<story><title>Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)</title><url>https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/03/repost-epistemic-learned-helplessness/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>spencerchubb</author><text>As a junior dev, sometimes I&amp;#x27;ve been blocked for hours because I want to show that I can solve problems independently. But I&amp;#x27;ve definitely had cases where I should&amp;#x27;ve asked questions early. A question that takes 1 minute to answer could have saved hours.&lt;p&gt;For instance, I was stuck on figuring out how to send an email through AWS. Turns out we have a lambda function that handles all the authentication and security things that are specific to our company. Once I asked my coworker and found out about this function, it was trivial.</text></item><item><author>philip1209</author><text>This article talks about learned helplessness in a learning context. I talked about it in a work context, and the two could be linked. I think social media is training people for everything to be quick, but learning + work aren&amp;#x27;t necessarily quick.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; This insistence on constant availability disrupts the essence of focused work. Rather than encouraging employees to tackle complex problems independently, there’s a trend, especially among junior staff, to quickly seek help upon encountering any obstacle. The fear is that being “blocked” under-utilizes an expensive team member. However, the nature of knowledge work is solving ambiguous, complicated problems - so the expectation of constant availability can lead to a culture of learned helplessness, which shunts professional development.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.contraption.co&amp;#x2F;essays&amp;#x2F;digital-quiet&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.contraption.co&amp;#x2F;essays&amp;#x2F;digital-quiet&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ZephyrBlu</author><text>The distinction between trying to solve a problem yourself vs ask for help is: are you figuring out a new problem, or figuring out the system?&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re trying to figure out the system, you should probably ask for help ASAP and build up some knowledge. Over time you&amp;#x27;ll need to ask questions about the system less frequently.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re trying to figure out a new problem related to your work, slogging away at it for a while is more ok because it&amp;#x27;s value-add and a good learning experience.&lt;p&gt;The lines are a bit blurry, but that&amp;#x27;s how I tend to think about this.</text></comment>
<story><title>Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)</title><url>https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/03/repost-epistemic-learned-helplessness/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>spencerchubb</author><text>As a junior dev, sometimes I&amp;#x27;ve been blocked for hours because I want to show that I can solve problems independently. But I&amp;#x27;ve definitely had cases where I should&amp;#x27;ve asked questions early. A question that takes 1 minute to answer could have saved hours.&lt;p&gt;For instance, I was stuck on figuring out how to send an email through AWS. Turns out we have a lambda function that handles all the authentication and security things that are specific to our company. Once I asked my coworker and found out about this function, it was trivial.</text></item><item><author>philip1209</author><text>This article talks about learned helplessness in a learning context. I talked about it in a work context, and the two could be linked. I think social media is training people for everything to be quick, but learning + work aren&amp;#x27;t necessarily quick.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; This insistence on constant availability disrupts the essence of focused work. Rather than encouraging employees to tackle complex problems independently, there’s a trend, especially among junior staff, to quickly seek help upon encountering any obstacle. The fear is that being “blocked” under-utilizes an expensive team member. However, the nature of knowledge work is solving ambiguous, complicated problems - so the expectation of constant availability can lead to a culture of learned helplessness, which shunts professional development.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.contraption.co&amp;#x2F;essays&amp;#x2F;digital-quiet&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.contraption.co&amp;#x2F;essays&amp;#x2F;digital-quiet&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eminence32</author><text>As you get more and more experience, I think this will become easier.  You&amp;#x27;ll eventually get a feel for what types of questions you should just work through yourself, and which types of questions you should ask someone else about, and the threshold for moving between the two (you&amp;#x27;ll develop a sense of &amp;quot;let me investigate theory A, B, and C, and if I still can&amp;#x27;t figure it out, I&amp;#x27;ll ask for help&amp;quot;).&lt;p&gt;Some of this will probably be via an increased understanding of the types of problems you can and can&amp;#x27;t solve.   And some of this will probably be because you&amp;#x27;ll eventually know more people who can help (something like &amp;quot;oh yeah, I know Sam worked on a similar problem last month, let me see if they found a solution&amp;quot;)</text></comment>