On 2019-09-04 16:53:20 -0400 (-0400), Doug Hellmann wrote:
On Sep 4, 2019, at 3:35 PM, Kendall Nelson <kennelson11@gmail.com> wrote: [...] Hopefully goes without saying, but don't burn yourself out trying to help someone else either.
This is the point in the flight safety demonstration where we remind passengers to affix their own oxygen masks before assisting others.
I would take this a step further, and remind everyone in leadership positions that your job is not to do things *for* anyone, but to enable others to do things *for themselves*. Open source is based on collaboration, and ensuring there is a healthy space for that collaboration is your responsibility. You are neither a free workforce nor a charity. By all means, you should help people to achieve their goals in a reasonable way by reducing barriers, simplifying processes, and making tools reusable. But do not for a minute believe that you have to do it all for them, even if you think they have a great idea. Make sure you say “yes, you should do that” more often than “yes, I will do that."
And also, as has been suggested to some extent in other responses on this thread, if there are expected things go undone because there's nobody who has available time to do them, then it's a distinct possibility those things weren't necessary in the first place. -- Jeremy Stanley