When I was a kid, removing my niggling and nagging choices, distractions, and petty inabilites sounded grand. It kinda backfired at first because I started over-planning the details of my daily activities, like ya do. And anything I actually took an interest in, to quell my confusion and streamline my time, drew people towards me for my arcane skills.
Is there any honor in hiding your abilities (when it’s not your job) so people don’t ask for help with simple stuff?
I was… uh… the family IT guy. My dad still needs the computer’s power button pointed out to him.
Place a notebook next to the computer. When you tell someone how to do something, tell them to write it down, every step, in the notebook. Tell them to write it down so that they will be able to understand it later. Next time they ask you the same question, refer them to the notebook. If this fails to help, consider insisting on some minor cost (such as ‘buy me a chocolate’ - nothing expensive, more an irritant than anything else, merely a cost for the sake of having a cost) for reiterating anything that has been written in the notebook.
It may or may not help, but if it doesn’t help, then at least you’ll get a certain amount of chocolate out of it.
I used to do step-by-step instructions and those XKCD diagrams (all of which were promptly torn down for being “dern confusicating”, but I’ll try all that. Thanks.
When I was a kid, removing my niggling and nagging choices, distractions, and petty inabilites sounded grand. It kinda backfired at first because I started over-planning the details of my daily activities, like ya do. And anything I actually took an interest in, to quell my confusion and streamline my time, drew people towards me for my arcane skills.
Is there any honor in hiding your abilities (when it’s not your job) so people don’t ask for help with simple stuff?
I was… uh… the family IT guy. My dad still needs the computer’s power button pointed out to him.
Place a notebook next to the computer. When you tell someone how to do something, tell them to write it down, every step, in the notebook. Tell them to write it down so that they will be able to understand it later. Next time they ask you the same question, refer them to the notebook. If this fails to help, consider insisting on some minor cost (such as ‘buy me a chocolate’ - nothing expensive, more an irritant than anything else, merely a cost for the sake of having a cost) for reiterating anything that has been written in the notebook.
It may or may not help, but if it doesn’t help, then at least you’ll get a certain amount of chocolate out of it.
I used to do step-by-step instructions and those XKCD diagrams (all of which were promptly torn down for being “dern confusicating”, but I’ll try all that. Thanks.