How to Be Useless

https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-wander-free-and-easy-through-life-by-being-useless

by robtherobber • 5 years ago

206 124 5 years ago

akprasad3• 5 years ago

One of the great joys of my freshman-year humanities sequence was reading the Zhuangzi, and I still have the book we used on my shelf. I'm not an expert of the Chinese of that era, but I've heard the original is extremely vibrant and playful, so choosing the right translation is critical if you're reading the text for the first time.

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.

detinho• 5 years ago

Reminded me of a song from Brazilian singer Raul Seixas "O conto do sábio chinês" (a tale about the wise Chinese)[0]. I stopped to actively search about the meaning / sources of many of his songs and let the dots connected naturally.

Today one more line has formed.

[0] https://youtu.be/9Co4ORFSBlQ

jianshen• 5 years ago

I'm really happy to see ZhuangZi show up on HN and a good reminder to go back and re-read his work from time to time.

akprasad3• 5 years ago

I decided to take you up on that vicariously and spent most of the evening reading my copy again. How refreshing it is!

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/

hawksprite• 5 years ago

Thanks for picking such a striding passage. I may would have otherwise passed it over.

akprasad3• 5 years ago

Here is another passage I love. I hope you enjoy it:

https://arunkprasad.com/log/ting-the-cook-from-the-zhuangzi/

somewhereoutth• 5 years ago

I suspect that there is a class of people who've long since mastered the art of being useless, and continue to enjoy the bounty that that brings. However they know this depends on the toil of others, and are reluctant to share that bounty. Hence the results focused 'meritocracy' that the rest of us have to put up with.

themodelplumber• 5 years ago

I admit that after reading, the "useless vs useful" framing comes off a bit like a false or maybe just unnecessary dichotomy. Maybe there's more to the idea than what was presented though.

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.

bjeds• 5 years ago

I'm noticing a sad trend recently.

* 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?

78882902• 5 years ago

You should also read "Bullshit Jobs" book. The very purposelessness of this system and the exploitation killed every ounce of creativity from many individuals.

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.

spaceisballer• 5 years ago

On one hand I’m happy people are wising up about how they shouldn’t take all this crap from workplaces and bad managers. You deserve to be respected and compensated for your work and not abused. All of that is great. I just hope it spurs movement to better us all not just bitching and being shitty just because screw work.

slowmovintarget• 5 years ago

You don't have to work for someone else, but you do need to work. It is how humans function, how they gain fulfillment and happiness. Especially with respect to completion. That's why the virtuous side of video games can dig someone out of depression. Setting a goal, working at it, meeting it, and pursuing the next one is the antithesis of depression. The negative side of games comes from the addiction cycles built into many of them... but I digress. It would be better to set goals in real life, work to meet them, then set the next goal. You have tangible results: a clean room, a meal cooked, a fence mended, a yard mowed, a chair built, a sale made, a customer served, and yes, payment earned.

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.

iratewizard2• 5 years ago

The useful idiots who pray for the revolution everyday truly believe that it will be endless charity for them instead of forced labor.

beaconstudios4• 5 years ago

Labour is not the same thing as work.

matheusmoreira2• 5 years ago

Hopefully capitalism will one day automate everything to the point no labor is necessary and society will evolve into post scarcity rather than communism.

sergiotapia• 5 years ago

What's wrong is wealth inequality. It all rolls downhill from that. Minimum wage is not enough to make ends meet and rent + food is through the roof. That's what is wrong. Imagine being scheduled to work 39 hours on purpose to avoid being full-time and getting benefits. That's just one problem in a laundry list of problems.

An entire generation was sold a dream and now people are waking up.

