14 ms·

Why I Quit Being So Accommodating (1922)

• jaggederest 14y ago
  Interesting read. Resonates on a couple levels. I do tend to think that people take the work-life balance a bit too seriously in the startup world, but those are also the same people who might otherwise have problems saying no to partnerships and business deals.
  • RyanZAG 14y ago
    I don't think that's really the message the author was trying to convey: "Read the life of a great scientist like Agassiz. Was he forever at the world’s beck and call? Not for a single day. To letters inviting him to write, or to lecture for money, he replied that he had no time for those things." The message seems to be more about using your time the way you want to use your time, and not the way others want you to use it. Want to work 20 hours a day? No problem - the author would encourage that as you're using the days you have as best you can to get where you want. Want to work 4 hours a day and spend the rest of the time with your family? Author encourages that too as long as you're providing them what they need. Basically: it's your time, not someone else's time to decide what you do with it.
    • pekk 14y ago
      It's your time, but you're a lucky person if nobody else has any leverage over you
• edw519 14y ago
  What a great read! Thank you, OP, for finding and sharing it. I don't know what I like about it more, that it's from an earlier "simpler" world or that it highlights a problem that's just as important today: learning to tell the difference between and issue and a detail and dealing with them differently. Sounds like the original author had his epiphany 90 years ago. I wonder how that ended up changing his life. (I have often commented here about issues vs. details. A few highlights:) http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=edw519+issue+detail&sortby=points+desc http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=edw519+issu...
  • jessedhillon 14y ago
    How are you discerning issues v. details from this post? I feel it's quite clearly about drawing/enforcing boundaries, being able to say 'no', and the like. In my experience, there are a lot of people in SV (men, mostly -- partly because SV is male-dominated) who can learn a lot from this lesson. First, the author refrains from blaming those who were taking advantage of his "kindness" (loose boundaries, really, but he framed it to himself as kindness for so long). Instead, he takes full responsibility for his own misapprehensions about how the world works -- not his father, not his college-friend-turned-boss, not anyone else. Today, when I read posts about people who undergo this specific epiphany -- "nice guy syndrome" if I can call it something -- it inevitably is accompanied by resentment: other people are cruel and manipulative, women are bitches who don't want nice guys, investors are sociopaths who just follow trends, etc. Second, and related to the first -- this man did not act simply in reaction to his epiphany. He didn't simply swing the other way, as if to say "well now I'll be a jerk to everyone else to punish them." Instead, he continued to be generous and magnanimous, but he took responsibility for drawing and enforcing his own boundaries. And those boundaries still included room to be generous and charitable, but what he gained was the facility to choose those traits. Previously, he felt compelled to oblige and unable to resist the impositions of others. Now, he has the power to choose not to oblige, and he still chooses to oblige when he feels drawn to do it. And when he doesn't, he now can turn down the request. As I said earlier, I have seen a lot of men arrive at the particular revelation that what they perceive as a kind and generous nature is actually compliance and subservience -- and then simply shut off that valve in reaction. I greatly admire this author's example of maintaining the choice to be generous, while gaining the capacity to choose the direction of his generosity.
    • m_myers 14y ago
      > Second, and related to the first -- this man did not act simply in reaction to his epiphany. He didn't simply swing the other way, as if to say "well now I'll be a jerk to everyone else to punish them." Instead, he continued to be generous and magnanimous, but he took responsibility for drawing and enforcing his own boundaries. For a humorous example of the wrong way to act after this epiphany, see the 1942 Joe McDoakes short film "So You Think You're a Nervous Wreck". http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038960/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038960/
• vijayr 14y ago
  Very good article. I think at some level, most "nice" people know they are taken advantage of. They know that they are supposed to say no, but they don't - primary reason being they don't know how to say no, plus they don't want to offend anyone. So the cycle keeps going.
  • StavrosK 14y ago
    Plus they aren't confident enough to know that people will still like them even if they don't do everyone favors.
