Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I generally default to "Yes", but the alternative is "Put this off for later" and folks who are not elementary school English teachers very rarely receive another look to their email if I can't address it immediately. I don't keep track of it but I think this means about 60% of people get yes these days.

Things which induce me to drop what I am doing and immediately get to work on someone's behalf:

1) Demonstrating that you know me well, either through familiarity with what I've done, what I've written, myself personally, or someone close to me.

2) Demonstrating that you have put a lot of work into something and can benefit from specific application of my expertise.

3) A precise request which I can satisfy. ("Can you teach me about running a business?" is not a precise request -- well, OK, it is, but only if you accept "I could." as a complete answer. "I have built an application which does X. I want to increase its organic search rankings for X, and having done my homework about SEO, I understand this means I need to get links to my website. Can you give me an idea for an X-related piece of linkbait?" is a precise question.)

Things which people frequently try that are not as successful as they probably hope:

1) "Help me, Obi Wan, you're my only hope." I enjoy backing underdogs, not losers. There is a difference. Pluck and vim and tales of what you've managed to do make you sound like an underdog. Apologies and lack of confidence and telling me who you've already asked who ignored you totally make you sound like a loser. (By the way, it very rarely improves any negotiation to tell the other party that they were the first person you thought of after the first four people you thought of said no.)

2) "This will only take..." Asking me to drop what I'm doing is much more disruptive than many people would assume it is. Also, folks have a tendency to underestimate how much work is required or how thoroughly I tend to answer requests which I answer.

3) Napkin stage ideas. Most of them will be culled before shipping. Why should I dedicate my limited time on a project which will probably be shelved, when I could instead work on something which will, with certainty, help people?

And the first thing that popped into my head was: I wonder if AskPatio11.com is available? Throw up these instructions and a webform and voilá. And then, if we hook it into Pat's email, we can get real time stats on his response and acceptance rates. For paying customers maybe we can offer access to stats on what the best time of day to email is and what help requests/idea critques are trending.

On a more serious note, thanks for writing this, Patrick. I had an idea a few days ago--more precisely a new permutation on an idea I've been banging on for over a year now--and my goal is to launch on Jan 1. I would really like to have your input on some of the details. I had decided to not email you--you are busy and right now I can't afford to pay for your time--but I'll take 60% odds. So you'll be hearing from me as soon as I launch, hopefully 21 days from today.

> 3) Napkin stage ideas. Most of them will be culled before shipping. Why should I dedicate my limited time on a project which will probably be shelved, when I could instead work on something which will, with certainty, help people?

Thanks for this. I've spent too much time helping people work out the scenarios and options for projects which will never happen. I only recently started realizing this for what it is, and you just summed up really well exactly the problem with it.

A couple other observations - a friend of mine makes nature documentaries and commercials, and he's constantly getting requests from people who want to work for free for him, get mentored, get advice, "look at my stuff", etc, etc. He says whenever anyone asks to work for him, with him, etc., he gives them a simple, straightforward, ~5 hour assignment to do. That cuts 90%+ of people right there.

> I enjoy backing underdogs, not losers.

I've found "helpful-but-not-compassionate" goes a long ways, since I almost never get requests like this any more. I write all over the place "drop me a line, what can I do for you, etc, etc." Lots of people take me up on it (I got 23 emails from people today, most were interesting... this is a bit higher than normal).

But I find losers like compassion. Instead of wanting to win, they want to feel good about being losers. Thus, any help you give them is useless to them, until they gain a real desire to win, and ideally evidence some of that desire. If you write touchy-feely stuff, you get people coming to you ostensibly for advice, but secretly just wanting a shoulder to cry on, which is worse than useless if you want to build real world stuff.

Ultra-practical, humble, disciplined, hard working, willing and eager to serve, charitable, empathetic, but absolutely no compassion seems to attract just about everyone you could really help, while turning off most people who want a shoulder to cry on. Of course, no compassion completely outrages people who have compassion as a heavy part of their identity.

That's the price you pay, I guess. I reckon all the practical people will look at these comments and nod, and the people whose hearts bleed will be outraged. That's not actually a good thing in my book, but so it goes. All life includes tradeoffs.

I reckon all the practical people will look at these comments and nod, and the people whose hearts bleed will be outraged.

FWIW: I'm a bleeding heart type who has spent a lot of time pondering how to be genuinely helpful without stepping in a lot of the pitfalls I've either witnessed or experienced first-hand. I've drawn similar conclusions. I would go so far as to say that if you really want to help someone, it is actually cruel to go the "I feel your pain" route. A lot of people will stop trying to really fix the problem if they can get some emotional relief. Also, my observation has been that tea and sympathy is generally offered for really hard problems that people believe cannot be fixed. I have come to view tea and sympathy as a very ugly message -- a veiled way of saying "you poor thing, you're doomed".

More than often a request for "mentor me" sounds like person's laziness to find their way. They want the easy way out.It sounds like "do it for me" rather then "guide me about doing X in a specific way".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com