| I disagree. In my career I started getting close to the people that had already done what I wanted and just asked them for advice. The advice they gave me was incredible and the most useful thing you could do. The most important thing is that it must be an active process. You must do the work to decode and extract the information. Different personalities will give you different advices. If someone has a very strong visceral nature, her advice is going to be "don't be too visceral, think before you act", because that is the advice she needs, but not what you need. That advice is completely useless if your nature is thinking too much, and you don't have a problem thinking, you love to think all the time. The advice you need is acting instead of thinking, to take decisions. So you need to be active and ask specifically the problems you are having when trying to do what you wanted. Most of the time you will realize the super big problems that you have are the most stupid and obvious thing for the person you are asking. It is so easy for them because their own nature or personality makes it so for them. 9 times out of 10 they will give you an easy, "obvious" solution you never thought about. |
If it's face to face, after I ask for advice, I always follow up with "Why?"