    • louischatriot 14y ago
      I'd go further. They don't know that people will not like them if they keep on saying 'yes'. Someone who can say 'no' when he needs to is more respected than a yesman.
    • vijayr 14y ago
      This is something I've struggled to understand too - how is it that someone who is always nice to everyone isn't high on the popularity list (they are only remembered when needed) whereas someone who only cares about his/her stuff, is popular?
      • StavrosK 14y ago
        Because being fun to be around, confident, etc is much more desirable to others than being help.
        • larrys 14y ago
          A way to illustrate this would be the nerd in the library helping the pretty girl vs. the jock who gets the girl. The question is what would happen if the jock also helped the girl in the library? Would that make him more or less attractive because he had become attainable?
          • 14y ago
• huxley 14y ago
  It's probably not a real story, The American Magazine published a great deal of morality tale fiction anonymously -- mostly aimed at a female audience -- and this sounds a lot like one of those "just-so-stories" about a man that brings his family to ruination (though usually it was demon alcohol or pool halls).
  • mikecane 14y ago
    Oh, AM also published a great many profiles of real people too. I set up a separate blog to highlight those: http://ipeopleblog.wordpress.com/ http://ipeopleblog.wordpress.com/
    • huxley 14y ago
      That's pretty neat, thanks for collecting all of those. I've spent hundreds of hours reading newspapers from that period for a historical novel I've been working on for a long while. It's equally fascinating to see the parallels and the divergences in our culture.
      • loceng 14y ago
        Any way to get updates relating to your novel?
  • vijayr 14y ago
    It's useful and well written article - even if the story is fiction, we can take away something from it.
  • hollerith 14y ago
    Thanks for pointing that out. I had been assuming it was factual.
  • xsmasher 14y ago
    The "Square D" company mentioned is real; in fact your circuit breaker box probably has a [D] logo in or on it. That doesn't prove the truth of the rest of the story, of course.
• barking 14y ago
  Great story. In case you're wondering who, Agassiz, the scientist mentioned in the article was, I thnk that this is probably him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Agassiz http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Agassiz
• hizanberg 14y ago
  Fantastic lessons from life experiences, really puts into perspective what really matters in life.
• puh 14y ago
  First off: I don't know if anything of this is really true. I just don't know people exactly and this is my perception and ONLY a perception. I don't know. Usually, when someone says they quit being nice I find it hard to believe that they were accommodating. Maybe I am wrong, but everyone I ever knew calling themselves nice actually wasn't, but rather the opposite. Yeah, I am not a nice person. I never was and I will never be. Yeah, a lot of people call me nice, helpful and whatever, but come on that's what everyone gets to hear all day long. Yeah, I spend working a lot and I spend my money for others and I have all my stuff second-hand because of that. I spend all night being awake, because there are people who rely on being. Yeah, on my way home I will bring your book to the library, so you won't be stuck in the traffic. Yeah, I feel better buying fair-trade goods - no actually, stuff that pays higher than fair trade stuff. But don't we all have something like that? I work more than 50 hours a week, spend most of my free time helping others and write here only because there really isn't anything else I can do right now - well besides thinking about what I could do better or sleeping (unlikely), when they need help (and someone always does), just to not feel like a bad person. But come on, everyone else does so too and most people on this planet do way, way more or else things wouldn't run as day do. And if everyone else is like that how does it make sense to call you nice? Okay, there are exceptions for all of this of course, but just because someone isn't a lazy asshole it doesn't make them nice or extremely accommodating, does it? And if someone has time to write a long article on how they are so accommodating are they really? P.S.: I slept about 3-4 hours per night last year, because there always was stuff to do and I (really) worked until I fell asleep. I guess it affected me mentally, but people rely on me.
