Yes, help is on the way*

Wait, don’t forget to read the fine print. It says “terms and conditions” apply.

Who does not want more help with what they are setting out to do?

Almost everyone.

Even the most powerful person on earth (if there is anyone like that) also needs help in one area or the other. But, wanting help and deserving help are TOTALLY different things. In the long run, you will only get what you deserve irrespective of what you wish. Like any rule in life, exceptions exist even for this rule.

Good help is scarce and mediocre help hurts more than it helps.

So, here is the practical problem. Good help is scarce because the people who can provide good help are busy with their own projects. Executing their own projects very well is what got them the knowledge and experience to be able to provide good help. The moment you can take them away from their own projects, they are walking the extra mile and they can only walk so many extra miles.

Since good help is scarce, the number of help requests that these people get is disproportionately higher than average.

So, what do they do?

Here is something that they might resort to after they rank and stack these requests (in no particular order)

1. They eliminate meaningless requests

2. They eliminate requests that were made because the requester was lazy

3. They eliminate requests that don’t deserve to be fulfilled

4. They eliminate requests that are not meaningful to them

They look at the remaining requests and choose the ones that will provide the highest ROI for their investment of time.

In other words, the odds of getting your request fulfilled with someone who can provide good help is pretty slim. But, the odds change significantly depending on “who you are” to them. If you are someone special to them, the terms and conditions section suddenly disappears. The objective decision making walks out of the door replaced by subjective decision making in your favor.

Well, you don’t become someone special to anyone overnight. So, this means you have to be on a lifelong journey of making life meaningful for many people and when the time comes, a small sub-set of them will return the favor.

You can increase the odds even more by being thoughtful and designing your projects in a certain way. If you do it right, your requests of help will create situations that when they fulfill the request, their lives become more meaningful. This is not easy and requires a lot of thinking while you design your project and while you design your requests for help.

Help is really on the way if you do your own homework before you need that help.

Photo Credit: loop_oh on Flickr