to provide for those who aren’t expected to contribute (kids under 18) so that they can grow into contributing members of society. But at that point, it should be up to the individual to work to attain the level of wealth they want, without any guarantees of success.
I guess safety nets could be a minimum standard of living, but those do exist to some extent (unemployment and one could argue bankruptcy is a reset for those with major financial issues). They are an insurance policy and can’t exist if everyone is using them at the same time.
ultimately this is your philosophy condensed into a paragraph, so what common ground do we have to argue with?
if you don't fundamentally see how absurdly false this statement is, that the vast majority of people will never have the opportunity to "reap what they sow" because they are destined to play economic catch-up for the rest of their lives, you are completely blinded by your meritocratic ideology and privilege.
labor is not the same as work. labor is necessary for life, and not an objection of socialists. work is the relationship of the worker to the labor, where labor is paid according to market wage, and the surplus value is expropriated by the employer/owner.
> If you have enough people who don’t find building houses, studying medicine, researching, and farming to be what their life is about, then those resources become scarce and more expensive (basic supply and demand).
breaking things down into basic supply and demand is so outrageous. we bulldoze housing or artificially keep it empty in order to prop up market values, to the detriment of society at large. we throw out food by the truckload, because it's better to keep its value artificially high instead of feed people who need calories. healthcare... supply and demand? fucking seriously? look around you.
> Resources are scarce, and there are not enough to go around, especially in a sustainable way, to provide what some would consider a “dignified” life, because some people view “dignified” as equal, and others view it at all different levels. Ask 10 people and you will have 10 definitions. Almost none of them will be sustainable for 7 Billion people. In fact, it would mean that the US drops its standard of living and starts providing charity to the rest of the world.
resources are kept artificially scarce. this happens over and over and over again. we have common ideas of what a dignified life is: human rights. we are clearly moving as a society towards health, education, and food as universal human rights, as well as the other traditional ones.
also, given climate change and the US's insanely eco-unfriendly lifestyle, we need massive shifts to rebalance our carbon heavy lifestyle.
> I guess safety nets could be a minimum standard of living, but those do exist to some extent (unemployment and one could argue bankruptcy is a reset for those with major financial issues). They are an insurance policy and can’t exist if everyone is using them at the same time.
safety nets have been being cut down since many of the ones we know were first instantiated in the new deal of the 1930s. instead, we have settled for corporate safety nets (2008 bail outs, 2020 bail outs) except the savings aren't passed down to workers, they are used to buy back stocks and inflate shareholder value.
supply and demand is literal bullshit, we live in a massively rigged economy.
Here's one of the more famous passages from the Zhuangzi as told in the translation we used (The Essential Chuang Tzu, by Sam Hamill and J. P. Seaton):
> Long ago, Chuang Chou dreamed he was a butterfly fluttering among trees, doing as he pleased, completely unaware of a Chuang Chou. A sudden awakening, and there, looking a little out of sorts, was Chuang Chou. Now, I don't know whether it is Chou who dreamed he was a butterfly, or whether a butterfly dreams he's Chuang Chou. But between Chuang Chou and the butterfly, we ought to be able to find some sort of distinction. This is what's known as Things Changing.
Today one more line has formed.
https://arunkprasad.com/log/ting-the-cook-from-the-zhuangzi/
I'm sure you have your own copy, but here is my transcription of the story about Ting the cook from chapter 3:
https://arunkprasad.com/log/ting-the-cook-from-the-zhuangzi/
I think the way we bind our identity to our productivity can be super destructive for those of us who are like Zhuangzi’s knotty tree.
* Master of the Three Ways: Reflections of a Chinese Sage on Living a Satisfying Life AKA The Unencumbered Spirit: Reflections of a Chinese Sage AKA The Roots of Wisdom: Saikontan (Vegetable Roots Discourse) by Hung Yung-Ming translated by William Scott Wilson
The challenge in learning from the Taoist writers is that almost no one can read their original works directly any more — the writing was so long ago that most modern-day Chinese people can't read it directly from Ancient Chinese without translating into modern first. The language has evolved.
That's before even getting into the challenge of learning in English or another language, since the works tend to have lots of metaphors and idioms and poetic language in them.
In my case, I had a really cool opportunity to go through over a dozen translations of the Taoteching with copies of the translation from ancient Chinese into modern Chinese and a translator's attempt at an English translation with a Chinese friend who is a scholar of linguistics. It was really fun and insightful.
That all said, I think Rosenthal's "The Tao Te Ching: An Introduction" is a wonderful starting place.
http://enlight.lib.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-AN/an142304.pdf
Rosenthal takes the very terse, poetic, and metaphorical lines of Laozi and turns them into extended prose while keeping a lot of the aesthetics. Like so:
> THE TAO AND ITS NAME
> 1. Naming things enables us to differentiate between them, but names are words, and words easily give rise to confusion. They do not replace the thing or direct experience of the thing which they name, but only represent or describe it.