WalterBright• 5 years ago

The only way to make wealth inequality go away is to make everyone poor. (This has happened in every society that tried it.)

altvali• 5 years ago

The problem you describe is poverty, not wealth inequality. While they are correlated, they are not the same. Some countries have less poverty and more inequality than others.

softsound• 5 years ago

Used to be scheduled 38 hours a week as a part timer but at least I sometimes got overtime pay for special occasions. I'm not sure if an entire generation was sold a dream, a lot didn't dream to begin with. As someone at the edge of being of being a millennial nearly gen z. I think a lot of folks never expected anything good per say, but perhaps many starting poorer made us have much worse mental health to begin with. I'm in a good spot now and worked into STEM with little education but I know many who will likely never get better. There is a lot of problems with the workforce that lower end people have so little power over. Requiring more of companies is a good place to start.

wnolens• 5 years ago

I think there's a cost to constant striving, and it's insidious.

craigmart• 5 years ago

Although I don't agree with the article, I can understand how someone could start hating work and the urge to be always productive. Our economy promotes competitiveness, which of course creates progress and brought us where we are now, but I think covid worked as catalyst for all the pressure the workers were feeling because of this. And when you are so distressed by the system it's way easier to believe that you don't have to work as hard to be happy instead of starting to push harder

fullshark• 5 years ago

I think it's the end of the business (or hype) cycle around web 2.0 + COVID making one rethink the value proposition of trading time for money (work). Which is why you have the web 3.0 business (or hype) cycle + metaverse + whatever trying to get pushed to motivate engineers again. Once in a lifetime opportunity on the horizon don't miss it! Or even better, you can create it yourself!

Apocryphon5• 5 years ago

Physically isolated people ruminate.

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.

WJW2• 5 years ago

That subreddit has existed for years though? Accepting your life for what it is goes back millennia in some religions, so that is not a new trend either. Greek and Roman philosophy is absolutely filled with people stating that striving for political or monetary gain is a fools' errand, so that is not something new either.

Perhaps this is merely a case of the Baader Meinhoff phenomenon and you suddenly notice it more than earlier?

bandana• 5 years ago

According to https://subredditstats.com/r/antiwork the subreddit was almost empty 2 years ago, and the subscriber count only started going in the past few months.

throwaway_JiY4E2• 5 years ago

sad trend recently Who are these people who are turning communities into sad opposites of these values?

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.

SuoDuanDao5• 5 years ago

There seems to definitely be some astroturfing going on with respect to anti-work, pro-union sentiment, and I agree it seems to have found Hackernews recently, from my perspective it looks like a sudden influx.

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.

Apocryphon5• 5 years ago

Anti-work and pro-union are orthogonal, and there has been restive pro-union sentiment on this forum for years. It has not really increased during this time, even though the present moment (a local maxima of labor demand) would be a prime time to start organizing.

thefrozenone• 5 years ago

Astroturf? Which powerful interest in the world right now wants people to work less?

yesenadam2• 5 years ago

From the guidelines: "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."

emadabdulrahim• 5 years ago

I noticed that too, and my initial reaction was similar to yours.

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.

erwincoumans• 5 years ago

The time you enjoy wasting, is not wasted time (Bertrand Russell).

ChildOfChaos2• 5 years ago

You are seeing this a lot everywhere.

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.

Zababa• 5 years ago

I don't know about the rest of the world, but I know that these last two years have been rough for me. It's not something I feel every day, but when I pause and look back, I see that I'm in a worse shape than two years ago. I still derive most of my pleasure from helping people close to me, this hasn't changed. But I have a hard time finding pride, pleasure or something like that in my day to day work. Maybe it's the disconnect between me and the users (I work for a relatively large SAAS company), maybe it's me losing empathy for strangers due to isolation, I don't know.

marksmith2996• 5 years ago

Its sad that people don't want to spend the measly 80 they get on the planet making widgets for someone else to get rich? Ok.

tayo42• 5 years ago

This example seems contradictory?

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.

itronitron• 5 years ago

A person can be "Antiwork" and still actively engage in the wonder of creativity and building. Most of the antiwork sentiment that I have seen online is drawing attention to very poor and often illegal management practices.

PinkMilkshake• 5 years ago

I don't think so, but I could be wrong. Japanese-style Niito (NEET), Chinese Tang ping (lying flat) and now the Antiwork movement in the West. They all have a similar sentiment, that the promise of a better life through hard work is a lie. I think the pandemic just accelerated what was already underway.

llimos• 5 years ago

For me it's the sense that the world is rapidly heading out of control, with big companies and governments everywhere performing a mass stitch-up, and if you haven't already made it you're probably not going to. And they're driven by greed alone, and those trying to build a better world are losing. And it's got a lot worse since covid started.