  • peteforde 14y ago
    I recognize some thought patterns in what you said here that I have also felt previous to this year, before I started working with an excellent professional coach. Several of the "practices" he gave me to work on involved learning how to say no to people. That includes delegation, qualifying, hidden costs. It's an involved set of closely held attitudes and assumptions that can be hard to break out of. My advice for you is that your intelligence might be working against you, because it appears that you've constructed a [familiar to me] set of logical assertions which seem to support this viewpoint. It's like a perpetual motion machine which lets you congratulate yourself and seem like both the everyman and an ascetic at the same time. While it's possible that these things are all true, it's at least likely that you're flattering yourself. Life is not black or white. By participating in HN are you nice for sharing your wisdom or egotistical and vain? By giving to charity are you paying it forward or celebrating your own self-image? People do things for selfless self-serving reasons all of the time. I personally don't think that this is a bad thing, so long as the end result is that people share wisdom and help those less fortunate. Anyhow, I sense I'm rambling but in closing the author isn't suggesting that he stopped being a nice person, he's explaining how he was shocked into realizing that spending his time doing things for other people at the expense of those closest who deserved his priority was not a winning proposition. He could in effect be nicer by putting on his oxygen mask before putting one on his kid.
• mutineer 14y ago
  The underlying principle in this article is the same one that underlies the advice at http://marriedmansexlife.com http://marriedmansexlife.com. mmsl helps husbands who endlessly say "yes" to all of their wives' requests, but who are frustrated by a lack of sex in their marriages. If you found the OP interesting and your marital relations are lacking, you need to read mmsl.
  • camus 14y ago
    Well if one is married and lacks sex then one should make it clear , and discuss it with his wife , because sooner or later things will break apart.
    • Tichy 14y ago
      Or discuss it with the man? Sometimes it is the woman longing for sex.
• ergest 14y ago
  Incredible find! This is my favorite quote (which hits home) "People never trust an accommodating man with important things"
• SatvikBeri 14y ago
  Compare the man in the article to someone who can take any request, no matter how absurd, and make sure it gets done behind the scenes. You can take a very similar set of actions, but by presenting them differently you come across as an extremely talented and capable person-almost a magician. And people will respect you and entrust you with more important things.
  • lusr 14y ago
    This simply cannot be possible. Perhaps you've been fortunate enough not to encounter the sort of people the article is referring to, and consequently aren't familiar with the drain these people are. Some examples from my own life, a more modern context: - acquaintances ask me to "fix their Internet" because I'm "good with computers": I point out I have other priorities and they're already paying the line provider/ISP so should call them for assistance - similarly, people who ask me to fix their computers: I point out that they wouldn't expect a mechanic to fix their car for free, and besides IT != software development - back in university when people asked me to help develop or debug portions of their solutions: if I couldn't figure it out in 15 minutes I told them I had other priorities but gave them general advice about what the problem or solution might be - people asking me to work longer for the same amount of pay and unpredictable benefits (i.e. bonus formulas): I became a contractor instead and I've been immeasurably happier for it You simply cannot consent to every request from such people - they will literally drain your life (i.e. time) from you, to what end?
    • SatvikBeri 14y ago
      I certainly don't mean that you can or should respond to every request. I mean that you can do the same amount of work, and depending on how you present yourself, you can be seen as the accommodating doormat (and consequently, treated like shit) or the guy who can get things done (and be treated well, trusted with more important stuff, etc.)
      • jakejake 14y ago
        You originally said "take any request no matter how absurd" which I would have understood to mean that you never refuse any request. I do know of one guy who can get anything done by way of an impressive network of personal connections. But he is not afraid to refuse petty requests - because his time and favors are valuable. That is the distinction, I think.
• jusben1369 14y ago
  "As a matter of fact, I was too often being friendly to the customers at the expense of the house. It is a common fault in salesmen. They let a thousand trivial demands on the part of the men to whom they sell take their time and energy from the business of the men for whom they sell." - This is one of the hardest concepts to teach in enterprise sales nearly 100 years later. Too often customers (worse prospects) ask for all sorts of things from compliant sales people who never ask if it's necessary. References, POC's etc. The salesperson chews up hours of their time and other employees times because they don't have the backbone to say "No" or at least "Not yet" The rationalization is "I'm advancing the deal for the company!"
