The Art of Being Useless
Why being too useful is slowly wearing us down
Happy New Year!
Time seems to move so quickly.
January often brings a sense of hope and anticipation. We think about new habits, new routines, and higher goals. Our resolutions are full of plans to improve what is already stretched thin. We want to do better, do more, and keep improving.
But underneath that optimism, there is a familiar tiredness. It shows up more often as we get older. It’s not a sharp fatigue, but a steady, dull exhaustion that comes from doing everything right and still feeling worn out.
We tell ourselves we’re tired because life is hard and moves quickly. The world is always changing, and work and life are demanding. All of this is true, but it leaves out something deeper and more uncomfortable.
Most people aren’t tired because they’re failing. They’re tired because they’re too useful.
If you’re reliable, people depend on you. If you’re good at your job, you get more tasks. If you stay calm, others will bring you their problems. Being capable rarely leads to rest. Instead, it just means more keeps piling up.
This is the trap. Being good at what you do doesn’t protect you. It just creates more demand. The better you perform, the more it costs you, and it never seems to stop.
So maybe this year doesn’t need another promise to be more productive. Maybe it needs something older and less common—a kind of survival wisdom. The skill of being a little less useful. Not lazy, just not always perfectly helpful.
The Equation We Rarely Question
From a young age, we are taught a simple formula: worth equals usefulness.
Our parents tell us to be helpful to society. School rewards those who do well. Work promotes people who get results. We’re encouraged to do more than what’s required. Over time, being useful becomes part of who we are. If I’m valuable, it’s because I’m needed.
Being very useful makes you stand out. That brings expectations, and those expectations lead to people asking more from you. What starts as recognition soon becomes an assumption: you’ll handle it, you’ll step up, you always do.
At work, the most capable and cooperative people are often the first to burn out. It’s not because they’re weak, but because systems quietly shift more tasks their way. Responsibilities pile up without discussion. There’s no relief, because nothing seems wrong on the surface.
This is where modern management proves an old idea. The Peter Principle is often seen as a joke about people being promoted until they can’t do the job. But it also shows that being good at your work leads to more demands, not more support. The system keeps asking for more until someone reaches their limit.
When you show how useful you are, the world doesn’t protect you—it just asks for more. The reward is more roles, more responsibilities, and more demands added to what you already do.
The system never asks if you should keep going. It only asks if you can.
The Twisted Tree
Long before performance reviews and email, a Daoist philosopher told a story about a tree.
Zhuangzi described a tree with twisted, uneven branches and wood full of knots. Carpenters walk by without stopping. Nearby, straight trees stand tall and useful. They are cut down young and turned into beams, planks, and tools.
The twisted tree survives.
The twisted tree survives not because it’s impressive, but because it’s seen as useless. No one wants to cut it down or use it, so it stays. It keeps growing, gives shade, and outlives the useful trees.
Zhuangzi wasn’t telling people to be lazy. He was showing the risk of being too useful. When everything is judged by usefulness, those who aren’t as useful are the ones who last.
In this way, being useless acts as a disguise. The world doesn’t destroy what it can’t easily take from. It just ignores it.
According to Arendt, unlike those who participate in a culture focused solely on relentless productivity, the twisted tree is not trying to compete but instead opts out of a system where the most industrious often experience burnout first.
The ‘straight trees’ are always available, always responsive, and always working to improve themselves. They organize their schedules, build their skills, and handle emotional work. They try to make every interaction as smooth as possible.
This makes them highly useful and, as a result, more easily taken for granted. In modern society, human activity is increasingly centred on labour, emphasising usefulness above all else. When usefulness becomes a person’s defining feature, their time and energy may be claimed by others before they even realise it. Your energy is used up without your say. Over time, you stop feeling like a person and start feeling like just a function.
That’s why exhaustion often shows up without a clear reason. Nothing dramatic happened—you just kept saying yes, kept working, and kept taking on more.
Then one day, you might have a heart attack, and everything stops.
“Yes, he was a very productive employee. Too bad he had to go like this.”
The real danger isn’t being useful—it’s becoming nothing but useful.
Hannah Arendt warned that a life reduced to endless labour becomes cyclical and disposable. Valuable only as long as it continues to perform. Once it pauses, it is replaced.
And you are always replaceable.
Being inconvenient
This way of thinking isn’t about being irresponsible. It doesn’t encourage giving up or abandoning your commitments. It’s not about becoming useless.
It’s about understanding the need to take care of yourself.
Instead of always being useful, try being strategically inconvenient. Be a little slower, not always available, and sometimes a bit inefficient or selfish if it helps protect your well-being.
Don’t answer every message right away. Wait. Let someone else take the lead sometimes. Don’t volunteer for every task you could do. Allow small problems to exist instead of fixing everything.
This is how you stop yourself from being used up all the time.
The safest place isn’t at the top of the usefulness list. It’s on the edge, where expectations are lower. You’re respected, but not pushed to your limits. Your value isn’t easy for systems to measure or exploit.
Like the twisted tree, you might not stand out, but you stay whole.
A Resolution for the Twisted
Straight trees don’t last long. The ones seen as useless are the ones that last.
As 2026 starts, maybe the goal isn’t to do more, learn faster, or work harder. Maybe it’s to avoid burning out.
The old philosophers weren’t telling people to be useless. They were teaching them not to let themselves be used up.
Maybe this year, that’s enough.