This post describes the state of underconfidence, which is to assign a lower probability to events than what actually happens. The event is here “being right” or “being competent enough to do X”. Yes, if people think they’re wrong in situations where they are right, they will waste time seeking advice and/or help. Here, self-confidence is a good thing because it brings them closer to correctly evaluating themselves.
Conversely, if they are overconfident they will waste time by making errors and taking more responsibility than they should. There, self-confidence is a bad thing because they are too sure of themselves.
If you are placed in an uncertain situation and you want to ensure success, asking for help is a trade-off between the cost of asking and the expected gain from the information. Say you ask a “stupid question”. If its answer helps you figure out stuff outside your area of expertise, it is worth it, and not stupid.
If you are shamed for asking stuff, for wanting to learn, when you are outside your expertise, you are not the problem, unless you asked the wrong person, and there were ways to learn at lower cost.
Learning has a cost. Asking has a cost. You can skip it, rely only on your present knowledge to act now and take a risk, so that it saves resources.
Conversely, you could write a post titled “Asking for help as a time-saving tactic”… for the symmetric situations.
I might actually write such a post, but I see it as being more...parallel to this concept? Aimed in the same direction at least.
And the reason I wrote this is because it’s my gut instinct that people starting out in a new field or job are more likely to suffer from underconfidence than overconfidence, which steals their time and resources.
Reading these comments, it seems obvious to me now that I should have framed it more in terms of who it was primarily addressed to; aside from the fact that this is advice I wish I’d heard some years in the past.
This post describes the state of underconfidence, which is to assign a lower probability to events than what actually happens. The event is here “being right” or “being competent enough to do X”. Yes, if people think they’re wrong in situations where they are right, they will waste time seeking advice and/or help. Here, self-confidence is a good thing because it brings them closer to correctly evaluating themselves.
Conversely, if they are overconfident they will waste time by making errors and taking more responsibility than they should. There, self-confidence is a bad thing because they are too sure of themselves.
If you are placed in an uncertain situation and you want to ensure success, asking for help is a trade-off between the cost of asking and the expected gain from the information. Say you ask a “stupid question”. If its answer helps you figure out stuff outside your area of expertise, it is worth it, and not stupid.
If you are shamed for asking stuff, for wanting to learn, when you are outside your expertise, you are not the problem, unless you asked the wrong person, and there were ways to learn at lower cost.
Learning has a cost. Asking has a cost. You can skip it, rely only on your present knowledge to act now and take a risk, so that it saves resources.
Conversely, you could write a post titled “Asking for help as a time-saving tactic”… for the symmetric situations.
I might actually write such a post, but I see it as being more...parallel to this concept? Aimed in the same direction at least.
And the reason I wrote this is because it’s my gut instinct that people starting out in a new field or job are more likely to suffer from underconfidence than overconfidence, which steals their time and resources.
Reading these comments, it seems obvious to me now that I should have framed it more in terms of who it was primarily addressed to; aside from the fact that this is advice I wish I’d heard some years in the past.