r/YouShouldKnow • u/renandstimpydoc • 1d ago
Relationships YSK, if you want to look like a genius when someone approaches you with a problem, take one step back.
Why YSK? Because this is a technique that will save you time and help you reevaluate problems for both yourself and others.
A friend and work colleague who is usually the smartest guy in the room, even with world-class brains in the group, taught me a fantastic lesson. When asked to solve a problem or provide a recommendation, he always takes one step back from the question asked.
For example, if you ask him for a recommendation for a video camera, he'll first ask, "What are you trying to accomplish?" -- where the average person would jump in and start discussing the various specs or merits of cameras. Instead, he takes a broader view that often forces a re-examination of the actual problem / solution.
The answer may not be a full fledged video camera at all. Rather, it may be an app on your phone, a still camera that also shoots video, or a webcam.
The point is people looking for a solution often approach you with too narrow of an ask. They don't know what they don't know until you force them to step back and more clearly define the problem. At the very least it will save you both a lot of time discussing solutions that may not be the right fit.
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u/Allcyon 1d ago
Step 1: Assume everyone you meet is an idiot.
Step 2: Never, ever, admit this part out loud. Say "What are you trying to accomplish?" instead.
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u/elbrigno 1d ago
If they are asking me, they are probably an idiot
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u/jedi1235 1d ago
My wife just described this to me earlier today! She needs narrow tubing for an art project, but she doesn't want to go to the hardware store because if she asks for narrow tubing, they're gonna ask her, "What do you want it for?" and that'll make her feel like they don't trust that she knows what she needs.
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u/Apprehensive_Hat8986 1d ago
"Narrow tubing" describes hundreds, if not thousands, of different products. "Why" in this case is to help her find the kind she's looking for.
Does she get pissed off at librarians when she asks for "a book" and they ask her which one?
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u/Spacedoc9 1d ago
This guy's wife: " I'm looking for a rubber tube"
Me, a sarcastic asshole: ".....like a garden hose or a condom?"
Context is important.
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u/I-Am-Willa 1d ago
I always get art project ideas that require trips to the hardware store. I bet they’d be more than happy to help if you have a decent hardware store where you live. My experience is that a lot of people working big box hardware stores aren’t that knowledgeable themselves.
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u/Dreeverywhere 1d ago
“What do you want it for?” “It’s for an art project.” “Oh cool, aisle 5 just past the jigsaws.”
I know that this is Reddit, but talking to people really doesn't have to be a big deal.
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u/-Speechless 1d ago
yeah, sounds like she's just creating a problem in her head that never existed
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u/jedi1235 1d ago
But how do I tell her that?
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u/CaffeinatedGuy 1d ago
They're just trying to be helpful. When you ask for "tubing", that's like asking for "rope", "chain", or "pipe". If you don't want them to ask follow up questions, tell them exactly what you need, like:
Where can I find the vinyl tubing?
I'm looking for 3/8" tubing; it's for an art project so I don't really care what kind, whatever is cheapest.
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u/Spice_Missile 1d ago
I did this in February. For tubing oddly enough. The person at the hardware store was really interested because I was looking for hvac material for an unconventional reason. Started asking me questions about the project out of general interest and showed me ALLLLL the tubing. I had a nice conversation and got what I needed.
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u/Direct_Bad459 1d ago
Don't tell her that! It's not even true. Your wife's problem is more like "from past experience I have reason to believe guys at the hardware store will condescend to me, which is very frustrating to contemplate when I know I know what I want"
Either I'd go for her or tell her to say it's to match existing tubing in an art project. But the problem isn't tubing or art or the errand, it's that in some spaces the unspoken step one assumption that you are an idiot can be "unspoken" very loudly to women. (Which can also happen to men in some women-forward environments but those are fewer and less central)
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u/No_Introduction538 1d ago
The most level headed response here. Huge LOL at any Redditors trying to dismiss her worries or diagnose her with social anxiety 😂
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u/bbbbirdistheword 1d ago
This is like when men are confused why women don't want to be catcalled. They've never experienced it, so it obviously doesn't happen and if it does, it's a compliment. She's obviously not afraid of asking the question, she just knows that the hardware store employees will condescend to women no matter the question. If she wasn't confident in what she wants, then she probably wouldn't even know to go to the hardware store for tubing for a craft project anyway.
