Modern Day Superpowers: Asking for Help

Powerful and actionable tricks to 10x your career

Perception versus Reality (4-years old)

Did you know that children as young as 4-years old start to care about their own reputation? Researchers from the SRCD (Society for Research in Child Development) surfaces this fact. They interviewed a group of children aged 3-9 and discovered that children at 6-years old developed the cognition to infer that those who care about “appearing” intelligent (“reputationally motivated”) less likely seek help than those who want to “be” intelligent (“intrinsically motivated”). This higher order thinking leads the researchers and I to believe that children actually connect help-seeking as a sign of incompetence.

This holds true for a lot of us today. Caring so much about what other people think that we essentially become frozen, a slave to other’s expectations and fleeting emotions.

To read the full research paper, check out this link

Asking for help has single-handedly empowered me to accomplish what I thought was impossible. Like starting a mental health nonprofit!

Perception versus Reality (18-years old)

I recall this interesting discovery manifest into my own college life. A friend of mine told me that our classmates were talking about me. One said “She is nice, but she raises her hand too much and asks stupid questions” Ouch!

At 18, I definitely took that personally. Admittedly, I did not ask any questions the next day in class and subsequently felt more stressed for the next quiz.

22 year old me would tell my 18-year old self to never stop questioning and being curious, even if those questions feel dumb.

If I truly let that get to me, I wouldn’t have accomplished everything I have today. I wouldn’t have gotten the grades, the friendship, nor the job opportunities.

So, if you’re afraid of asking for a call with that dream role model, you might want to reconsider what your future self might say if you decided not to knock on that door. :)

Training Time

Like any superhero, they have an origin story. They have flaws, but innate powers that grant them opportunities to win the day. The best career advice I could give someone is to put yourself out there as much as possible to the point of feeling a little uncomfortable. How you might ask? You might argue I have a lot of credentials and experience so it’s easy for me. Truthfully, Rome was not built in a day. You just gotta start because no one else will do it for you. Here are my top tips to get started with

1. Identify 10 people you find inspiring and reach out to learn more. Ask them questions like, “what do you enjoy about your job? what are some challenges you face? how do you recharge?” etc.

2. Join as many communities in your industry as you can on Slack, Discord, Geneva, etc. and network there by texting 1-2 times a day

3. Find a problem in your dream company, solve it, and execute. Then show the case to an employee there on LinkedIn or warm intro (your mom’s friend). This works better than asking for a referral and might work on some senior leaders too (I’ve done it before). For example, let’s say your favorite app has issues with the onboarding flow. Write a 2-pager product tear down and a potential solution to their onboarding that could improve some business goal like retention.

Sample script:

“Hello, my name is Abby. I’m a Computer Science student. I’m super inspired by your work with X and am curious to learn more about your day to day. Do you have time to connect over Zoom to chat and share insights? I understand you must be busy, so no worries if not.”

Your Challenge

This advice has enabled me to propel my career to heights I have never imagined for myself and I’m just getting started. I challenge you to reach out to that person you feel like would reject you for a call. They could be a school alumni, professor whose research sounds interesting, classmate with a budding startup, content creator, etc.

Let me know how it works out for you. I hope you have many doors open for you ✨

Resources

1. Deb Liu, CEO of Ancestry.com’s perspective on a thriving career: https://www.femaledisruptors.com/post/secrets-to-getting-what-you-want

2. Confidence tips also by Deb Liu:

   Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

3. Cold-messaging templates: https://www.zendesk.com/blog/cold-email-templates/

4. Schedule mentorship session with me: https://topmate.io/abigayleryuwei

5. Job board I have used:

   https://startup.jobs