  • scrumper 14y ago
    I picked up on this too. If it resonates, it really resonates. Fortunately, in enterprise sales at least, a good sales engineer can go a long way in curbing a salesman's worst excesses.
  • greenyoda 14y ago
    The salesperson chews up hours of their time and other employees times because they don't have the backbone to say "No" The salesperson does this because he'll get a nice commission if the sale goes through, and doesn't really care about the people whose time he's wasting.
    • vidarh 14y ago
      If he' on commission, then either he's not wasting his employers time with these things, if they genuinely lead to high total sales, or he's wasting his own time as well.
      • greenyoda 14y ago
        Total sales don't determine whether a company lives or dies. It's the bottom line, profit or loss after all the expenses are paid, that matters. Sometimes, the real cost of a sale can exceed the revenues to the company from the sale. For example, I've seen salesmen sell vaporware that the company then has to drop everything to implement, possibly a feature that's not of use to any of the company's other customers. The salesman gets his commission and doesn't care that the development group is tied up with the feature he sold and unable to work on the really important features. If salesmen could receive a commission on profits rather than gross revenues it would give them incentives that are better aligned with the health of the company. Unfortunately, it's easy to calculate a salesman's revenues and very difficult to calculate the actual profits (or losses) attributable to him.
• nakodari 14y ago
  This is beautiful! Thanks for writing this and sharing it. You will be amazed how many capable men and women I come across who demand simple tasks that they are perfectly able to take care of themselves. I finally learned to say "No" and the requests died down over a period of 2 years. These same people are happy to have me around. Pro tip: If you are sitting in a large gathering and someone asks you to help them out. At best, if you cannot say "No", what you should do is give them pointers. That's it, nothing more. Those who are motivated enough will take your pointers and handle it themselves, others will not. I have found that people in general are just trying to get someone else to do their work for them, for free, without giving a thought to the other person's schedule.
• blisterpeanuts 14y ago
  One has to strike a balance. "No" is a very powerful and effective strategy when used judiciously. However, you don't want to say "No" to everyone about everything, or you become known as the opposite of the overly helpful fellow in the story, and people will resent you. I enjoyed this article and I'm grateful to Mike Cane for turning me on to this charming bit of Americana. In those days, it was said that "The business of America is business" and the writings in this magazine fully reflect that belief. It's all about getting ahead, becoming the big boss, achieving financial security. Underlying it all is a naive yet practical optimism, a sense that we [white males] can achieve anything if we set our minds to it. It's a bit sad to think in contrast of today's narcissistic, short-sighted attitudes which are so prevalent.
  • zeidrich 14y ago
    "No" isn't a strategy. I think if you think the story is about saying "No", then you've missed the point. The point is the mental shift between living reactively and ceding control to anyone who asks for it, to living with purpose and giving your time and attention to those people who deserve it. People will resent you for being unreasonable. People will resent you when their expectations are not met. When you are too accommodating, people may value your courtesy. However, they will expect you to be accommodating, and if you ever try to stop, they will resent you for violating their expectations. If you say no when it's reasonable to do so, then you set fair expectations. People respect your fairness, so they don't expect more than is reasonable from you. If you are unreasonable, people expect you to be unreasonable. They will ask little of you, but they wont have any respect for your character. It's very easy, especially when you are worried about people's perception of you to be too compromising, which leads to unmanageable expectations and that feeling of persecution. It's your own fault when this happens, you've been silently making promises with your actions, and people get angry when you break them. Say you go to a coffee shop every day and get a sandwich, and to be nice, the server gives you a free small coffee, and you do this for a few months, and every time you get a free coffee. Then one day, you go to the coffee shop with enough money for your sandwich and ask for a sandwich and coffee, but the server demands you pay for the coffee this time. That's frustrating because you don't have the cash to get both, so you either go without the coffee or plead with the server. However, consider another coffee shop where you ask for a sandwich, and the server asks if you want a small coffee for a dollar. You decide you want the coffee, you buy them both. You're happy with the arrangement, and the former situation never comes up. You never have the opportunity to be frustrated with the server because she hasn't set any expectation she's not willing to maintain.
