I believe it's not quite as simple or black and white as they say. Things generally don't fit into the help others or help yourself category so neatly in real life. Typically if you're in a team, the other team members will be doing things that impact you directly or soon will do.
And focusing on others vs self misses a more reasonable split: brief targeted help and more involved help.
Often in companies, people reinvent the wheel and struggle with problems with well established solutions - provided you can briefly give a pointer and do it with sufficient tact as to not offend then this kind of thing is almost always worth helping with.