DEV Community

Discussion on: When should you ask for help?

Collapse
 
sebbdk profile image
Sebastian Vargr

My rule of thumb is to ask for help if i am out of solution-leads, or what i am working on has high priority and i do not have time to pursue all the leads i have.

Leads include, google, docs etc, like the article mentions, but also code debugging, library source-code exploration, testing, and other shenanigans.

Do these things, if you have the time.
You will come out a slightly better problem solver each time, i promise.


I find 90% of the time, i already know the solution.
I just gotta poke the old relation engine a bit to bring it about.

A couple of tools i use to do this are, list all probably solutions down, and if that fails, use a colleague as a canvas and list up your possible solutions to them, without their feedback (speaking aloud to your-self also works, but i usually only do this at home).

This is usually enough to get the creative juices flowing.

Collapse
 
sebbdk profile image
Sebastian Vargr • Edited

Also, as rule of thumb, i never try out solutions before i have listed up the possible solution's first.

I might end up pursuing a detour, or sub-par solution, otherwise.

Unless ofc. i am limited by time.

Collapse
 
kayla profile image
Kayla Sween

Those are good suggestions. Thanks for sharing! I like to try out solutions as I go, but I know that doesn’t work for everyone. Sometimes I will look at a few places and try to summarize (for lack of a better term) my findings into another solution.