• gjm11 14y ago
  I notice that his name is Bert at the start of the article and Joe at the end. If there were any doubt about whether the story is real or made up, I think that clinches it; people very seldom forget their own names.
  • scrumper 14y ago
    More likely bad editing. Joe was his roommate and eventual boss. It's only once near the end that his aunt calls him Joe.
    • jrochkind1 14y ago
      yeah, bad editing, but if it weren't fiction, would the author have mis-stated his own name in his first draft?
      • __--__ 14y ago
        If he had decided to use a different name so he could publish anonymously, sure.
      • moconnor 14y ago
        If it were real, names would have been changed to anonymize it. No search replace in those days, so it's an easy way for such a mistake to creep in. I still suspect it's a fictional or largely fictional piece though.
  • sopooneo 14y ago
    Or, stretching, Bert is Tyler Durden.
• wyclif 14y ago
  "First: A man’s chief loyalty must be to the woman who has joined her life to his; to the children who call him father; and to the business which feeds and clothes and houses them all." A greater truism can hardly have been spoken.
  • lwhi 14y ago
    It's a romantic notion, but caring about friends, community and society at large needs to factor in somewhere.
    • zwily 14y ago
      Sure they do... after those things. He said "chief loyalty", not "sole loyalty".
      • lywald 14y ago
        Putting society above all is the only path to true harmony and perfection. When every subgroup is fighting for itself we get... What we have today. Chaos.
        • philwelch 14y ago
          How, concretely, do you do that?
          • lywald 14y ago
            Simple example: Daughter wants a iPhone, you want a new car. Some neighbor needs help to pay healthcare bills. You don't buy the shiny things, and help the neighbor instead. Another example: You own apartments, and some poor immigrant student can't afford the rent in the city with his university. You lower the rent, because a happy PhD is worth more than $100/month. Yes, even if you don't know him and won't gain anything from it. Another example: You're the personnel at that top university. You agree to be paid less than you deserve so more can afford the education. Another example: You can get in Google because of a friend. But you know someone else more qualified wants the job too. You let him have it. Because it is best for society that everyone gets the job he deserves, and that important jobs are done efficiently, instead of cheating for your own sake. Another example: You know you can increase sales dramatically by using gamification and abusing psychology to get your users addicted to reward mechanisms. You don't do it, because it's best for society that clueless people don't waste their time/resources with bad MMOs and Farmville, despite the interests of your company. Another example: You can get a lot of profit by hiding poor products under shiny overpriced cases, then throwing money at marketing. You don't do it because it's not in the interests of the people. Another example: You don't use your marketing/SEO skills to sell a fancy software which already exists as a superior FOSS alternative. (Broken window fallacy) Another example: Don't pull out the mote from your eye, but the beam in your neighbor's eye instead (no, I'm not religious) Another example: You agree to pay taxes so that the sick and poor stop dying and starving on the street. Final example: You can help people around you, but you're going to appear weak and it will hurt your social status... Oh terrible... You do it anyway. Some of these examples are poor, but I could write a book about it, and the point is obvious, isn't it? Really I can't believe I have to argue about it. Of course that's hopelessly idealist and unpractical. But only because everyone else is selfish and shortsighted in the first place. I'm just saying this is how it would work in a perfect world, and this is how Reason says we should strive to act. Optimization requires resources to go where they are needed most. If you disagree with this statement, use arguments, and good luck. "Me first", "my family first", "my company first", "my country first" is not good enough. It's chaos. All the evil in the world rests on these "good" intentions. People get slaughtered for the sake of others' families. Do it if you want, but don't downvote me then pretend it's the moral thing to do, when it's obviously not. Anyway I'm done with this site, constantly obsessed with personal "success" to the point of biased and blind amorality... A faithful portrayal of the modern world. One of these days we will drop the ego, and the sooner the better.