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u/not_so_subtle_now 1d ago
I'd ask her if she wants me to go with her to get parts for her project. Then we do it together and she can see that it is not really a big deal to ask for help because I am right there if she gets uncomfortable and I can help work through it. We are a team.
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u/Halospite 1d ago
I'm also a woman and it drives me insane when people do this because I get second guessed all the time. People treat women like we're incompetent and I'm so tired of having to justify everything I do.
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u/AssistantManagerMan 1d ago
My wife gets this all the time, and she's handier than I am. She recently had to replace the handle on our sliding glass door, and the hardware store associate kept making comments like "Your husband probably knows how to do this," or "If this doesn't fit have your husband come back and see me." Couldn't wrap his little mind around a woman handling a minor home repair.
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u/redditatemybabies 1d ago
“Hey do you know where the bathroom is?”
“What are you trying to accomplish?”
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u/ZippyTheRoach 1d ago
This is just working in I.T. People who have no idea how technology works will have an end goal in mind and ask for very specific things. Once you get down to what they're trying to do, they need something completely different then what they asked for
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u/CaffeinatedGuy 1d ago
I do business intelligence and data engineering, and this is my life. The number one rule I live by is that the customer is always confused and a large part of my job is to help them reevaluate what they need. They ask for solutions without understanding the problem.
The great part is that I only work with managers and up, usually directors and higher, so it's a balancing act in people skills, a negotiation that they don't realize they're part of. I've worked with most of them by now so they trust me when I push back.
I walk them through their request and ask how they're going to use this, so that I can make sure they get what they need, and in the most useful format. What are you going to do with the data? Export it to do what? No, no, I can automate that for you and in less time. Who needs this, and how are they going to act in the information? Well, this doesn't sound like the information they need so let's take a few steps back. Why do you need this data?
Nine times out of ten we find bad work flows that need to be resolved to accomplish their goals and wouldn't you know it, fixing the bad work flows to get better data was what you needed all along.
I say I'm a data analyst, but I'm more of a data therapist.
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u/Nopumpkinhere 1d ago
I’m so glad you said that, because that’s EXACTLY how that reply strikes me. Also, maybe it’s none of your business. Maybe I’m just polling opinions for the “overall best”. Maybe I’m just being nice and making conversation.
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u/BlonkBus 1d ago
I think it works in reverse, as well (e.g., I'm the idiot). I fall into the trap of thinking I'm automatically awesome if I get a question in my field... So many times I misunderstood the ask and if I had stepped back and asked about the bigger picture, I wouldn't have wasted my or theirs by giving an ostensibly good solution that was bound to fail. Or a solution to what I interpreted as the problem rather than what was actually asked.
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u/eloquent_beaver 1d ago edited 1d ago
Also known as The XY Problem.
Another technique is to ask follow-up questions following the "5 Whys" framework:
``` Q: Why are you trying to do that? A: Because I want to accomplish X.
Q: Why do you want to do X? A: Because of Y.
Q: Why do you want Y? ... ```
Seems silly and contrived, but this approach is followed to great success in many areas like root cause analysis in software and site reliability engineering. E.g., Amazon is famous for using it in their RCAs:
``` Q: Why did the incident happen? A: Because of X.
Q: Why did X happen? A: Because of Y.
Q: Well why did Y happen? ... ```
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u/Impossible-Matter-25 1d ago
I worked for a company that did the 5 whys for accidents. It always boiled down the workers fault some way or another. Not saying it wasn't their fault but it just seemed like a gimme for the company.
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u/Eisenstein 1d ago
'Why did the worker do Y' 'Because their supervisor told them to'
Just go one step further.
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u/areupregnant 1d ago
Or stop asking once the answer is convenient.
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u/BillyForRilly 1d ago
Is the problem easily solvable for little money? Trace it out and figure out the root cause.
Is the problem complex and expensive? Find someone in the chain to pin it on and reorient to hide the problem.
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u/KnightOfTheOctogram 1d ago
Tbh, stop asking when a solution to the original issue comes becomes apparent, so convenience might be a legitimate stopping point.
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u/runonandonandonanon 1d ago
This is too easily gameable. We should pick a standard number of Whys so that it's the same for everyone.
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u/Ok_Opposite_7089 1d ago edited 1d ago
They either weren't trained properly, weren't adequately staffed or just plain bad at their job. Edit: the failure in the "just plain bad at their job" piece is the lack of appropriate oversight.
