Zhuangzi
The use of being useless
What nobody requisitions lives longest
Zhuangzi, In the World of Men; The Mountain Tree
Making yourself useful is instinct. What being useful costs you at the same time.
What actually happened?
A master carpenter passes an oak so vast it could shade thousands of oxen, and doesn't look twice. Asked why, he says: it's useless timber — boats from it sink, coffins rot, tools break. Good for nothing, and so it has lived this long. That night the tree comes to him in a dream: the fruit trees get torn apart the moment the fruit ripens; their ability is what harms them. I have sought uselessness a long time, and only now have it. Then Zhuangzi turns it on people: everyone knows the use of the useful; nobody knows the use of the useless.
Useful is a qualification to be requisitioned
Once a person is judged unusually good at something, that something arrives without end. It looks like being valued. It is being fixed in one position and spent there — the ability itself becomes the source of the load.
Whoever is best at firefighting gets all the fires. Three years on, they're the least replaceable and the least improved person on the team.
Useless is the room you keep for yourself
The useless tree survived by not appearing on anyone's list. People need a portion of time and ability that isn't counted as output — it produces nothing immediately, and it is the only part nobody else gets to schedule.
Put half a day a week in the calendar and hold it. Everyone will call it a luxury, and it decides whether you can do anything else a year from now.
Don't exhaust yourself in a single position
Zhuangzi isn't against being useful. He's against being useful as the only way of existing. Used to the limit means completely defined, and the moment that use isn't wanted the person expires with it.
A team that only knows one line of business fails entirely when the cycle ends. Not for lack of effort. They were too competent.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: you're the one on the team who can carry anything, and you're busier every month.
Ask first: the thing I'm best at — what position is it fixing me in?
Where it goes wrong: treating being needed as safety; converting all of your hours into output you can report.
Lines to keep
Everyone knows the use of the useful. Nobody knows the use of the useless.
The cinnamon is edible, so it is cut down.