• justjimmy 14y ago
  Can't help but be reminded of a novel I read in university - Faith of the Fallen (Sword of Truth series). It wrote of similar theme (with a more focus on faith/religion), of how one must serve the greater good, humanity and the whim of his fellow men. Going down further, you go into the philosophical territory of individualism vs collectivism, how do you decide and balance your own moral ground, your 'selfish' needs and the needs of your neighbours.
  • pdwetz 14y ago
    He was very much inspired by Ayn Rand for that book; I can't find the article that quotes him on it, but the wikipedia article at least mentions the connection. Similar to Ayn Rand, I thought he was a bit over the top and heavy handed with his philosophy, but obviously that's just a subjective takeaway. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_of_the_Fallen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_of_the_Fallen
  • charlieflowers 14y ago
    That is one of my favorite books of all time. You're right ... it centers on exactly what this article covers. The people in the book were members of a culture that taught that it was selfish to spend time and energy on your own needs. Your duty was to sacrifice your needs and your life for the "greater good". The "moral" was that there is nobility in taking charge of your own life and making what you want of it, and that, in fact, it is from doing so that the greater good benefits too. The slogan that captures it all: "Your life is yours and yours alone. Rise up and live it." Not selfish: the main character in the book would give up everything for the woman he loved. I have no idea how much it overlaps with Ayn Rand. But taken as its own individual work, I consider it one of the most profound things I've ever read.
• xradionut 14y ago
  I just had a call from someone conducting an IT survey. I asked the person, "What's in it for me?, I'm at work, time is money." They were confused and I responded, "I'll do your survey if there's a gift card or lunch involved. You are not a client, nor a friend. Time is money."
  • jimmytucson 14y ago
    There's one way to go overboard. My 8 year old just asked me to hook up his PS3. I said, "Kid... time is money. What's in it for me? Every day, I'm hustling." I think people have learned to respect me so much they don't even invite me to parties or funerals anymore. Score!
    • theorique 14y ago
      There's a very big difference between a random caller doing a survey (no connection, no ongoing relationship, no obligation) and your own son, or even between the random caller and anyone close enough to you to ask you to a funeral or party. Do you really not see the difference between these situations or are you just doing a reductio ad absurdum?
  • redwood 14y ago
    Time is money, family, and self :)
  • jakejake 14y ago
    I used to work at a marketing firm and we did occasional phone survey which I would have to listen in periodically to ensure the questions were understandable and getting good answers. I was always amazed that anybody would spend 20 minutes answering questions asked by some random person for absolutely no reward. I still don't understand why. And our surveys had to be representative of the area demographics so it was not just all lonely, elderly people. It was people of all ages, race, etc.
    • zevyoura 14y ago
      People are bored, and a lot of people want someone to listen to them.
• rgbrenner 14y ago
  What a wonderful article for the Chrismas season. Helping people is so overrated. May we all strive to live in a world like the 1920's; when a 12 year old child could work in a coal mine for 16 hours a day and receive 1-2 dollars, when minimum wage laws were non-existent; and the income disparity between the top and the bottom was at it's highest point in all of US history. What a wonderful time to have lived, and this article is exactly the type of attitude we need to cultivate in todays society. I hope you detect the sarcasm.
  • eshvk 14y ago
    Did you read the entire article? He is not talking about becoming uncharitable. In fact at the end, he does suggest that he didn't become some sort of 1920's Scrooge but decided to instead re-prioritize his life to focus first on his family, work and next on other people. I am unsure of how this is an unreasonable thing to do. Also, I fail to see how the wider societal issues of that age are correlated with his viewpoints. This is just like a hobo saying "rgbrenner didn't give me $5 last time I asked him, this is why gay people cannot get married".
  • nollidge 14y ago
    I hope you detect the false dichotomy in your response.
  • Simucal 14y ago
    Maybe you should read more than the title of an article before commenting on it. Everything you just said has nothing to do with the point or conclusion of the story. Helping people at the expense of your wife, children and your employer is what the protagonist was discussing. He ultimately gave more in charity after his realization, except that he now controlled that charity, it didn't control him.