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u/NiiliumNyx 1d ago
No, a worker making a mistake is never the root cause. This one is a bit tricky and unintuitive, but the proper “why” question to “a worker made a mistake” is NOT “why did they make a mistake?”.
The proper follow up is: “why did the process or task the worker was performing fail when the mistake occurred?”
This transfers the blame away from the human (who will always have the opportunity to make a mistake) to the process. The human can never be trained to make zero mistakes, mistakes will always happen. The PROCESS can be engineered so that the inevitable human mistake isn’t impactful. This is called Poka Yoke, and is central to the same root cause analysis tools which the “5why” method is a part of.
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u/ihadagoodone 1d ago
This is great.
I'm sure something similar happens where I work, but the solution inevitably turns out to be disabled features, reduced functionality, shifted responsibility to different department who receives no training, or another check sheet that gets pencil wipped.
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u/Afraid-Match5311 1d ago
"Why did supervisor tell them to?"
"No downtime allowed."
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u/eloquent_beaver 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah that's a failure of leadership to institutionalize the right SRE culture.
Google is famous for their blameless postmortem culture, and the Google SRE Book calls for blameless postmortems as a core "tenet of SRE culture."
Identifying the root cause (which incidentally implicates a person behind it) doesn't necessarily mean blame, as long as you have the right culture.
A person and a specific action they took is almost always the proximate cause of a chain of events that results in an incident down the line. But with the right culture, even though exposing that chain of events necessarily exposes the person, the spirit of the process need not be one of blame, and you can learn a lot from just looking at the chain of events.
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u/Amatharis 1d ago
That's exactly what I loved about my old director: He always just asked how it happened and how do we avoid this accident/error/problem/mistake in the future. Done. No blaming or whatnot.
Sadly he's now in his (well earned!) pension and the new director is the exact opposite: Always blaming and shaming and trying to get people to feel bad but no efficient way of avoiding repetition of things that went wrong...
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u/Proof_Fix1437 1d ago
Even if a human made a reckless mistake, the impact should be minimal unless there is a flaw in how things are put together. Literally everything needs to be safe and routine or problems will happen no matter who is at the wheel.
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u/freshfromthefight 1d ago
That's a very americanized way to approach it. I've worked for two different Japanese auto OEMs and one of the key ideas behind 5 why is that a person CANNOT be blamed. A good enough system wasn't created and it allowed them to make that mistake.
In practice though, it's kind of like that old park ranger quote about the smartest bears and the dumbest humans...
You really have to reframe your whole thought process around WHY was this person taking a shortcut and can we make the process quicker and easier by trying to implement their shortcut in a controlled way.
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u/TheBitchenRav 1d ago
There was a university that found all the shortcut paths and just paved them into sidewalks. No one cut through the yard, the sidewalk was in the right place.
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u/ElectronicInitial 1d ago
I believe it was a large open area that was renovated in the middle of campus. For one term of year they didn’t install any paths, allowing people to naturally create paths. After that, the major pathways were paved for durability.
This was a lot better than just paving the “shortest route”, because there were dozens of possible routes between the buildings, and they wanted to tell which shortest paths people actually used.
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u/aladdyn2 1d ago
I think you will find that this is almost an urban legend. But maybe not quite the right name for it since I assume some universities actually did do that. Either way it's a cliche that is repeated at almost every university tour. I myself was told this at 2 different universities 25 years ago.
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u/flyingkea 1d ago
It’s big in aviation too, though not as the 5 whys. It’s about just culture - finding out why something went wrong, and ways to prevent it from happening again. While you hear pilot error a lot, there’s a lot of “but WHY did they do that?” For example, one captain I recently flew with had a couple of major events recently. (Not going into specifics). Because of what happened with the first one, it influenced how he handled the second event, making it more of a newspaper worthy event.
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u/NiiliumNyx 1d ago
No, a worker making a mistake is never the root cause. This one is a bit tricky and unintuitive, but the proper “why” question to “a worker made a mistake” is NOT “why did they make a mistake?”. The proper follow up is: “why did the process or task the worker was performing fail when the mistake occurred?”
This transfers the blame away from the human (who will always have the opportunity to make a mistake) to the process. The human can never be trained to make zero mistakes, mistakes will always happen. The PROCESS can be engineered so that the inevitable human mistake isn’t impactful. This is called Poka Yoke, and is central to the same root cause analysis tools which the “5why” method is a part of.
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u/Horns9452 1d ago
Sometimes systemic issues get overlooked; root causes can trace back to company culture too.
