About 4 minutes to read.
Asking for help can feel harder than doing another hour of work. You can spend an evening rearranging the same presentation because showing a colleague where you’re stuck seems like admitting you shouldn’t have been given the project.
The trouble is that another hour may give you more slides without answering the question holding everything up. If you don’t know what the audience needs to decide, effort alone won’t supply that knowledge. Someone who has been in the room might.
There is a point at which doing everything yourself becomes an extra condition you’ve placed on success. The work already has to be good. Now it also has to prove you never needed anyone.
When trying harder stops helping
In her October 3 conversation on Modern Wisdom, psychologist Angela Duckworth describes a limit to the rule that more effort is always the answer. Looking outward or asking for help can feel shameful to someone accustomed to succeeding through persistence. Yet a different situation can give that effort somewhere better to go.
That distinction matters when you’re already trying. A useful question is whether the next attempt will teach you anything the previous attempts didn’t. Repeating a method can be necessary practice. Repeating it because asking someone feels embarrassing is a different decision.
Imagine trying to keep a capable person stuck. Give them a difficult problem, make them reluctant to reveal what they don’t understand, and insist that outside guidance would invalidate the achievement. They could work extremely hard under those rules.
Removing the last rule leaves plenty of work to do.
What the other person actually sees
A 2015 paper by Alison Wood Brooks, Francesca Gino, and Maurice Schweitzer offers a reason to question the assumption that a request automatically makes you look incapable.
In one experiment, 170 university students solved mathematical puzzles. Each believed they had an anonymous partner who would tackle the task afterward. That partner was actually simulated by a computer. Researchers randomly assigned students to receive either a friendly message from the supposed partner or the same message with a request for advice added.
The real students then rated the supposed partner’s competence. Those who had been asked for advice rated that partner more highly than students who received only the greeting. The researchers measured an impression, not an improvement in the partner’s actual ability.
Another experiment found the boost for a difficult task but no detectable difference for an easy one. These were brief, artificial interactions, not years of dealing with a particular manager. The result challenges an automatic assumption; it doesn’t promise that every person will welcome every question.
Give someone a question they can answer
James Clear’s October 8 newsletter points out how much trouble can come from the way something is communicated. Applied to asking for help, that observation suggests making the difficulty visible enough for another person to respond usefully.
Consider two possible messages about that presentation. “I’m terrible at this. Can you help?” leaves your colleague to discover the task, the problem, and the size of the favor. “I’ve drafted the recommendation, but I don’t know which objection this audience is most likely to raise. Could you flag the one you’d address first?” gives them a specific contribution to make.
That’s an illustrative application, not a communication formula Clear tested. Its advantage is straightforward: the colleague can see what you’ve already done and where their experience would help. They can also judge whether they have time to answer.
You remain responsible for deciding what to use, revising the presentation, and delivering it. Advice can change your work without transferring ownership of it.
You can ask while feeling uncomfortable
Even a well-framed request can sit unsent. In his October 5 newsletter, Chris Williamson separates doing a brave thing from becoming a permanently brave person. An uncomfortable action needn’t wait for a complete change in personality.
A small request is a useful place to apply that idea. You can send it, feel awkward, and get on with something else. The discomfort doesn’t need to disappear before the message becomes legitimate.
Of course, the other person can decline. They may be busy, lack the experience you need, or simply prefer not to help. Leave them room to say so. The useful act is making a reasonable request, not securing a particular answer.
Three ways to make help useful
Choose relevant experience over impressive status. Someone who has presented to this audience may offer more useful guidance than a famous person with no knowledge of the situation. Ask yourself what the person has actually seen or done that bears on your problem.
Expose one uncertainty instead of condemning your whole ability. You can be good at a job and unclear about a particular decision. Name the missing information, show the attempt you’ve made, and ask a question that would change what you do. That gives the other person something concrete to work with.
Separate embarrassment from a real cost. Feeling exposed isn’t the same as revealing something confidential or asking a hostile person for a favor. Account for those real constraints. When the downside is mainly an awkward moment, you can choose to tolerate it without demanding that you first feel confident.
Leave the second chair available
The presentation remains on your laptop. A colleague may point out the objection you missed, but you have to decide how to answer it. You have to stand in front of the room.
There is room at the desk for another chair without anyone taking yours.
P.S. By the way, an AI wrote these sentences from the creators’ videos, newsletters, and posts Payton actually consumes week after week. He built the system that makes this letter, and he will keep putting it out once a week. He put his taste and judgment into what good looks like, and into how to avoid bad. He wants to be fully transparent about that.