How to ask for help from people who don't know you如何向不认识你的人寻求帮助
No matter what you’re doing, from building a civilization on Mars to getting a summer internship, you will have to ask people for help. Yet, most people get this crucial skill wrong. They put themselves at the front of their request, when they should be putting the other person there. But isn’t getting help just charisma and luck? No, asking for help is a skill, not an attribute you are assigned at birth like green eyes.无论你在做什么，无论是想在火星上建立一个文明，还是想获得一份暑期实习，你都必须向他人寻求帮助。然而，大多数人在这项关键技能上都做错了。他们把自己的需求放在请求的前面，而应该把对方放在前面。但获得帮助难道不只是靠魅力和运气吗？不，寻求帮助是一项技能，而不是你出生时就被赋予的特质，就像绿色的眼睛一样。
How do you ask for help from people? There is only one principle. Put yourself in their mind. All good communication is grounded in an understanding of the reader’s mind. And so, I have some heuristics I would recommend when you ask for help from people you don’t know.你如何向他人寻求帮助？只有一个原则。站在对方的角度思考。所有良好的沟通都建立在对读者思维的理解之上。因此，我有一些建议，当你向不认识的人寻求帮助时，可以遵循这些建议。
One heuristic to remember is that help is about people before it is about projects. When you ask for help from someone, their helping your project is predicated on them wanting to help you. So, you should make it clear that you are someone worth helping. One of the strongest ways to show that you’re worth helping is to demonstrate that you are a serious person. You might claim that you want to enter machine learning or learn to lift weights. Lots of people say that though, and the way you show that you’re serious is by showing proof of work. A trained model, a blog post that shows depth and thought and a vlog of your training are all ways to show that you are serious.另一种方式是建立个人联系：你可以说“史蒂夫建议我联系您”，这会在对方心中为你建立一个更温暖的形象。但要小心，因为你是在借用别人的信誉。如果这个人不喜欢史蒂夫，那么这可能会损害你的信誉。或者，如果你不像史蒂夫说的那样优秀，他的信誉就会受损。
Another way is personal connection: you could say “Steve suggested I reach out” which situates you more warmly in their mind. But be careful here, because you’re borrowing against someone else’s credibility. If this person doesn’t like Steve, then this might hurt your credibility. Or, if you aren’t as good as Steve says, his credibility is hurt.另一种方式是建立个人联系：你可以说“史蒂夫建议我联系您”，这样能让对方在脑海中更温暖地接纳你。但要注意，因为你是在借用别人的信誉。如果对方不喜欢史蒂夫，这可能会损害你的信誉。或者，如果你不像史蒂夫说的那样优秀，他的信誉就会受损。
And finally, we get to institutional credibility. You could mention that you’re a student at some famous university, or work at a large corporation. This is the weakest because at best it proves you cleared a filter once, and nothing more. It also doesn’t situate you to them specifically and can feel like you’re signalling status. So use it sparingly and avoid making it your only source of credibility.最后，我们谈谈机构信誉。你可以提到你是某所名牌大学的学生，或者在一家大公司工作。这是最弱的一种方式，因为最多只能证明你曾经通过一次筛选，仅此而已。它也不能让你与对方产生特定的联系，并且可能让人觉得你在炫耀身份。所以要谨慎使用，避免将其作为你唯一的信誉来源。
Once you have situated yourself (or not), the next step is to explain context. Before you ask them for help, you have to answer the question: what is going on here? If you have done the previous step well, you have borrowed their attention and you must spend it judiciously. Here, your description must be so short as to be unsummarizable. You are spending lent attention which is the most precious currency. To do this, think of what makes your context connect to things that they would already know. Do not explain to your elected representative the factionalism of your university club, but do explain how the club connects to their legislative priorities. Or when asking a scientist for an internship, don’t talk about how you’ve loved science since you were a child, but do talk about how you’ve implemented and extended their paper from 2023.一旦你确立了自己的身份（或者没有），下一步就是解释背景。在你向他们寻求帮助之前，你必须回答这个问题：这里发生了什么？如果你在前一步做得很好，你已经获得了他们的注意力，并且必须明智地使用它。在这里，你的描述必须简短到无法再被概括。你正在花费的是借来的注意力，这是最宝贵的货币。要做到这一点，想想你的背景如何与他们已经知道的事情联系起来。不要向你的民选代表解释你大学社团的派系斗争，而是要解释这个社团如何与他们的立法重点相关联。或者，在向一位科学家寻求实习机会时，不要谈论你从小就热爱科学，而是要谈论你如何实现了并扩展了他们2023年的论文。
