The quality of your query isn’t entirely unimportant—you can lose a chance with poor quality—but the person asked will usually have lots of other reasons that play into their decision, and most of them you’ll never know. In the absence of this information, what you have is an opinion on the quality of your request, so naturally that’s what you focus on to optimize; but that doesn’t mean this is the decisive variable in the average case.
Assuming I get this rejection thing done and I’m not fearful or rejections, how does that one-up my chances?
It makes it easier to actually try. As long as you still feel “now’s not the time”, worrying about the quality of what you’d say if you actually did is not an efficient use of your attention.
You’re right, the rejection game is about quantity not quality, and that’s because people have found quantity makes more of a difference.
The quality of your query isn’t entirely unimportant—you can lose a chance with poor quality—but the person asked will usually have lots of other reasons that play into their decision, and most of them you’ll never know. In the absence of this information, what you have is an opinion on the quality of your request, so naturally that’s what you focus on to optimize; but that doesn’t mean this is the decisive variable in the average case.
It makes it easier to actually try. As long as you still feel “now’s not the time”, worrying about the quality of what you’d say if you actually did is not an efficient use of your attention.
You’re right, the rejection game is about quantity not quality, and that’s because people have found quantity makes more of a difference.
You’re saying that I’m dwelling too much on avoiding rejection even though I’m thinking I’m optimizing my chances, right?
Oh fucking hell. Maybe I did miss a few chances now that I think about it.