Trying to Be Impressive, Not Helpful?

I realized that I was actually in everyday life trying to be impressive and not helpful. If it wasn't something that I was going to get credit for, if it wasn't my idea, I probably wasn't going to either give it my all or my attention. So now on this side of it, I actually wonder, what is helpful, not impressed? What does that look like? The reason that we're talking about them as a pair is to set them up as being too dramatically different things.