The compliment that made me realize I had the wrong goal

Someone told me recently that my work was impressive, and it landed badly.

Not because they meant it unkindly. Because I realized I did not want to be impressive. I wanted to be useful. And somewhere along the way I had started optimizing for the thing that sounds good in a room rather than the thing that helps a person on a Tuesday afternoon.

Impressive is a design that makes people nod. Useful is a design that makes people stop noticing it, because it just does what they need and gets out of the way. Those two things pull in different directions, and I had been drifting toward the first without admitting it.

Since then I have been asking a different question about everything I build. Not will people be impressed by this, but will anyone be slightly less annoyed because this exists.

Have you ever caught yourself chasing the wrong kind of approval? And how did you notice?