(And then it goes deeper into explaining on that point.)
At least in Rosenthal's case, his take is quite different than the professors who wrote this article:
> KNOWLEDGE OF 'THE TAO', AND EXPERIENCE OF THE TAO.
> There is a way in which we may conduct our lives without regrets, and in such a manner as assists in developing and realizing our individual potential, without harming others, or inhibiting the realization of their potential, and which is beneficial to a healthy society.
> Such a way of life may of course be conducted without a name, and without description, but in order that others may know of it, and so as to distinguish it from other ways in which life may be conducted, we give it a name, and use words to describe it.
And then, critically —
> 2. LETTING GO OF OPPOSITES.
> It is the nature of the ordinary person, the person who is not yet at one with the Tao, to compare the manifestations of the natural qualities possessed by things. Such a person tries to learn of such qualities by distinguishing between their manifestations, and so learns only of their comparative manifestations.
> So it is that the ordinary person might consider one thing beautiful when compared with another which he considers to be ugly; one thing skillfully made compared with another which he considers badly made. He knows of what he has as a result of knowing what he does not have, and of that which he considers easy through that which he considers difficult. He considers one thing long by comparing it with another thing which he considers short; one thing high and another low. He knows of noise through silence and of silence through noise, and learns of that which leads through that which follows.
> When such comparisons are made by a sage, that is a person who is in harmony with the Tao, that person is aware of making a judgement, and that judgements are relative to the person who makes them, and to the situation in which they are made, as much as they are relative to that which is judged.
The interaction and fusion of Taoist and various other Chinese thought with Buddhism, attributed typically to Boddhidharma traveling from India to China, became the foundation of Chan Buddhism in China and later Zen Buddhism in Japan.
I reckon most scholars and practitioners from the tradition wouldn't accept the useful/useless distinction as correct or as "Follow[ing] the Daoist way" - like, some nice ideas in the article, but both a false dichotomy and unfortunate dualism there.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZG_E1BDb_XFmvq-dj6ZK_vFWYJz...
The other component that seems uniquely daoist is the fundamental goal of long life/immortality (as opposed to a buddhist nirvana) hence the emphasis on starting with the body and the overlap with chinese internal arts taichi, hsing i and bagua.
Around the 15th c there was a fundamental shift in physical training theory to the principles of the yi jin jing ("changing the muscles into the quality of tendons theory")
This is a sophisticated and fundamentally different approach to the body than most western training systems.
Here's a rare clear explanation: https://youtu.be/ZuA484T1CHM
It reminded me of the film _About A Boy_ which tackles a really similar set of themes and also avoids this "be useful" trap by getting at something more like the "subjective value of heroism" or in other words the perceived value of helpful interpersonal connection--to the subject. In any case the theme is IMO naturally attractive to humans and is a key part of cultural narratives. The Uncle Ben story from Spider-Man--it's great to be a hero but what are the real dilemmas there, _and_ what do we make of them. Etc.
Heading in this direction naturally confounds the idea of social boundaries a bit, which IMO is a really good conversation to be having these days, since boundary-setting, having shown so much therapeutic value, is a crucial concept to reconcile with a more boundary-opening approach.
Not to criticize too harshly, but if the only tool we are considering is this useful/useless filter, the outcomes might be unnecessarily not-so-great, for both others and ourselves.
* This article is one instance.
* Within the past 24 hours there was a Hacker News submission "Self-improvement is embracing your messy, imperfect life" ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29928873 )
* Combine this with the sudden appearance of subreddit "Antiwork".
Are people depressed or anxious because of covid, or what's wrong?
Trying to be a better person every day, in combination with the wonder of creativity and building, is what made the internet interesting in the early days. Who are these people who are turning communities into sad opposites of these values?
I think people are just burnt out and maybe lockdowns/covid has made them realise this more as they are unable to do the things that used to put some much time into.
Life cannot and should not be just about doing work, being productive, attaining goals, being useful etc. I think the problem is with a standard job and a normal adult life, we have little time for anything else and life just seems like an endless stream of things we need to do in order to be worthwhile or to reach any level of competency.
Like with most things though, there is a balance. It's good to work on yourself, make improvements, obtain goals etc, it's not so good if your entire life just becomes this and balance is exceptionally hard with the lack of time and energy that exists compared to what is required to do all of this.
An entire generation was sold a dream and now people are waking up.
I grew up feeling it should be a sin to waste money on fancy cars or fancy vacations. I now think we need more abstract art, NFTs, and something real compelling and scarce in the metaverse to absorb all that money.
Just some ill-formed thoughts with plenty of holes.
