One of my new personal rules for myself is, if something annoys me, I’m going to funnel that into content that I can reference the next time I encounter it. Today I am annoyed by a very spammy, solipsistic request for help, that was effectively just “plz subscribe to my channel bc I need more subscribers”.
I’m moderately decent at asking for help (once I get past my aversion to asking in the first place). So rather than give you a help, and help you for a day, let me teach you how to ask for help, and help you for a lifetime.
The following assumes that you want to ask for help from a busy stranger. If you already have an existing relationship with someone, you probably don’t have to put in as much effort into the ask, but I think these principles will boost your odds of success regardless.
1.Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. This is the most important thing that tonnes of people seem to fail to do. Why should this person help you? What is it like to receive a message from you? Don’t be a creep. Don’t be a bore. If it’s an important text or email, and you’re not sure of yourself, run it by a trusted friend. Read it out loud and feel how it sounds. It shouldn’t sound like a demand, a threat or a hostage letter. It should sound, ideally, like a casual invite to a bit of fun.
2. Keep it short. If you need help from someone, don’t make them read an essay just to understand what you’re asking. Put in the effort to edit down your request until it’s something that’s quick and easy to read. You might have 10 questions for them. Put 9 of them in your drafts, and ask the most important one. The more work you make them have to do to help you, the worse your odds of getting help get.
3. Give a sincere, specific compliment. I’m not saying appeal to their ego to make them feel good, though that doesn’t hurt. The important thing is to demonstrate that you’ve done your homework. “I read your essay about X and I thought it was really insightful how you talked about Y.” Giving people specific, sincere compliments is a gift, and it will make them feel like repaying the kindness – if your request is a reasonable one. You’re no longer “random stranger”, you’re “person who appreciates my work”.
4. Make it easy for them to say yes. Don’t give them the responsibility of figuring out what kind of help you need. Nobody wants additional responsibility for no clear reward or payoff. We all have enough responsibilities already.
5. Do your homework. Do at least a cursory check to see if they’ve already answered the question that you’re asking. Google your question and see what the top results are, and read through the results. Piece together *your* tentative answer to the question you’re asking. Eg, instead of simply asking “should I do X or Y”, it’s worth adding a line that says, “I read a compelling argument for X, but…”. This lengthens your message slightly (don’t write a whole essay), but it’s worth it because it demonstrates that you’re serious and not just screwing around.
6. Don’t be needy and/or demanding. Nobody owes you a response. It’s sad that this needs to be said, and yet it does. But also, a lighter version of this: don’t be tedious about how “you’re probably not going to see this…” and “I don’t expect a reply…” or any of that stuff. Just ask your question and go. The more overwrought you make things, the weirder you make it for them. Just ask the question, in a breezy and relaxed tone if you can.
I’ll update this with more details the next time I feel compelled to.
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“Will you Like/follow/subscribe to my page?”
As I wrote earlier, the specific thing that got me started on writing this was some random guy asking me to subscribe to his YouTube channel. This happens almost every week. He didn’t even tell me what his channel was about. As a matter of principle, I care about my information diet. If you’re approaching me because you like my content, well, part of why my content is good is because I am judicious about making sure that I only follow and subscribe to information feeds that I deem worth my time.
Here’s the best way you can get me to subscribe to your YouTube channel: get me interested in you. I have a huge body of work that’s publicly accessible. I have tonnes of blogposts and videos. You could reference any one of those things that’s relevant. Tell me something about yourself. Tell me what your best content is and why you think I’ll like it.
Here’s a bit of a “secret”. The best way to get someone to follow you is not to ask them to follow you (this comes across as needy), but to get an interesting conversation going. Who doesn’t want to participate in an interesting conversation? “But I don’t know how to do interesting conversations” make an interesting observation, ask an interesting question.
How do you know if something is interesting? You can never be 100% sure that something will be interesting to someone else; a big part of that involves studying the other person’s utterances and getting a sense of what they’re interested in.
But even without that, you can get pretty far by focusing on what you found interesting. You have to do the work of going through your own thoughts. Why do you want to ask this person for help, anyway? Why them? What is the thing you care about?
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“Will you try my app/product?”
Another recurring class of request I keep getting is “will you try my app/product”. If I don’t know you, the odds of me trying your app are extremely low. I barely try the apps that are made by people who I care about and have existing relationships with. If you really think that I’m really going to benefit from using your app, you have to find a way to demonstrate that to me without me doing any work. I didn’t try Roam Research until I witnessed a friend using it, and now I love using it every day. That’s just the way it is. If I stopped to try every product that people asked me to try, I’d almost never have time to do anything else.
If you’re not even sure, and you’re just hoping for feedback… I really don’t have time for that stuff. I’m sorry. Figure your stuff out. I charge people $100/hr for feedback on their apps, and even then I only pick clients who I have a good feeling about – meaning I like something about their general vibe, I like their tweets, I like their blog, I feel like they’re “on to something” and they aren’t just messing around and wasting time. It’s entirely possible that they’re actually geniuses working on The Next Big Thing and that I’m clueless. I’m OK with that.
Generally speaking, it’s way easier to respond to something that’s in the form of “hey I think this is cool, it does X – and I’m curious if you think it’s cool too” than “I spent 2 years working on this and it would mean a lot to me if you…” – please don’t put that sort of pressure on me! I don’t know if other people respond well to that sort of thing, but I personally don’t. I’m not here to judge people’s life’s work, I’m here to be playful and have fun.
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probably not obvious: it’s much easier to get help with stuff, if you’re good at *something*. it can be something really arbitrary and even “silly” or “unimportant”, like say…
you could be good at speedrunning a particular video game. you build an audience for that. people feel gratitude to you for entertaining them. you then ask your audience, hey can anyone help me out with X. and someone who’s better informed/experienced than you, who likes you, points you in the right direction
at some subconscious level I think a lot of people who are cloutmaxxing have some vague sense of this, but the tragedy is that if you go full [redacted] then you get a [redacted] audience with [redacted] outcomes
To be updated.
Related post: how to get my attention
If you liked this blogpost, you’d probably enjoy my ebook FRIENDLY AMBITIOUS NERD, and also my youtube channel!
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stray notes:
(2023jul24) when I was younger I was very adamant about always doing everything myself, because I was always hostile to the idea of bad teachers. and also I was too broke to afford anything. but with time, experience, a clearer sense of self, I’ve come to appreciate the value of hiring help. Honestly half of the time it’s from helping other people myself as a client!