Asking for Help via Email

We all need help every now and again, that’s just a fact of life. In our younger years it can be so simple as help tying our shoelaces, in our elder years it can be help taking care of things around the house, and somewhere in between there will be no shortage of occasions when we’ll find ourselves in want or in need of assistance for just about everything else. Help is not always easy to come by, however, and asking for help can be difficult for even the most humble among us. When it comes to careers and the modern world, however, a particularly difficult approach for many is asking for help via email.

Leo Widrich, blogger and co-founder of the popular social media tool Buffer, once related his own experiences in a blog post. Widrich’s emails would be long winded and often filled with unnecessary details, often of his own life story, concluding with a vague “What are your thoughts?” The requests would often yield little in terms of results, with many simply not having the time to read the meandering requests. It wasn’t until he received a reply from Noah Kagan, the founder of Appsumo, that Widrich discovered a better way to approach his requests.

The reply simply read: ":) Can you send 1 short specific question?" Tucked within this one simple sentence was a world of wisdom. Widrich began crafting a new way to word his emails, keeping them to 3 or 4 short sentences with one very specific question. Not only did Widrich get more replies, he also found that in defining his questions he would often find the solution himself. As Dorothea Brande states: "A problem clearly stated is a problem half solved." An approach to consider next time you find yourself asking for help.

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