HollywoodZero2• 5 years ago

As soon as many of us went to remote work, suddenly there's this rise of making the "perfect" home office.

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.

k4ch0w• 5 years ago

That subreddit is more about not slaving away your time working 2-3 jobs to barely get by. It's people waking up to the fact that they are always busy and always behind and to the idea that working hard doesn't always equate to doing well in life.

ncr100• 5 years ago

I would offer the explanation that it's the calendar. It's January. New year's rejuvenation could be taking hold of more of us than it normally does in other months.

mattlutze• 5 years ago

I never felt that the Internet in the 90's was about turning yourself into a meat robot. Tech businesses want that from their staff and had been slowly working toward it, but the last 2 years feel like that slow creep was accelerated and a lot of people have had enough.

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."

systemsignal• 5 years ago

Imo part of it could be the proliferation of easy money. When you see people making millions and retiring off doing nothing in crypto (buying pictures of apes) its hard to be motivated to do things. It all becomes bullshit

Apocryphon5• 5 years ago

And within tech circles, crypto is just a parodic extreme continuation of what we've been seeing for the past fifteen years ago- dumb money being thrown around at wild ideas by investors looking for crazy returns.

lionhearted• 5 years ago

Respectfully, I spent a few years fascinated with Taoism and quite a bit of time studying it and reckon you probably get some wrong impressions from this article.

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.

diamondage• 5 years ago

As far as i understand, the dao de ching is in fact more of a confucian text. Its original focus was 'how to rule'. Albeit a great intro to thought of that time and place. It may be my perverse nature, but religions that actively try and hide their knowledge make me think they have something worth researching (as opposed to ones that knock on the door and try to convert me!). Its hard to find good stuff online. Here is a rare "interview with a daoist":

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

halfnormalform• 5 years ago

The story isn’t about being a lazy mooch. It’s about realizing if you only view yourself in terms of your utility to others, you will be consumed for your usefulness.

Don’t laugh but there’s an excellent comic book version of Zhuangzi’s writings: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691008820/zh...

throwaway_JiY4E2• 5 years ago

if you only view yourself in terms of your utility to others, you will be consumed for your usefulness.

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.

gumby• 5 years ago

Mistaking the path for the journey.

(Or more prosaically, mistaking the how for the what or the process for the goal)

thenerdhead6• 5 years ago

The smartest people in the workforce know this.

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.

yboris2• 5 years ago

I love CAR - Competence, Autonomy, Relatedness :D

These three I think are the pillars to a happy job!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory#Basi...

chrisweekly• 5 years ago

Mastery, Autonomy, and Purpose were the three job satisfaction pillars in a popular RSAnimate whiteboard presentation video a few years ago... and it resonated with me (while feeling incomplete, given it omits social / interpersonal factors).

EDIT: Found the video: https://youtu.be/u6XAPnuFjJc

PragmaticPulp• 5 years ago

I see a lot of these comments on Reddit and HN recently, but I have no idea where all of these people are working that doesn't do any sort of performance management. Outside of maybe the biggest, oldest tech companies that have so much profit that nothing matters, companies really don't enjoy burning cash on useless headcount. It's hard to tell if they're even actually practicing what they preach, or if it's just a sort of escapist fiction.

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.

thenerdhead6• 5 years ago

I don't think this is about performance. At least I wasn't referring to it in my comment.

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.

zackify• 5 years ago

If you can get the job done in 20 hours but you are supposed to work 40, I think that’s more of the mindset the parent comment is talking about. Doing the minimum to keep your job and staying a good employee, while not overworking.

opportune2• 5 years ago

I don't get it either, I actually enjoy getting things done and being responsible (to the extent that is reasonable) as well. Doing nothing makes me feel like a piece of shit. Not because of some kind of societal conditioning about work being inherently virtuous, I think, but because it feels good to contribute to something larger than yourself, and I think we should endeavor to contribute to society proportionately to what we receive from it.

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.

