Asking for help: the specific question gets answered, the vague one gets postponed

Many researchers delay asking for help because they think it signals incompetence. In practice the opposite holds: people who ask early and precisely progress faster, and are seen as more competent, not less.

Ask early

• A day stuck is normal; three weeks stuck is a cost.
• Set your own threshold in advance: if this is not solved by Friday, I ask.
• The threshold removes the daily decision.

Ask precisely

• What you are trying to do.
• What you tried.
• What happened instead.
• What you think might be wrong.
• The fourth item shows you have thought, and often reveals the answer as you write it.

Ask the right person

• A peer for anything routine.
• A technician or specialist for method and equipment.
• Your supervisor for direction and priority decisions.
• Sending everything to the busiest person slows you down.

Make it easy to help

• A minimal example rather than your whole project.
• The exact error, not a paraphrase of it.
• The context needed and nothing more.

Afterwards

• Say what worked in the end.
• Write it down for the next person.
• Help someone else with the same problem later.

One thing worth remembering

Set a threshold in advance for when you will ask.

The daily decision about whether you have struggled long enough is what turns one stuck day into three stuck weeks — a rule fixed before you are stuck removes that decision entirely.

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