The Perils of Asking for Advice and a Strategic Approach to Seeking Help

Dr. Orion Taraban, host of Psych Hacks, discusses the pitfalls of directly asking for advice, drawing from a personal experience where seeking counsel from ten different mentors resulted in ten mutually exclusive recommendations. This situation not only created confusion but also risked damaging relationships with those whose advice was inevitably not followed. The core argument is that the conventional approach to seeking advice can be counterproductive, leading to obligation, conflict, and a loss of personal agency.

The episode distinguishes between a direct request for "what should I do?" and a more nuanced inquiry: "what would you do if you were in my situation?" The latter is presented as superior because it elicits a response rooted in the advisor's self-interest, which often differs from what they might prescribe for others. This distinction highlights the difference between prescriptive advice and a more authentic, experience-based perspective, as exemplified by the "dirty secret" of oncologists often choosing not to undergo chemotherapy themselves.

Practical advice includes being highly selective about who to ask for advice, limiting it to individuals who have already achieved what the seeker desires or possess the specific knowledge needed. Crucially, the podcast advocates for reframing the question from a direct command ("what should I do?") to a hypothetical inquiry ("what would you do?"). This reframing provides the seeker with greater psychological space to consider the input as a suggestion rather than a binding directive, thus preserving their autonomy and mitigating the risk of perceived disobedience.

The broader implications extend to maintaining healthy mentor-mentee relationships and fostering personal decision-making. By adopting a more strategic approach to seeking input, individuals can gather diverse perspectives without feeling obligated to follow every piece of counsel, thereby protecting their relationships and empowering themselves to make choices aligned with their own self-interest and values. This method encourages critical thinking and self-reliance even when soliciting external wisdom.

I ended up asking the advice of a lot of people maybe 10 people in total and this was a problem because lo and behold when I asked 10 people for advice I received 10 different responses.

I got myself into a situation where I could not fail to disobey some of the advice that I was given because I just asked so many folks for help.

You should only ask advice from people who already have what you want or who already know how to do what you want to be able to do.

You should limit the amount of people from whom you ask advice to avoid the situation that I found myself in.

You should avoid the question what should I do entirely.

A much better question to ask these folks is what would you do if you were in my situation.

Oftentimes what people would do in their own self-interest doesn't exactly align with how they believe other people should behave.

A dirty secret of the medical profession is that most oncologists would not undergo chemotherapy if they had cancer themselves.

By asking what would you do if you were in my situation you're not bound as rigidly to follow the advice as you might have been if you had asked what should I do.

The response here won't be an explicit direction to you personally so it gives you some space to accept it or not as a suggestion.