Being of use to someone

December 20, 2024

I am currently reading “The courage to be disliked” by Ichiro Kishimi which in many ways is a provocative and contemplative read. When I finish it I will have to summarise my thoughts in some way to both remember some of the good points it presents but also digest the full scope of it.

But today I will write about a point that stuck with me after reading the book in bed last night.

The book deals with “Adlerian psychology” or also called “individual psychology” named after the Austrian psychiatrist Alfred Adler.

As mentioned earlier there are lots of “provocative” or “contemplative” points in the book but the one I stumbled upon last night was incapsulated in this qoute:

That one can act on the community, that is to say, on other people, and that one can feel “I am of use to someone.” Instead of feeling judged by another person as “good,” being able to feel, by way of one’s own subjective viewpoint, that “I can make contributions to other people.” It is at that point that, at last, we can have a true sense of our own worth.

The main point here that stuck with me, and is also the title of this post is this:

“I am of use to someone.”

Having worked more than 15 years in IT I am somewhat struggling to find examples of when I felt “I was of use to someone.” Apart from my direct leader of course.

To give a bit of context I am currently a few months into a “hiatus” after my last freelance contract where I was burned by people I thought I could trust. So I spent the first couple of months with a strong aversion towards my job in IT and the entire sector. But slowly I am getting back into a mindset that opens the door for future contracts. But this pattern has been repeated a few times over the last couple of years. Having to take some months off after a contract because I felt burned out. Luckily I have been in the fortunate and priviledged situation that I had enough saved up for these “hiatuses” to even be a possibility.

If I dig deep in my memory, I may be able to find the feeling of “being of use to someone” when I started out making booking systems for airlines. I do not know whether it was the fact that this was one of my first jobs in IT or it has something to do with the fact that it felt more relatable. But I might be able to find a “use to someone” as being the passengers that was able to book and get easier, cheaper and better experiences.

But since then I have worked a lot in finance, even with a short stint in a major digital infrasctructure project here in Denmark and what all of the tasks and projects have had in common is a very long distance from then end user and no way to see that what we created was of any real use to someone.

My realization last night was that this may be why I keep getting a feeling of burnout. The main beneficiary of a lot of the work I have done has been organizations that already had too much money. It felt more like I was benefitting them than I was benefitting any of my “peers” or the community at large.

In some projects I would even go as far as saying I could not even see a beneficiary at all as they felt more like spinning the wheels, was stopped half way or just closely resembled “busy work”.

I think the lightbulb that ignited yesterday made me realize that I need to find jobs or projects where I feel like I can “be of use to someone.”

I like the freedom of freelancing, the ability to be well paid and the freedom it gives to take time off.

But perhaps I won’t need the ability to take months off if I can just find work which has a clear feeling of “being of use to someone.” Then maybe I can live with a smaller salary and less freedom. Because no matter how I put it working in the IT sector will be priviledged in terms of salary and freedom.