I think it's less "not wanting to help other people" and more "wanting to do what is valued". Value could manifest in many ways: * purely intrinsic ("doing coo

I think it's less "not wanting to help other people" and more "wanting to do what is valued". Value could manifest in many ways: * purely intrinsic ("doing cool work" vs. "de facto IT guy") * purely extrinsic (the year-end perf review won't give me kudos for helping with excel documents) * a mixture (I want this organization to succeed, the best way for me to do that is by doing X, and instead I'm helping debug excel sheets). Often it's a mixture since people often enjoy doing what brings the most value. I do volunteer stuff for a charity. A lot of the stuff I do is very interesting and challenging and valuable to the charity's core mission. But I'm also expected to help other volunteers with mundane helpdesk stuff like connecting to the wireless network. I don't enjoy it and also it distracts from a much more valuable use of my time.