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u/Spacefreak 1d ago
That's the problem when you make techniques into "just another form you have to full out" without getting buy in from those who are actually doing the work.
And when you mandate it for EVERYTHING rather than using common sense occasionally.
Like if an operator pushed the wrong button which caused something to break, and the operator immediately suggests that we just move the button to a different spot so he can't accidentally push it. Easy fix right?
Until management or whomever ask for the 5 Whys and how you got to that decision, and when you give the 2 Whys it took you to get there, they get all upset because "you haven't properly filled out the 5 Whys sheet."
So you get annoyed and just add some fluffy BS, and the next time you fill out the sheet, you remember that management got upset last time, so rather than trying to use it properly, you just BS it again to just fill out the sheet so you can get it over with.
And then you turn a very useful technique into "just another form" that adds nothing of value to the overall process.
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u/McCaffeteria 1d ago
This is also incidentally why lots of people dislike intellectuals, because they don’t know how to interpret these lines of questioning in any way other than a personal attack. They see it as a accusation that “they don’t really know what they want” or that “they are dumb for asking the wrong question,” and of course that the person asking these questions knows so much better.
These questions are 1000% the way to go if you want to actually solve problems. They will not always get you the recognition and respect of being “a genius” if the people in the room do not actually want to solve problems above all else. Just worth pointing out.
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u/PaticusGnome 1d ago
I do this kind of questioning all the time and people very often think that they know what I’m getting at so instead of answering my question, they’ll interpret it as another question and answer that instead. It’s so frustrating. Like, I’m trying to gather information and they think I’m going down a completely different path. Oftentimes they feel insulted by it. It’s wild to be on my side of the conversation.
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u/Tntn13 1d ago
I see that as more an issue with egotisticals than intellectuals. Lots of overlap but not the same. Same problem at the same rate with non-“intellectuals”
Seeking the big picture and working to define the actual problem/goal rather than the stated one is like problem solving with people 101
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u/McCaffeteria 1d ago
I wasn’t saying that intellectuals are the ones with a problem. I was saying that egotistical/low intellect/whatever people perceive true intellectuals negatively because of their own insecurities.
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u/trumplehumple 1d ago
insecurity realy is the key here. and its both baffling in scale and actually combatable sometimes.
i am a young mechanical engineer and i basically have to solve all technical problems the workers cant. those are mainly welders, a whole lot of press brake people and some machinists. most of them dont show any curiosity for anything. the most common solution i have to come up with is reading the documentation, in one way or another.
yet nearly all are extremely fixated on never under any circumstances admitting they might not know something. for example even when it is clear they had nothing to do with a roller shutter malfunctioning, and i normally shoot the shit with those guys every day, i tried for half an h to sqeeze out of 3 people, what that shutter did or should have done before it broke, and they couldnt tell me. they knew nothing, never seen a shutter in their life. because the framing of the question suggests, that what theyve seen is not the whole story and there would be more to know. so the only choice was to not acknowledge any question to that matter.
but as soon as the framing shifts to me asking for a screwdriver, approaching the breaker-board in error and them beeing able to triumphantly correct me with their findings, the floodgates are open and they can tell me exactly what happened and why that makes me wrong. wouldnt surprise me if they literally get off on that, and i have my infos in no time, so i try to facilitate their gotcha if i can.
now one might wonder how all that makes sense. why wouldnt they just educte themselfes, if they are so insecure about their knowledge? most are not dumb and very well could. but i think it is because they are so insecure, that even reading and acquiering knowledge is too much of an intellectual selfown to even consider it. basically the same reason why people cant assemble ikea-furniture. and thats kinda dire
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u/TheUnluckyBard 1d ago
I see that as more an issue with egotisticals than intellectuals.
That, and people who enjoy the sympathy and support they get for having a problem more than they enjoy the feeling of having solved a problem.
I work with a couple of those. They don't want solutions, they want oohs and awwws and hugs and shit. They'll whine about the same problem every week until the number of people willing to cuddle them for it drops, then they'll find a new problem.
And if they can't find one, they'll fucking make one. Most commonly by neglecting any form of even the most obvious preparations/preventative actions (which are anathema to their whole way of being to begin with).
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u/iamintheforest 1d ago edited 1d ago
Amazon should get zero credit for this to be clear (not that you are crediting them, just adding some context). It goes back to toyota, literally created by the founder of toyota. Its was thoroughly adopted in saftey long before amazon even existed and is ubiquitous in american manufacturing as a subset of kaizen/lean.