  • theorique 14y ago
    This wasn't really the point of the article. The writer was talking about saying no to being used and exploited by people who felt entitled to his time and effort and did not respect or appreciate that effort.
  • deleted 14y ago
• xutopia 14y ago
  Reading this article rings so true with me. It's why I quit playing MMOs... I always felt like I was doing work for others rather than enjoying myself.
  • Benferhat 14y ago
    Haha, I'm pretty similar. If it's impossible to solo the game, I won't play. It's nice to be able to help others, but not if it's mandatory.
• michaelochurch 14y ago
  Social status and being well-liked are different things, and sometimes you have to choose one at the expense of the other. It's not a comfortable feeling, but it's the truth. Being accommodating lowers your social status but makes you well-liked. The end result of this is that people waste your time because they get away with treating it as having less value than theirs. But the default mode of most people is insecurity so, when the chips are down, they go with the high-status guy (the rival druggist who was not accommodating but prospered). Respect, not popularity, is key. I spent many years of my life doing obnoxious, ridiculous things on the basis that it was better to be hated than ignored. I was completely wrong. Being hated or disliked is undesirable, if you can help it. Being ignored is fine. Being liked but not respected turns you into one of those whiny "but I'm such a nice guy" types, so it's the worst of all outcomes. Being liked and respected is what you want, but to get that, you have to accept the fact that some people will ignore or dislike you. The reason it is better, in most cases, to be ignored than disliked is that it takes less effort. The same goes with being liked but not respected-- lots of effort. You should expend effort only for people who respect you. That's a chance to show true loyalty, not subservience. Subordinate people can never be really loyal, because power relationships always evolve and, when they do, their colors will change. So you only gain anything by doing someone a favor if you're already from a position of equality.
  • m0nty 14y ago
    I have always found that helping people does not make you more popular: they just start treating you like their bitch, and get angry when they ask yet another favour and you eventually say "no". Also, they will not reciprocate - why should they waste time helping their bitch, when the bitch is supposed to help them? As soon as you act like a subordinate, you become one, at least in their eyes. People often mistake my role as tech support, which means anything from changing toner cartridges to setting up their presentation equipment. They often just turn up in my office with another "emergency" and I'm supposed to drop everything and run off to help them. I have learned to issue a flat "no" when this happens unless they let me know well in advance that I will be needed. They are often furious but I'm thick-skinned enough not to care: at least I have some control over the situation if I play it this way. My boss supports me so that helps. "You should expend effort only for people who respect you" is something I've learned the hard way and it really does work. I keep pushing back until they learn that (even if I annoy them) my time is not worthless, and if they treat it as such I will not help them. Actually, I usually end up feeling quite good about this way of working.
• lkrubner 14y ago
  This says a lot about about how much the human life span has changed in the last 90 years: “You are thirty-five years old,” I said to myself. “More than half of your life has already been spent."
  • drzaiusapelord 14y ago
    What? Ave USA lifespan for males is 75. So 5 year difference? The only difference I see is that people pretend 45-50 is when "mid-life" happens. No, you're not going to live to be 100. 35-37 is mid-life. Accept it.
    • varjag 14y ago
      50s is a mid-life of an adolescent in the Western world. You are not adolescent when you are infant, toddler or a teen.
      • SonicSoul 14y ago
        Adolescence: "generally occurring during the period from puberty to legal adulthood...The period of adolescence is most closely associated with the teenage years, although its physical, psychological and cultural expressions can begin earlier and end later..." .. that said, your figures are still accurate :)
  • Tichy 14y ago
    Hm, really? Sure, I hope to get older, but I don't really make great plans for life in my 70ies. While life expectancy might be higher, I know people who died younger, and many who are 70 and not in the greatest shape.
