This sounds very familiar, I'll tell you how I deal with this. First of all I feel you should drop the wish to deliver "value to society". You are applying pre

This sounds very familiar, I'll tell you how I deal with this. First of all I feel you should drop the wish to deliver "value to society". You are applying pressure to yourself based on a very vague statement: What is value? Who is society? What does a society value? You feel an emptiness, a need to please others and I argue that is impossible to fill the emptiness by focusing on anything but yourself. There is no such thing as society, there are people, and people have very different opinions as to what constitutes value. So what do you do? Assuming you are not a sociopath, you have loved ones, and you like to see them happy. Most of all, you'd like to see yourself happy. You have to realize that this is not a selfish goal (or that selfishness is not bad!). A happy person is a joy to work with, a happy person will make his surroundings better. So, what do you like to do? Maybe working with a computer makes you feel empty? I recently made a bunk in my caravan, working with my hands, using wood and tools and creating something tangible is nice and very different from computer related work. Programming, bloging and all that social network stuff is very much in your head. Some books I can recommend: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, you will get down voted for liking it on HN ;) but to a pleaser such as myself (and you too, mr. "I want to deliver value to society"), it offers an incredibly powerful philosophy for seeing the morality in putting yourself first (as a healthy, non-sociopathic human!). Don't take advice on this philosophy from people who didn't read the book! It helped me a lot. My wife likes a strong me, that knows what he wants because she likes to do things I like. Doing things I like makes me happy and productive and allows me to give back much more! F society (it's to vague)! F the world (it's to big), focus on yourself, the rest will come later :) (You know what selflessness is? Doing stuff you hate, purely for others, it's unsustainable and you won't be a pleasant person to be around while you do it. Doing something you love and making others feel better in the process is not selfishness, and it is a much more sustainable way to make yourself happy.) Find out what makes you feel good, calm, makes your head tranquil, and do as much of it as possible. For me it is very specific: "Find beautiful natural waters and swim in them with the kids." Start with getting rid of the pressure to make society better.