I agree with you on most counts, but you're viewing it from my position of not yet having (attempted) to see it from different angles and tackling issues (i.e.

I agree with you on most counts, but you're viewing it from my position of not yet having (attempted) to see it from different angles and tackling issues (i.e. yet to do homework). One should definitely do what you suggest and attempt to be constructive and productive (i.e. do the homework). But if management shoots everything down and they expect you to build a house out of match-sticks and that thing falls apart at the slightest gust of wind, are you to blame or management for not giving you better building materials? (i.e. homework done, nothing left to do) I'm advocating for a realistic view of things: Sometimes, oneself is to blame, sometimes it's something else, and sometimes it's forces out of our control, but there is always something at fault, if something goes wrong, hence there is always something to blame in failure. But seeing oneself to be blamed at all times leads to burn-out. EDIT: I'm aware you could also take a bunch of match-sticks, grind them to a pulp, and create some type of wood-like cement from it, and then build a house from that, and that might work. So let's say, they just give you five boxes with 20 matches each and it has to be at least 25 square-meters. Some might now argue, that you could go and start trading this until you end up with a house, there's the story of a guy who started trading a pen for something else on eBay, and ended up with a house. So management now insists this has to be done by the day-after-tomorrow. Etc. The question is: When and where do you stop telling yourself you haven't thought of the right solution and instead insist that management is absurd?