What's Your Mindset When Asking for Help?

00:00:00.000 | Our next call is from Jacqueline. She basically has a question about asking for help and how

00:00:10.000 | you go about it. Hi, Cal. Thanks so much for your podcast.

00:00:14.040 | It's helped me so much. Almost every day I refer to something that you said in your podcast

00:00:19.860 | in conversation with other folks. I really appreciate listening to your outlook on life,

00:00:25.160 | especially your sense of gratitude and lack of shaming. So I was really interested in

00:00:31.400 | your discussion with David Epstein in episode 39 about people being hindered by their own

00:00:37.000 | expertise or ego and how these can keep people from asking questions or asking for help.

00:00:45.500 | My question is about how you approach this problem. What is your mindset when you are

00:00:50.240 | asking questions or asking for help? Do you fear looking stupid? If so, how do you deal

00:00:58.440 | with that? Also, at a more technical level, how do you get help? For example, how do you

00:01:03.520 | know when to reach out, who to reach out to, and how to get what you need from that interaction?

00:01:10.440 | Just quickly, I consider this a productivity question because I think my inability to ask

00:01:16.520 | for help has been slowing my ability to get anything done. My PhD took me roughly nine

00:01:23.160 | years and now I'm still having trouble publishing chapters of my dissertation. I have the mindset

00:01:28.920 | that I should figure things out for myself, and I'm also scared of looking stupid. I think

00:01:33.800 | asking for help would help, but I haven't quite figured it out yet. Thanks so much.

00:01:39.720 | All right, Jaclyn, I like this question. Let me set your mind at ease. I'm a relatively

00:01:46.400 | smart guy, and I ask for help constantly in all areas of my life. Here's why I feel comfortable

00:01:54.820 | doing that. You can learn from my experience here. I guess you could call it the privilege,

00:02:00.600 | or you could call it the lack of luck, depending on how it's going to impact your mindset.

00:02:07.000 | Whatever it is, I got to train at a place that we're surrounded by the very smartest

00:02:10.560 | people in the world. I was at MIT in the theory group at MIT, literally the smartest people

00:02:17.640 | in the world. I could throw a stone and hit three Turing Award winners and three MacArthur

00:02:24.060 | Genius Grant Award winners, one of whom who won the MacArthur when he was 17 and had been

00:02:30.520 | a tenured professor at MIT since he was 18. Incredibly smart people, not just, "Oh, that

00:02:36.840 | guy's sharp," but their brain can move things by staring at it.

00:02:43.840 | They ask questions all the time. Completely the smartest people in the world will use

00:02:49.960 | phrases such as, "Pretend like I am a child and explain this to me." They are the very

00:02:58.680 | first people to say at a talk, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't know what that word means you

00:03:04.120 | just said. Slow way down. Slow way down. I don't understand that equation. Why is that

00:03:10.240 | right? Slow it down for me. Assume I don't know anything." It was the defining factor

00:03:15.080 | of the very smartest people in the world is that without any shame, they are constantly,

00:03:20.480 | constantly asking for people to slow down, to explain things simply.

00:03:23.920 | They're constantly faced with people who go way too fast because they're intimidated and

00:03:27.880 | say, "Well, this person's so smart. They're going to think I'm dumb. I got to..." They

00:03:31.600 | don't want you to go fast. They want you to go real slow. You want to understand each

00:03:36.560 | piece before they move on to the next. To me, that was incredibly instructive. Now,

00:03:41.520 | the reason why, of course, they don't care about doing that is that they know they're

00:03:45.160 | smart. They literally have a certificate that says genius and the 600,000 that comes along

00:03:50.600 | with that fellowship. They know they're smart, so they don't care about trying to look smart.

00:03:55.760 | By studying the smartest people in the world, you say, "What is probably the right thing

00:03:59.000 | to do?" It turns out it's to ask questions all the time.

00:04:03.560 | It's not a flaw with you if you don't understand something or someone's explaining something

00:04:07.720 | very confidently, and you're like, "I didn't get that." Nine times out of 10, it's not

00:04:11.360 | because you're missing something. It's because they're going way too fast, and they're just

00:04:15.320 | trying to look smart. This effect is so powerful that you can then, if you've been around these

00:04:20.560 | type of super brains, it becomes a counter signaling situation. When you see someone

00:04:26.160 | not asking for help or acting like everything is obvious or explaining something really

00:04:30.760 | fast, you immediately think, "Oh, that person's probably not that sharp. That person's compensating

00:04:36.200 | for something. That person is really worried about what people think about them." It becomes

00:04:40.400 | a counter signaling effect. The more questions you ask, the smarter you actually seem.

00:04:44.480 | So, Jacqueline, I'm going to say you learn from that experience. If you want to actually

00:04:50.080 | live in the world like a smart person, ask questions about everything you don't understand.

00:04:55.560 | If you don't know how to do something right, ask questions about that. I do this all the

00:04:58.800 | time. I call people. I'm known for this at Georgetown. If I'm put on a committee for

00:05:03.280 | something, I was like, "I have no idea how this works. What do I need to do?" I'm just

00:05:06.680 | like, "Let me just hold on, dial my phone. Hi, I'm dumb. I have no idea how any of this

00:05:12.960 | works. No, no, slow down even more. I was doing this recently. We're starting a new

00:05:17.720 | academic program I'm involved in." I had to do this with someone from the registrar's

00:05:22.960 | office. I was like, "Just start from scratch. I don't even know what that system is. What

00:05:27.200 | do you mean major? Just pretend I am 12." Then I did this the other day. I had to call

00:05:31.840 | the admissions department because they needed to turn something on. I was like, "Look, just

00:05:36.200 | start from scratch. I don't know anything." It's really useful to everyone involved. Everyone

00:05:41.520 | always pretends like they understand things, don't understand anything.

00:05:43.960 | So, Jacqueline, that is the mindset you should be in. By asking the most fundamental questions

00:05:49.400 | about how things work or why something is true, you are going to be setting yourself

00:05:53.120 | up for having the very smartest insights and the very best work. When it comes to help,

00:05:58.520 | ask for it. "Hey, I'm having a hard time writing my chapters. Let's talk about it. I need help."

00:06:05.220 | Talk to your old advisors. Talk to people you know. "What's going on here? Should I

00:06:08.240 | rethink this? Should I change my habits?" Be in that habit. I'm glad you asked this

00:06:12.040 | because I want everyone to be in this habit. Ask for help all the time. That is what's

00:06:16.000 | going to make you paradoxically seem way smarter than the guy on the other side of the room

00:06:21.800 | trying to play it cool and is fooling nobody. The guy who's trying to desperately make it

00:06:26.160 | seem like, "I guess I know everything and I understand everything." No one is fooled

00:06:30.440 | by that person. It is slowing down their ability to have original thoughts or get useful things

00:06:34.840 | done. Ignore that person. Ask questions. If I do it, if those supersized brains at MIT

00:06:42.480 | were doing it, then you should feel absolutely secure doing it yourself. That being said,

00:06:48.440 | whenever Jesse asked me for help, I yell at him. That's more of a discipline thing. If

00:06:55.640 | you don't know how to do this, then maybe you don't belong here. That's what I say.

00:07:00.160 | Take your $250,000 a month out of here. Buy a pull-up bar.

00:07:04.280 | What do you do with that $250,000 a month? I know you're not putting it into your truck.

00:07:07.880 | I know that's not where you're investing it. Go get our pull-up bar installed. What the

00:07:12.080 | hell's going on here?

00:07:12.720 | *sniffs*

00:07:13.760 | *outro music*

00:07:16.560 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

What's Your Mindset When Asking for Help?

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