Ask me something 'stupid'
I was scrolling through Twitter the other day and I saw a tweet by Adam Wathan which made me stop and read the whole thread:
“Learning is more important than your ego. I ask for help about dumb shit on Twitter all the time, no one thinks I’m stupid and I have grown 100x as a result. I literally started a podcast just to get people to explain things to me that I didn’t fully understand”
- Adam Wathan
The tweet is actually a couple of years old but the message contained within it could have been written two hundred years ago and it would still be just as valid and valuable.
You can only gain from admitting that you don’t understand something and seeking help to fill that knowledge gap. There is nothing to gain from pretending to understand something that you don’t. In fact, you’ve just lost a learning opportunity instead.
I get asked a few questions in my courses but I’m sure that my students have questions that they wanted to ask but didn’t. I’ve never once thought I’m being asked a stupid question but there have been many times where I’ve stopped and thought ‘Wow, what a really good question!’ And there have been questions that have made me think that this person is way smarter than I am.
The only stupid questions are the ones that don’t get asked.
Who would you consider to be the smartest? Someone who doesn’t ask questions in order to appear like they know more than they actually do or someone who asks thoughtful and genuinely interested questions in order to know more than they actually do?
Of course, it can be more complicated than this because you have to take personality into account. Shyness is one of the obvious reasons why people don’t ask questions and, without wanting to stereotype, shyness is quite a common trait among developers. I include myself in that group.
Fear of being judged by others is another common reason. Some people don’t want to ask questions in a public forum for this reason. This is why I often tell my subscribers that they can reach out to me in private, by email, any time. And they often do.
Everyone has their own reasons for not asking the questions that they want / need to but if you want to grow, it’s an obstacle that you’ve got to overcome. If you consciously force yourself to start querying things that you don’t understand, it will start to become easier and more natural and eventually it will become a habit.
And it’s good habits, more than anything else, that pay dividends over the long run.
Now feel free to ask me something ‘stupid’.
Cheers
Gary
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