Perhaps this is merely a case of the Baader Meinhoff phenomenon and you suddenly notice it more than earlier?
This is also selection bias. Yesterday there was immense thread about quitting jobs- the majority of people were leaving for other jobs, not to retire.
For a long time we watched businesses get leaner, trying to use frameworks and automation so that the same staff could manage 2x, 5x 10x, 100x the amount of resources. The pandemic saw hiring freezes, wage freezes, from which businesses are still recovering. Market analysis is showing that most non-hospitality sectors have recovered though, which infers that folks are really under the gun to deliver more than ever before.
"Trying to be a better person every day, in combination with the wonder of creativity and building, is what made the internet interesting in the early days. Who are these people who are turning communities into sad opposites of these values?"
I'd challenge the assertion that productivity hacking and the self-improvement hustle are what made the internet interesting in the early days. Creativity and exploration, absolutely!
If your flow is converting your time into productivity for a company, for no increase in shared compensation for the result of that productivity, then that's tots cool for you.
I think many are tired of it and you're seeing them say "no."
But then I realized there's nothing wrong with "Self-improvement is embracing your messy, imperfect life". The paradox is that letting go of the fantasies we have of ourselves can actually help us move closer to a better version of who we'd like to be.
For example, today I woke up and thought "I should just accept the fact the I'll likely waste many hours on YouTube, Twitter, podcasts, etc." The funny thing, it already put me at ease that if the day ends up being like this, it won't totally surprise me, and perhaps I won't judge myself too harshly for it.
Which in turn could change the direction of my day, now that I feel a bit more relaxed and less uptight.
We'll see.
it's not about sad versus happy, but "doing" versus "being". And it's not a multiple choice test. Just you cannot ignore the other polarity.
That said, I agree with at least the headline in your second point - making any kind of positive change requires accepting the current state of affairs as it is first. I've found that the phases in my life where I feel content and not constantly needing to 'change' were actually those times where I was able to most consolidate the gains I was struggling towards the rest of the time. I think it might have something to do with not being in crisis management mode that allows the mind to relax into new configurations. Of course, YMMV.
The CCP. Xi Jinping absolutely stands to benefit domestically from discord being sown in the West, especially if it's of a Marxist nature and broadly in agreement with the doctrine of Common Prosperity.
(Not actually accusing anyone of anything - there's no way their propaganda department could be this competent - just answering the question directly).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29372166
Of course, you could claim both nations’ intelligence services are engaged in a game of rival psyops, but stories like this would seem to indicate there’s worker discontent that crosses borders.
100%, man.
My point wasn't that "China's probably doing this"; just that there are other powerful interests outside of corporate lobbyists that have very different goals.
I can't see a mix of obscene inflation (mainly in rent/real estate prices), a culture of conspicuous consumption and a WW1-style class divide where competent working class people are bossed around by the reject offspring of the upper 20% leading to anything more than mass discontent.
Antiwork is not fueled by lazy people - there's nothing wrong with that subreddit or this movement in general.
Life just got dull and boring and the routine of being a purposeful pushed people to their limits because at the same time, they see a pandemic and the planet's destruction via climate change.
And we support to support this?
Trying to be a better person every day, wonder of creativity and building got destroyed by modern capitalism.
There are definitely always going to be the "fuck all work give me free stuff" folks, but I think it's important not to let their presence detract from the overall movement. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good and all that.
The "movement" may intend to be about "meaning" and "exploitation," but the likelihood it turns into being about transfer payments and forcing people who do work to support the leisure of those who have decided they have a "right" not to is fairly high. I say this because it's happened before.
Even a solo company works for other people - it’s just that they can fire bad customers and it doesn’t take away their entire income. This is a much different power dynamic than an employer employee, but you’re still working for someone else (customers or investors) or you’re not bringing in money.
Why? why do I need to buy more stuff, take on the extra work of making my home office LOOK like a pristine zen room? Do I need all the LED lights that streamers use?
I thought the whole point of working from home was the flexibility to do work when and where was best for me. Sometimes I find myself after hours in my basement thinking, why don't I just go sit outside and enjoy the sun? I have entires days when I basically go from the upstairs to the downstairs and then back up at the end of the day. No different from going to the office, only the office was my basement.
> Hacker News submission "Self-improvement is embracing your messy, imperfect life"
> Trying to be a better person every day, in combination with the wonder of creativity and building, is what made the internet interesting in the early days.
These two ideas seem inline with each other?
Antiwork on reddit seems like slacktivism and whining about work on the internet, wouldn't give it much attention. People have been hating work forever. reddit is good at making vocal mintorites seem louder then they really are. those posts are getting 10s of thousands of upvotes, small in the grand scheme of things.
Also a lot of them are Hoppeans and that just makes them authoritarians.
if you want to read about how anarchists want to restructure society, read about spain's 1936 revolution.