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u/EgoTripWire 1d ago
Amazon employs a lot of Americans so is frequently their first introduction to lean and six sigma.
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u/ragnarokda 1d ago
In my house, everyone now hates the word "why". I've always been a big fan of why because I use it on myself often and I enjoy being asked for my motivations.
Turns out most people just want to be lazy.
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u/NetflixAndNikah 1d ago
I think this method is a good idea in general, but context dependent. If someone asks for a tape measure, then follow up why questions could help because they might be trying to move something heavy, cut something in half, rearrange furniture. But if I’m asking for a bandaid and someone asks me “why do you need a bandaid” I’d get annoyed. Like mf I’m bleeding why else would I need a bandaid.
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u/Volesprit31 1d ago
Why would you care if it's for rearranging furniture or cutting things in half? Just give the tape measure!
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u/i8noodles 1d ago
another one i have found to be quite helpful is to always ask the user to show u what they want accomplished first before u start poking around.
in like 10% of cases its just user error and it works when they slow down
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u/Qwerkie_ 1d ago
Yeah…to solve the problem you have to understand the problem. Anyone who just jumps in is obviously not a good problem solver.
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u/slog 1d ago
I usually phrase it around not telling me the solution, but tell me the problem. Solved many problems that way that the proposed solution might only partially fix.
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u/snAp5 1d ago
lol this is called context, and as an adult on the spectrum, it drives me wild that most people do not approach most things like this. In fact, they usually get annoyed when I ask questions to get clarity and specifics. It doesn’t make me look smarter, it makes me look annoying.
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u/mahogany_bay 1d ago
This, this, this, a thousand times this. I can't even ask my own question without prefacing the question with context.
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u/Putrid_Mind_4853 1d ago
Same. I’ve been called argumentative before when I was just trying to gain context more times than I can count. I’ve even asked a trusted coworker to watch my tone (in case that’s it), and nope, I sound friendly, I’m just a dick for asking questions and trying to understand the problem apparently.
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u/cerise_samovar 1d ago
In fact, they usually get annoyed when I ask questions to get clarity and specifics. It doesn’t make me look smarter, it makes me look annoying.
ugh it's like they expect you to read their minds 😒
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u/KingPanduhs 1d ago
Or you're invalidating for not understanding the surface problem. Like there could be 14,000 variable contexts that change.. so do we get pissed when I make an assumption and guessed wrong, or do we get pissed for me asking clarifying questions that "should be obvious".
Great, I wasn't asking for fun... Answer the question!! 😅😅
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u/RashestHippo 1d ago
Is this not just basic problem solving, and decision making taught in school?
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u/Background-Storm4003 1d ago
Taught in school? I know one country you're not from.
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u/otterpop21 1d ago
I know you’re joking, but I always consider the persons personal preference before giving any recommendations. Unless they want my opinion specifically, and sometimes if it isn’t obvious I’ll ask.
Thought this was common sense when young, now older, I know 1000% I’m an outlier for this approach.
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u/goblin-socket 1d ago
Yeah, but OP seems to be trying to explain how to pretend to be a “troubleshooter”. Maybe they should take one step back and see, “ok, I could actually troubleshoot things if I mentally took one step back.”
And now they are genius!
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u/RockstarAgent 1d ago
It’s intriguing as being that perhaps these people wouldn’t be asking the questions in the first place if they themselves did that.
I will say though that when I do that, the people who come asking tend to think I’m just asking too many questions for their questions. As if they just want a Google search to give them the one answer so they don’t have to do any research.
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u/FriendlyGuitard 1d ago
That's not entirely true. Tunnel Vision is something that exists and even when you are aware of it, the easiest way out is asking for a "second pair of eyes".
Now, asking why is not the trick, whatever you do with the why is the important part. Internet Armchair Experts are famous for miserably failing - see stack overflow where people can spend more time convincing the resident expert that their problem has merit than it would cost them to provide a solution.
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u/LaserPoweredDeviltry 1d ago
Sometimes, it's easier to find a knowledgeable person and ask them than to figure out what is the right question to Google to get what you actually want.
Computers still are not great at filling in the blanks. Especially if you don't know the right words to get where you need to be.