SuoDuanDao5• 5 years ago

I read a pretty interesting commentary on Canadian culture, not sure if it's more widespread but it seemed pretty apt: "If you ask a Canadian how hard they're working, you'll get one of two responses: 'Hardly working', or a long complaint about how hard they're working. There seems to be no correlation between the answer you get and how hard the person actually works".

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.

coldtea• 5 years ago

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'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.

HollywoodZero2• 5 years ago

Another, maybe even more simple approach is: the art of saying no.

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.

baby• 5 years ago

I've always called that "learning to disappoint people". If you want to be a good and productive engineer, you have to defend your time and isolate yourself. You can't let anyone else be in control of your agenda. That means not answering to people promptly (or at all), saying no to projects, etc.

thenerdhead6• 5 years ago

It's definitely part of the art. You have to put yourself first before other people's priorities.

sokoloff• 5 years ago

I don’t know if “side hassles” was intentional or not, but it’s genius either way.

matheusmoreira2• 5 years ago

Corporate life today has this idea that we should always be doing more.

I too have this idea that corporations should always be doing more. Paying employees more. Offering more benefits. Paying more taxes.

opportune2• 5 years ago

I'm having a hard time understanding your comment. Are you saying high performers will feign uselessness to get out of undesirable work or commitments? Or that being useless is a psychological defense mechanism for corporate survival? Something else?

thenerdhead6• 5 years ago

All of the above.

icedchai• 5 years ago

Yep. Definitely. Especially now, as the pandemic rages on, why should one take on extra responsibility when they're stressed out? You'll wind up with a bunch of extra meetings, presentations, and bullshit you are able to do, but don't want to. Why bother? Some days I can barely get out of bed.

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.

yboris2• 5 years ago

A related classic: In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell

https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/

squam• 5 years ago

Yeah, it was referenced in the article.

roeles4• 5 years ago

There are people who easily interpret Taoism's themes such as goallessness and stories like these as idleness. I used to be one of those people. This might be in part due to the western translations of the Tao Te Ching.

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/

hinkley• 5 years ago

Tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name.

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.

amelius2• 5 years ago

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.

roeles4• 5 years ago

I think I learned more about eastern philosophy by taking a taichi class than I ever did reading about it or listening to lectures.

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.

ChildOfChaos2• 5 years ago

The Stoics have a reserve clause that I like that they add to there goals...

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.

DarylZero4• 5 years ago

Inshallah.

roeles4• 5 years ago

Yeah. I sometimes compare it to gardening. You take care of the causes, and let mother nature take care of the consequences.

As said below though, practice is an entirely different thing from intellectual understanding.

thadk• 5 years ago

Thanks for https://ttc.tasuki.org/! I forked it and put the first 10 verses of Ursula K LeGuin's interpretation here as it was missing: https://thadk.net/sbs/#/display:Code:gff,sm,jhmd,jc,rh,uklg/...

roeles4• 5 years ago

You're welcome! Thanks for the reply and the expansion!

air7• 5 years ago

Our "Be Productive or Feel Bad" predisposition is a very powerful meme (in the original sense of the word) in that it is very good for Society at the expense of the individual.

geranim0• 5 years ago

... except that societies are made of individuals

notreallyserio2• 5 years ago

Framed in terms of today, we should not reduce ourselves to tools that serve others, or the economy, the greater good, or even our future selves (for example, the urge for young workers to work very hard to secure their future career).

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?

LesZedCB4• 5 years ago

right to a dignified life instead of need for money. guaranteed basic necessities: housing, healthcare, education, food. this is the platform of antiwork.

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.

mlac2• 5 years ago

Everything you mentioned to provide a dignified life requires labor to produce. 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).

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.

dash2• 5 years ago

Here's a phrase I like: "the world has no contract with you."

windows2020• 5 years ago

Some people, in some way, thrive relaxing in the shade of a tree. But for some, such idleness kills their soul.

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.

absolutelymild• 5 years ago

I have a friend witch schizophrenia who’s never been a lot hold down a job. He always talks about the sense of shame he has for not contributing anything to society.

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.

hkon• 5 years ago

So who exactly was John Galt?

rramadass• 5 years ago

Relevant Reading;

* 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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caigentan

How to Be Useless

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