Set a time budget for your tasks and don’t be afraid to ask for help

DanielJuly 16, 2021July 17, 2021

You may know that I am a long-time follower of Swyx. I think the first encounter with him was via the How to better market yourself as a React developer talk.

Recently he wrote something that I so much agree with: Set Explicit Help Timeouts.

Very often, trying not to look weak or just to protect our ego we don't ask for help when we are stuck. And we waste so much precious time and energy, trying to complete a task that we don't know how to solve or don't have enough data about.

And the fun part is that people are taking pleasure from helping fellow kind. Ask yourself when were you unhappy because you helped someone?

Even more, asking for help is one of the ways you build relationships with your colleagues and better integrate into a new team.

And guess what!? Asking for help will only result in encouraging your colleagues to ask back for help from you when they needed. So more interactions, better communication, and a stronger team.

Of course, I am not saying we should not try to solve a problem by ourselves. Solving problems and trying stuff is the main way to learn. But asking for help and more information is maybe as effective.

Set a time limit for what you do. In my case is about one day. If I get stuck on something, I am giving it a second shot the next day. But if at the end of this second day I am still blocked I will reach for help. It's something that took me a lot of time to learn (and still forget to do sometimes). Just that it’s one of those things that makes a difference in the long run. So, go team!