How to ask for help from people who don't know you如何向陌生人寻求帮助
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，从在火星上建立文明到寻找暑期实习，你都难免需要寻求他人的帮助。然而，大多数人在这项关键技能上都不得其法。他们往往以自我为中心提出请求，而本应站在对方的角度思考。难道寻求帮助仅仅靠个人魅力和运气吗？不，寻求帮助是一项技能，而不是像绿眼睛那样天生具备的属性。
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.该如何向他人寻求帮助呢？其实只有一个原则：设身处地为对方着想。所有有效的沟通都建立在对读者心理的理解之上。因此，针对如何向陌生人寻求帮助，我总结了一些建议性的启发式方法。
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.首先要记住的一点是：寻求帮助的核心在于“人”，而非“项目”。当你向某人求助时，他们是否愿意提供帮助，前提在于他们是否愿意帮助“你”这个人。因此，你需要明确向对方展示你是一个值得帮助的人。展现这一点的最有力方式之一，就是证明你是一个认真的人。你可能会说你想进入机器学习领域或学习健身，但很多人都会这么说。要证明你的认真，必须拿出实际成果。一个训练好的模型、一篇展现深度与思考的博客文章，或者一份记录你训练过程的视频日志，都是证明你态度认真的方式。
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.另一种方式是利用人际连接：你可以说“史蒂夫建议我联系你”，这会让你在对方心目中的形象显得更亲切。但要小心，因为你是在透支他人的信用。如果对方不喜欢史蒂夫，这反而会损害你的信誉；或者，如果你表现得不如史蒂夫所言那样出色，也会伤害到他的信誉。
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.最后是机构背书。你可以提到你是某知名大学的学生，或者在某大公司工作。这是最薄弱的背书，因为它充其量只能证明你曾经通过过某种筛选，仅此而已。它无法让你与对方建立具体的联系，甚至可能让人觉得你在炫耀身份。因此，请谨慎使用，切勿将其作为你唯一的信用来源。
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.在完成自我定位（或未定位）后，下一步是解释背景。在开口求助之前，你必须回答这个问题：现在的情况是什么？如果你做好了上一步，你已经赢得了对方的关注，因此必须审慎地使用这份关注。你的描述必须极其简洁，精炼到无法再概括。你正在消耗借来的关注，这是最宝贵的资源。为此，请思考如何将你的背景与对方已知的事物联系起来。不要向你的民意代表解释你大学社团内部的派系斗争，而要解释该社团如何与他们的立法优先事项挂钩。或者在向科学家申请实习时，不要谈论你从小有多热爱科学，而要谈论你如何实现并扩展了他们 2023 年发表的论文。
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.下一个启发式方法是让你的请求易于接受。让请求易于接受，很大程度上在于降低对方的接受成本。一种明显的成本是“规模”。你可以请求对方花二十分钟时间，但不要要求他们在短时间内阅读你五百页的手稿。另一种是“具体化”：请求一个切入资源比泛泛地问“我能请教你吗？”要好得多。提出请求后，要尽量减少对方的摩擦成本。如果你需要引荐，就写好一段关于你自己的简介，方便对方直接转发。如果你有问题，请通过书面形式提出，而不是通过通话。最后，关于成本，要让你的请求有边界。不要索求长期的义务（比如要求对方终身担任你的导师），而应将其限制在阅读一篇博客文章上。如果这次合作顺利，他们自然会乐意阅读更多。
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.最后一个启发式方法比较特别：让对方容易拒绝。你可能认为最坏的结果是遭到拒绝，但其实最坏的结果是对方在压力下勉强答应。如果对方拒绝了，最好的回应是感谢对方的时间，然后继续前行。让你的信息带有道德绑架的意味，或者反复纠缠，都无法达到预期的效果。你的强迫只会破坏你与对方的关系，而你却可能沉浸在强行获胜的虚假满足感中。一个咬牙切齿才帮你忙的人，绝不会再帮你第二次。即便帮忙，也只是为了摆脱你强加的义务而敷衍了事。相比之下，心甘情愿的帮助是轻松自然的，就像你为别人扶住门一样。自愿提供的帮助能让你问心无愧，不必背负强迫他人的负担。而发自内心的帮助，是双方共同为事业贡献价值的基石。
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.以上仅为一些启发式建议。在遵循核心原则的前提下，你可以调整顺序或直接舍弃某些建议。真正重要的是你是否站在读者的角度思考。但有一点除外：永远不要撒谎。所有的求助都源于你本人。如果对方察觉到一丝不对劲，那么无论你的请求多么微小、具体、低摩擦且有边界，都不可能得到肯定的答复。
Edit: added a line on how to respond when you get a no.编辑：增加了一行关于遭到拒绝时应如何回应的内容。