    • 16s 14y ago
      "The days of our years are threescore years and ten (70 years old); and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years (80 years old), yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away." - Psalm 90 10 Edit: Not sure why this would be down-voted. It's a quote from the King James Bible with a source reference that supports the notion that 70 years is about all the time we as humans have to live life in good health. It is relevant to the article as it lines-up with the 35 years old, "half of my life" claim as well. People do live longer than that, but quality of life and good health tend to go down a lot in the 70s.
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• ryguytilidie 14y ago
  My god, as someone who wakes up at 7, starts working right away and doesnt usually stop until around 7-8, this rang pretty true to me. I really need to going out of my way to help people because I never get as much out of it as I give. I do recruitment for a startup and constantly have people asking me to help them fill roles at other companies. I wonder how many extra hours I'd be able to give to my girlfriend or current job without those. Need to work on shedding some excess.
• ableal 14y ago
  "Unless, in a word, he commands his time. Read the life of a great scientist like Agassiz." Hmm. 1807 – 1873, Swiss paleontologist, ended at Harvard, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Agassiz http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Agassiz . Plus, Ezra Pound's take, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_sunfish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_sunfish
• analyst74 14y ago
  Aside from being able to say no. I believe a more subtle and useful technique is to actually use the good will you built into an actual relationship. How do you turn an acquaintance that you occasionally do favors for to a good friend? Well, you get the favors back in other ways. To put it in nicer words, you give them chance to help you back. That's how relationships grow.
• kamaal 14y ago
  Well the axiom of offering things to people is to realize, anything that you do/give away/offer for free will be perceived as a valueless. No matter how difficult or important the work actually is. Go out of your way to help someone, its almost dead certain you will be treated like a doormat next time. You will always be expected to keep doing things for free. Its a given. No person should ever be helped unless he is totally incapable of helping himself.
• smagch 14y ago
  This article hit the nail on the head. In essence, the human kind is identical with dog. There are certain amount of people that need a indication that you are in a higher-order in the pecking order. Otherwise, you'll be imposed/bullied.
• knitting 14y ago
  Being the "nice guy" certainly has its own benefits. Having performed favours already, the author can certainly ask for returns. He would also win various popularity based scenarios. But instead, he is so busy scratching others' backs that he forgets his own. I find the reason that the author was not trust with responsibilities in his friend's company, is due to the fact that he lacks the ambition and tact that would make a successful business man. How he blames himself for others taking advantage of him is admirable, and fitting with his "nice guy" attributes.
• philjohn 14y ago
  This situation was used to great comedic effect in "Blackadder's Christmas Carol".
• elanperach 14y ago
  Great Read!
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• osdiab 14y ago
  I think that helping people definitely can give you preferential treatment and respect, but whether it does depends heavily on _how_ you help them. The physical act of helping earns you a reputation as a 'nice' person; however, I've found in my limited time that when people start trying to use me (getting a sense for this is a very useful thing to have, and something I had to learn the hard way after being used), I either need to (a) draw the line and say no, or more commonly, (b) help them in such a way that I force them to think or do something along with me. In my experience, plan (a) happens strictly only after you've done plan (b) before. By just doing everything for others and magically making things happen, you allow people to trample on you; but by teaching them exactly what you're doing, you (1) demonstrate that you really know what you're doing, (2) practice your understanding of the thing it is you are doing, and (3) place on them the expectation that they won't come back for trivial help. I only resort to plan (a) if, after doing plan (b) a few times, they still attempt to use you. Teach a man to fish...
• mikecane 14y ago
  I have made these into basic ePub eBooks people can download for free from Google Docs: http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2012/12/27/an-experiment-in-epub-ebooks/ http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2012/12/27/an-experiment-in-e...
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• joeycfan 14y ago
  There's a real art to this. If you are not accommodating at all - you're a jerk and no one wants to help a jerk.. Too accommodating, you're a doormat and no respects a doormat and no one wants to help someone they don't respect....
• shanellem 14y ago
  Fantastic read. Long, but well worth it. Maybe if we had taken note of this decades ago, we wouldn't be seeing the "no" revolution now. It's ok to say no sometimes, it doesn't make you a bad person. Thanks for sharing this, OP.