Wow! This thought thread is a what's what on the list of horrifying and inauthen...

usmeteora · on May 26, 2017

I think this more like prioritizing minimum to desired requirements for your own self versus others.

For example, my boyfriend and I are both engineers but hes working at a place short term over the summer with a 3 hour time difference. I work 10am-4pm, he works 9am - 7pm but with a three hour time difference.

Staying up an extra hour to talk to him very night after hes done with work means going from 6.5 hours to 5.5 horus of sleep, which means I don't get up and workout, eat a good breakfast and go to work feeling refreshed.

Luckily im dating an icredible person and he understands this, and that the unideal arrangement is short term, so we found a comporimise and work around, but I did have to say no I can't vid chat tonight I'm going to bed.

Doing a favour is easy, giving up something of yours, of which time by the way is very expensive for busy people, at the expense of your own personal time (which people think is not a requirement but I know for a fact now it is, and even some of the busiest CEOs etc take a no compromise personal time out each day or each week reagrdless of how many emergency events are knocking at thier door. They do this because they know in the long run they suffer, and their company and employees suffer from bad decision making)

so anyways, at the expense of your own personal time, health, mental health other relationships or budget.

people who also have healthy priorities will know this and understand. For example, I'm dating someone who actually cares about me and WANTS me to be happy, well rested healthy and do well in my career. So its not hard for us to find compromises around times we would normally like to talk for a few months so I can still maintain my morning routine which sets the tone by my mental and body health for each day and in general my life, without being sickly sleep deprived, and he can still enjoy the work culture with his team who rolls in late and works late and enjoyed working late as a team. I want him to enjoy this experience and benefit from it and grab beers a couple times a week after work with his work buds. I want him to do well, so its easy for us to do favours for eachother because our personal lives and therefore our happiness together benefits from this. Neither of us would be happy together if we felt we were compromising our ability to be our best, especially at this juncture in our lives, young 20s making or breaking reaching our goals.

I've been in relationships with men who couldnt care less about my long term goals and would keep me up late, obligate me to do their chores and guilt trip me for not being arm candy at every fancy event they went to if it took away from my personal projects, working out, or me time, or guilt tripping me for staying late at work, not encouraging me to go get that new job because things are convenient if I'm unsuccessful and will be miserable enough to drop out of my career and have their kids one day.

You want to try to mostly limit expensive (in terms of time or sacrificing life goals or day to day health which can add up quickly whether its lack of sleep, personal you time, workout time, healthy food or skipping your mid day 10minute meditation or walk on your lunch break) to people who ask favours not too often, and you know there is a mutual benefit.

I don't mean that in selfish terms. I mean if someone continually doesn't do their job well and the favour is you continually give up your lunch break, which you barely take and cut down to a 15min walk in the sun to go over notes or fix another last minute repeated mistake from someone who feels entitled to your time or won't learn how to fish, and wants you to fish for them, then you should say no.

Another example, people have asked me "hey can you make an app for me, or go come meet me for a drink and listen to by business idea and give me your advice, feedback, business advice, network connections based on what I tell you."

Alot of times this person has not done their own due diligence, or knows I'm usually willing to help out and just wants my tech knowledge and connections. That's fine, but I find people who don't reach out with specific questions during a sepcific stage of development and won't send you an email about it, simply want you to meet up for a beer and let the fact you are in a conversation for an hour be free mentoring advice and social networking for them.

In regards to people asking about apps or websites and asking me to help them because they know im in tech but arent at all. I get how it could be confusing to get started or get help on an app if you run a non tech company, but the questions are so basic I now resort to basically asking them to google it.

Literally google it. If you have done all the work and have a question that you feel my specific experience/expertise could help you make a pivot point decision on a very developed situation where you have done your due diligence, and you want me to be a bouncing board, then go for it.

but I often find people like this are throwing a half assed or 20% thought 5% put in effort to idea/project, and they spend their time try to sell me on how I should be just as excited about it as they are, for the explicit purpose of me feeling its worth my time to jump in and offer more time and effort and help to advocate for their project, and always of course a good friend wanting to help people out, never a formal contract or consulting time.

Another example, I have a friend who owns a non tech company or not in the space of software, and they mentioned having a terrible time finding a good marketing firm to consult with and that at the end of the day they really just needed google analytics.

