Is there a word/phrase to describe an action which leads to it being pointless?

Question

I'm wondering if there's a word or phrase to describe an action or activity which turns out to be pointless - let me explain further with an example;

Recently I was organising the garage and had lots of bits of wood lying around which I needed to store properly, so I made some shelving with the wood. In so doing, I realised I had used up all the wood which I needed to store - so the shelving I had created was sort of redundant and unnecessary. However, had I not have built the shelving I would still have lots of bits of wood lying about the place which would need storing.

I wondered if there is a word, phrase or expression to describe this sort of futile paradoxical activity?

Many Thanks!

Answer 1

By using the wood, you have obviated the need to store it.

Building a container to store the material you'd use to build the container is a self-obviating action.

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obviate ˈɒbvɪeɪt/ verb verb: obviate; 3rd person present: obviates; past tense: obviated; past participle: obviated; gerund or present participle: obviating

remove (a need or difficulty).

"the presence of roller blinds obviated the need for curtains"

synonyms: preclude, prevent, remove, get rid of, do away with, get round, rule out, eliminate, make unnecessary, take away, foreclose, avoid, avert, counter

"the settlement obviated the need for the separate cases to be heard in court"

avoid or prevent (something undesirable).

"a parachute can be used to obviate disaster"

Answer 2

There is 'self-defeating':

Self-defeating - adjective

1 - serving to frustrate, thwart, etc., one's own intention or interests: His behavior was certainly self-defeating.

www.dictionary.com

Answer 3

I think self-defeating is close, but I would use the phrase defeats the purpose instead.

However, I do not quite agree you building the shelving was pointless. You ended up having cool new shelves instead of random bits of wood sitting around.

Answer 4

This strikes me as a classic Catch-22.

A situation in which a desired outcome or solution is impossible to attain because of a set of inherently contradictory rules or conditions

The term was coined by Joseph Heller in the comic novel Catch-22, and is such a useful idea that logicians have formalized and adopted it. It's also entered common speech. I think it's sometimes misused to mean, in general, 'an inescapable situation' but OP's case fits the more precise definition.

The book itself provides several examples of Catch-22. Here are some:

1. In order to be excused from combat duty, you must be declared insane. However, in order to be declared insane, you must request a psychiatric evaluation, which only a sane person (who doesn't want to die in combat) would do. Thus, the very act of seeking an insanity diagnosis prevents such a diagnosis.

2. A prostitute (who has sex for money) refuses to marry any man she deems crazy. Her definition of 'crazy' is any man that would marry a woman who has already had sex. The conditions logically preclude the possibility that she will ever marry a man.

The Wikipedia page on Catch-22 in logic gives a more concise example:

3. To apply for a job, you need to have a few years of experience; but in order to gain experience you need to get a job.

I think OP's case is even neater:

4. In order to store the wood, you must build a shelf; but in order to build the shelf you must use the wood.

Answer 5

I don't see why your project was self-defeating: since you no longer have scrap wood cluttering your garage, it seems it was actually self-fulfilling. But I think the self-contradictory part comes into the consideration of whether you've built a scrap-wood storage system. Clearly making the shelving eliminated the need to consider the question since the solution itself did away with the need to consider the problem. When a question is an academic enterprise, devoid of practical consequences, it is called moot. When an activity makes itself a moot consideration, it is called self-mooting. Consider this example from a motion from a long-suffering defendant in a law suit who complained that the plaintiff had decided to

prevent the deposition from going forward by filing this patently frivolous, self-contradictory, self-mooting motion by which Plaintiffs are moving on May 10, 2011 for an order retroactively preventing a deposition from taking place on April 19, 2011, when the deposition already has to be rescheduled because they blocked it by filing this motion.

As far as I can tell, the motion is frivolous because it seeks to prevent a deposition from taking place after the deposition had been cancelled. This had the effect of blocking any rescheduling of the deposition since the rules of civil procedure require that the parties to wait for the court to consider the motion. Once the defendants got the delay they wanted by filing the motion, there was no reason for the court to consider the merits of the motion, making the motion self-mooting.

Here's another example from the December 1989 issue of Spy magazine (which I still miss):

Infamy has become a self-mooting concept.

This is from an article by Richard Stengel called "Here Today, Here Tomorrow" on why we can't seem to get rid of celebrities. Even disgrace cancels its own opprobrium with the glamor of the fame it induces.

Finally, an example from the website The DailyKos about the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids anyone from being elected President more than twice. Some people claim that the amendment does not preclude a President who has been elected twice (e.g, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama) from serving a third term by being elected Vice-President on a ticket with a Presidential candidate who immediately resigns upon election. This would allow the Vice-President to assume the office of President a third time by succession, not election. A commenter notes that this interpretation

... requires a claim that the language of the 22nd [Amendment] was drafted so as to make the provision essentially self-mooting....

Legal interpretation generally holds that provisions of the law not be interpreted to be self-defeating.

Answer 6

I'd suggest, "vain"

Longman Dictionary: "A vain attempt fails to achieve the result you wanted."

Here are two examples:

"I built shelving in a vain attempt to store the material."

"I used up all shelving material in a vain attempt to build shelving."

And this idiom: "in vain" from Oxford Dictionary

For example:

"I used up all material to build shelving in vain for storing the material."

Answer 7

A useless or pointless activity is nugatory

There is no point analyzing the frobniz requirement, it would be nugatory effort.

Answer 8

It sounds like 'An exercise in futility'.

A course of action doomed to be futile.

Also 'in vain' would be another word for redundant, but used in a different fashion.

Examples:

His attempt to clear the wood was an exercise in futility.

He tried to clear the wood in vain.

Answer 9

Consider,

of little or no avail

Of no use or advantage, ineffective. This idiom uses avail in the sense of "advantage" or "assistance," a usage dating from the mid-1400s. Also see to little purpose. The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms

Answer 10

You solved your problem - which was having scrap wood lying about. You also happened to find a solution to a problem which you did not have. However for some reason you chose to view having a solution to a problem you don't have as a problem in itshelf.

If you insist on viewing it as a problem which would need solving the closest I could think of is performing a Sisyphys work : doing one work which results in having to start over again. But that one is from Greek mythology (I think), so it is probably not a very good english phrase. Everything else I could think of, someone else had already written in previous answers.

Answer 11

What comes to mind first: creating a space for the wood pieces is a "moot point" now that I've used the wood to create a space to store....does that make sense?

Answer 12

come to naught:

To come to nothing; be without result or fruition;

Answer 13

You could call it a Pyrrhic (or hollow) victory, in which the victory itself was offset by the losses to such an extent that you're either worse off or no better off afterwards.

Answer 14

I'd call it a self-defeating venture