Do what you can
“It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little – do what you can.”
–Sydney Smith
Something has been bugging me for a few weeks now. Is it normal for people to not seek out solutions to annoyances? I understand my brain is wired differently than most in that I CONSTANTLY have to tinker with stuff. It doesn’t matter if I’m solving problems that actually exist or not, but I will always find something to change with something in my life. It’s because I realize this about myself I need outside input to figure out if I’m off base here.
The specific trigger was the realization that a not-unsubstantial-number of my coworkers haven’t eliminated a useless popup that shows up when opening a record in our internal tracking software. For most average people that equates to dozens of popups daily, including the associated clicks and annoyances. A two-second search in our internal documentation gives you a link to click to make it go away forever. That’s literally all it takes and people can’t do that.
This led me to further wonder how pervasive this condition is. I wouldn’t wish my level of obsession on anyone, but I feel like there has to be a happy medium. I’ve seen so many people who don’t even appear to understand that life can be better. It doesn’t even matter if they could or couldn’t make the change themselves; they don’t even conceive of a different scenario.
Maybe I’m the freak here: constantly working to improve the universe.