Through a very technical personal project, I was also using google analytics for something, and being that this group is run by a good friend of mine who genuinely is having a wreck of a time finding high quality marketing, I offered specifically to help out with their google analytics. Not anything else like graphic design, advertising, social media campaigns, just said yeh if you are so busy you don't even have 5 hours to go through google analytics analysis, and set up the filters you want and identify and prioritize some outliers who could be customers of worth, then I can atleast look at whats hit it already, put some security filters on it and give you a run down of what you have so far, and set up a few more things.

I figured 20 hours of work total over a month, and actually its very beneficial for me to get access to working with google analytics from a growing company perspective versus a personal website/project of mine for future.

All fine until I go to meet with their Director and find they have no financial, specific customer, demographic goals at all, much less for 1 month 3 month etc. So outside of setting up basic security, its very hard to utilize analytics if you don't know what youre analyzing or what your goals are, or the genre or even priority of customers since the potential customers span multiple industries all over the world.

if I offer to do analytics, I need to know what I'm analyzing. If google analytics is specifically analyzing people exposed to your company, then I need to know what youre interests are as far as people, targeted or widespread marketing, specific consumer groups, specific industries, specific locations, maybe atleast a profit or unit sales goal so then we could utilzie the hits to see who is most likely to provide that? Nothing...

So alot of people are willing to take free help, but alot of people don't know how to utilize that help to do something valuable or use it to teach themselves how to do it themselves or go find the long term help needed.

Alot of times what people are really asking just like when I've been asked to write emails is:

"Please review everything that exists currently, can be done and needs to be done, identify potential solutions, prioritize amongst existing priorities, document communicate, find the right people to do it, and of course since already noone else besides you is willing to do even this, if you want to prove your motivated, youll actually implement the solution yourself"

Thats what alot of times "favours" end up being when people say "hey, I want to go over this idea and get feedback from you" ....

balabaster · on May 26, 2017

I totally appreciate the effort you went to to write this.

You're quite right in that your time is valuable and a lot of people encroach on this time without any respect for just how valuable it is - it's the only resource we cannot renew, at least so far. So your taking the time and effort to write this instead of whatever else it is you could've been doing to further your success is evidence of how important this topic is to you as well. So thank you.

You are from the sound of things in a wonderful and respectful relationship that values your time and needs. This is worth keeping hold of; but many people have absolutely no respect for each others needs in this sense and so walk all over it with the expectation that their partner should be more selfless so they can be more selfish instead of both being selfless towards one anothers needs. Any affront to this perception is considered selfishness on your part.

"Oh you need time to yourself, I will make room and take on responsibility so that you can have that." returned by the favour of "Oh, you need some time to do X, Y or Z activity so you can be fulfilled, you know what, let me take A, B and C off your plate so that you can do that."

This is the difference between a selfless relationship and a one sided relationship where one partner is "You know what, I need this in order to feel fulfilled, so I need you to do X, Y and Z for me so that I can get that fulfilment." "What do you mean you don't have the capacity to do that? You think your time at the pub with your friends is more important than my mental wellbeing?" "Well, you want me to stop doing something that's good for my own mental wellbeing in order for you to satisfy yours."

From the sound of things, you've been on the receiving end of this too, so you understand both sides of this coin.

A balance definitely needs to be struck between the giving of yourself freely to those that are important to you and the expectation of payment in kind. Relationships are a two way street.

With regards to people who approach you for technical assistance in their projects - I've been burned a number of times: Kids with no due dilligence done expecting me to give my all for their success, right up to a sociopath who had done all her due dilligence and had used every developer she could get to do her bidding as stepping stones to her success while taking advantage, not paying them, setting lawyers on them to hand over code she'd not paid for and the whole 9 yards who approached me with a solid prototype, a solid business plan and an NDA that protected her and "a contract that's coming" but was never delivered who convinced me to work on good faith. She was a nasty piece of work. So I understand being taken advantage of and I'm wary of it having been stung for tens of thousands of dollars in payments I will never receive. Thankfully a solid understanding of the DMCA, Copyright Law and lucky timing saved me from her ever being able to publish my work, but that's another story for another time.

My point is: If your friends and business partners are taking advantage without any respect for your needs, they're not your friends. If any contract is too one sided without any consideration for your needs and there is resistance to your needs being met, they don't care about you, only themselves.

If your friendships aren't instrumental in your success and your success is where your personal fulfillment lies, then your friendships should be evaluated in such a way that they bring you that success, not stand in its way... and that's a two way street. You cannot expect your friends to be instrumental in your success without your willingness to be instrumental in theirs. You stand by them as you expect them to stand by you. If one or the other of you is not meeting this basic tenet of friendship, then you need to reevaluate that friendship.