The next heuristic is to make your request easy to accept. Making something easy to accept largely is about reducing the cost of acceptance. One clear kind of cost is the magnitude. Do ask someone for twenty minutes of their time, but don’t ask them to read your five-hundred-page manuscript in a week. Another is to make it specific: asking for a resource to start with is better than “can I pick your brain?”. When you’ve made your request, make it low friction for them. If you’re asking for an introduction, write a blurb about yourself which they can forward. If you have a question, ask it in writing rather than over a call. And last on cost, make your ask bounded. Don’t ask for recurring obligations like being your mentor for your whole life, but do keep it limited to asking them to read a blog post. If that instance goes well, they’ll gladly read more.下一个建议是让你的请求易于接受。让某事易于接受，很大程度上在于降低接受的成本。一种明显的成本是数量。可以请求别人给你二十分钟的时间，但不要让他们在一周内读完你五百页的手稿。另一个是具体化：请求一个资源比“我能和你聊聊吗？”要好。当你提出请求后，要让他们更容易操作。如果你请求介绍，请写一段关于你自己的简介供他们转发。如果你有问题，请通过书面形式提出，而不是通过电话。最后关于成本，要让你的请求有明确的界限。不要请求长期的义务，比如让你终身担任导师，而是要限制在请求他们阅读一篇博文。如果这次做得好，他们会很乐意阅读更多。
My last heuristic is stranger: make it easy to say no. You might think that the worst outcome is a no, but the worst outcome is a pressured, begrudging yes. If you get a no, a good response is for you to thank them for their time and move on. Making your message carry emotional guilt or pestering them over time will not have the effect you intend. Your coercion will have poisoned your relationship with this person while you feel the false glow of a hard-won victory. A person who helps you with gritted teeth is one who will never help you again. And even then, the help will be a half-hearted effort to get rid of the obligation you manufactured. By contrast, help freely given is effortless, the way you’d hold the door open for someone. Help willingly given keeps your conscience clear, free from the burden of having pressured someone. And help, when given from the heart, is the foundation of a relationship where both of you contribute to what you’re building.我最后一个建议有点奇怪：让拒绝变得容易。你可能会认为最糟糕的结果是被拒绝，但最糟糕的结果是勉强、不情愿地答应。如果你被拒绝了，一个好的回应是感谢他们的时间然后继续前进。让你的信息带有情感上的内疚或长时间的纠缠不会达到你想要的效果。你的胁迫会毒害你与这个人的关系，同时你却沉浸在艰难获胜的虚假喜悦中。一个咬牙切齿地帮助你的人将永远不会再帮助你。即使如此，他们的帮助也将是敷衍了事的，目的是摆脱你制造的义务。相比之下，乐于助人是毫不费力的，就像你为别人开门一样。心甘情愿的帮助能让你问心无愧，摆脱了强迫他人的负担。而发自内心的帮助，是建立一段关系的基础，在这段关系中，你们双方都在为你们正在构建的东西做出贡献。
These are only heuristics. You can, when following the principle, reorder or drop them altogether. What matters is whether you’re thinking from the perspective of your reader. Except. Never lie. All your asks for help come from the person attached to them – you. And if your reader gets even a whiff of something off, then no request, no matter how small, specific, low-friction, and bounded, can get a yes.这些只是建议。在遵循原则的前提下，你可以重新排序或完全放弃它们。重要的是你是否从读者的角度思考。除了。永远不要撒谎。你所有的求助都来自于与之相关的人——你。如果你的读者察觉到一丝不对劲，那么任何请求，无论多么小、多么具体、多么低门槛、多么有界限，都无法得到“是”的答复。
Edit: added a line on how to respond when you get a no.编辑：添加了关于如何回应被拒绝的说明。