Our next call is from Jacqueline. She basically has a question about asking for help and how you go about it. Hi, Cal. Thanks so much for your podcast. It's helped me so much. Almost every day I refer to something that you said in your podcast in conversation with other folks.

I really appreciate listening to your outlook on life, especially your sense of gratitude and lack of shaming. So I was really interested in your discussion with David Epstein in episode 39 about people being hindered by their own expertise or ego and how these can keep people from asking questions or asking for help.

My question is about how you approach this problem. What is your mindset when you are asking questions or asking for help? Do you fear looking stupid? If so, how do you deal with that? Also, at a more technical level, how do you get help? For example, how do you know when to reach out, who to reach out to, and how to get what you need from that interaction?

Just quickly, I consider this a productivity question because I think my inability to ask for help has been slowing my ability to get anything done. My PhD took me roughly nine years and now I'm still having trouble publishing chapters of my dissertation. I have the mindset that I should figure things out for myself, and I'm also scared of looking stupid.

I think asking for help would help, but I haven't quite figured it out yet. Thanks so much. All right, Jaclyn, I like this question. Let me set your mind at ease. I'm a relatively smart guy, and I ask for help constantly in all areas of my life. Here's why I feel comfortable doing that.

You can learn from my experience here. I guess you could call it the privilege, or you could call it the lack of luck, depending on how it's going to impact your mindset. Whatever it is, I got to train at a place that we're surrounded by the very smartest people in the world.

I was at MIT in the theory group at MIT, literally the smartest people in the world. I could throw a stone and hit three Turing Award winners and three MacArthur Genius Grant Award winners, one of whom who won the MacArthur when he was 17 and had been a tenured professor at MIT since he was 18.

Incredibly smart people, not just, "Oh, that guy's sharp," but their brain can move things by staring at it. They ask questions all the time. Completely the smartest people in the world will use phrases such as, "Pretend like I am a child and explain this to me." They are the very first people to say at a talk, "Whoa, whoa, whoa.

I don't know what that word means you just said. Slow way down. Slow way down. I don't understand that equation. Why is that right? Slow it down for me. Assume I don't know anything." It was the defining factor of the very smartest people in the world is that without any shame, they are constantly, constantly asking for people to slow down, to explain things simply.

They're constantly faced with people who go way too fast because they're intimidated and say, "Well, this person's so smart. They're going to think I'm dumb. I got to..." They don't want you to go fast. They want you to go real slow. You want to understand each piece before they move on to the next.

To me, that was incredibly instructive. Now, the reason why, of course, they don't care about doing that is that they know they're smart. They literally have a certificate that says genius and the 600,000 that comes along with that fellowship. They know they're smart, so they don't care about trying to look smart.

By studying the smartest people in the world, you say, "What is probably the right thing to do?" It turns out it's to ask questions all the time. It's not a flaw with you if you don't understand something or someone's explaining something very confidently, and you're like, "I didn't get that." Nine times out of 10, it's not because you're missing something.

It's because they're going way too fast, and they're just trying to look smart. This effect is so powerful that you can then, if you've been around these type of super brains, it becomes a counter signaling situation. When you see someone not asking for help or acting like everything is obvious or explaining something really fast, you immediately think, "Oh, that person's probably not that sharp.

That person's compensating for something. That person is really worried about what people think about them." It becomes a counter signaling effect. The more questions you ask, the smarter you actually seem. So, Jacqueline, I'm going to say you learn from that experience. If you want to actually live in the world like a smart person, ask questions about everything you don't understand.

If you don't know how to do something right, ask questions about that. I do this all the time. I call people. I'm known for this at Georgetown. If I'm put on a committee for something, I was like, "I have no idea how this works. What do I need to do?" I'm just like, "Let me just hold on, dial my phone.

Hi, I'm dumb. I have no idea how any of this works. No, no, slow down even more. I was doing this recently. We're starting a new academic program I'm involved in." I had to do this with someone from the registrar's office. I was like, "Just start from scratch. I don't even know what that system is.

What do you mean major? Just pretend I am 12." Then I did this the other day. I had to call the admissions department because they needed to turn something on. I was like, "Look, just start from scratch. I don't know anything." It's really useful to everyone involved. Everyone always pretends like they understand things, don't understand anything.

So, Jacqueline, that is the mindset you should be in. By asking the most fundamental questions about how things work or why something is true, you are going to be setting yourself up for having the very smartest insights and the very best work. When it comes to help, ask for it.

"Hey, I'm having a hard time writing my chapters. Let's talk about it. I need help." Talk to your old advisors. Talk to people you know. "What's going on here? Should I rethink this? Should I change my habits?" Be in that habit. I'm glad you asked this because I want everyone to be in this habit.

Ask for help all the time. That is what's going to make you paradoxically seem way smarter than the guy on the other side of the room trying to play it cool and is fooling nobody. The guy who's trying to desperately make it seem like, "I guess I know everything and I understand everything." No one is fooled by that person.

It is slowing down their ability to have original thoughts or get useful things done. Ignore that person. Ask questions. If I do it, if those supersized brains at MIT were doing it, then you should feel absolutely secure doing it yourself. That being said, whenever Jesse asked me for help, I yell at him.

That's more of a discipline thing. If you don't know how to do this, then maybe you don't belong here. That's what I say. Take your $250,000 a month out of here. Buy a pull-up bar. What do you do with that $250,000 a month? I know you're not putting it into your truck.

I know that's not where you're investing it. Go get our pull-up bar installed. What the hell's going on here? *sniffs* *outro music*