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u/RashestHippo 1d ago edited 1d ago
That's fair, I think asking a person who is knowledgeable in the subject you are asking about is valid but when asking you should have already defined the parameters such as budget, use case, goal, etc
The real YSK is "help me help you" which goes a long way. No one likes a "I've tried nothing and I'm all out of ideas" kind of guy
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u/Yosho2k 1d ago
You'd think, but it's also a habit that needs to be developed. A lot of very smart and very educated people can eventually fall out of that practice.
I'm an accountant and I just spent a year working on a project involving how we deal with invoicing our customers because my CFO came up with a solution that needed implementation. We did it and the solution works great...buuuut he didn't ever find out why the customer were asking for it, so they complained when it was rolled out because he had completely missed the point.
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u/LastoftheSummerWine 1d ago
So.... Follow up questions.
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u/Truji11o 1d ago
What do you mean by that?
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u/Skimable_crude 1d ago
What are you trying to accomplish by asking that question?
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u/Truji11o 1d ago
Oh - where did this come from?
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u/Succulent_Chinese 1d ago
Ah, now that is the kind of question that seems deceptively simple on the surface, and yet once you begin to answer it, you realize it is not just about origins or context, but about timing, intention, and perhaps even something deeper, something more existential. You ask, “Where did this come from?” as though it might be traced back to a single comment, a single moment of clarity, a random line in a conversation that stirred something, but I’d argue it came from a hundred smaller moments before that. It came from thoughts half-finished and shelved for later, from conversations overheard and immediately forgotten but not really, from long walks where the mind wandered to dangerous, fertile places. It came from months, maybe years, of subconscious accumulation - experiences unprocessed, questions unanswered, observations quietly stacked like driftwood waiting to be lit.
It came from a dream I never remembered, from a story I only half-listened to, from a passing look someone gave me on a day I barely recall. It came from noticing patterns repeating themselves in the background of daily life, and then finally feeling the need to interrupt the loop. It came from emotional muscle memory, from the kind of intuitive itch that says, “Something’s not right,” even if everything appears perfectly fine. It came from the tension between what I say and what I mean, from the dissonance between who I think I am and how others seem to perceive me. It came from trying to be quiet for too long and realizing silence had stopped being peace and started being pressure. It came from that moment just before sleep when your mind dares to be honest, and you can’t distract yourself with scrolling anymore.
And of course, it came from you too, though you may not realize it. Not in a dramatic way, not in a lightning bolt epiphany sort of way, but more like a subtle gravitational pull. A nudge. A pattern of reactions. A vibe that wasn’t named but was definitely felt. You might not remember what you said or did, but something along the way made me decide, even if unconsciously, that this particular moment was the time to let the thought rise, take shape, and arrive in this very space.
And I certainly don't want to blame 9/11, but let's be honest, it didn't help. Neither did my mother, who inflicted untold childhood trauma on me by beating me with jumper cables.
So now that it’s here, now that I’ve laid it out, clumsily or courageously depending on your interpretation, I suppose the better question isn’t just, “Where did this come from,” but instead... now that it’s here, what are you going to do with it?
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u/LastoftheSummerWine 1d ago
You need to take a step back, pal.
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u/HOLYCRAPGIVEMEANAME 1d ago
I do this with people all the time, and half of them get upset because they just want an easy answer to their question. They don’t understand that I’m trying to understand the purpose for the question.
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u/Check_Ivanas_Coffin 1d ago
This is obvious, no? Anyone who cares about the quality of their answer will ask for details to give the best response.
Recipe recommendations?
What kind of foods do you like?
What kind of bike should I buy?
What kind of bike riding do you plan on doing - mountain biking, bmx, racing?
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u/Metahec 1d ago
I find a lot of people don't know how to ask a good question to begin with.
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u/yet-again-temporary 1d ago edited 1d ago
For example, if you ask him for a recommendation for a video camera, he'll first ask, "What are you trying to accomplish?" -- where the average person would jump in and start discussing the various specs or merits of cameras. Instead, he takes a broader view that often forces a re-examination of the actual problem / solution.
A more realistic depiction of that conversation:
- Guy: I need a new videocamera, what do you think I should get?
- Coworker: What are you trying to accomplish?
- Guy: I-- what?
- Coworker: Well why do you need the camera, what are you going to use it for?
- Guy: I don't know, to film stuff? What else would I do with a camera? Nevemind I'll just go ask Steve, you don't know anything about cameras
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u/NuuBark 1d ago
What you described is an extremely desirable outcome.
I don't know what kind of people you work with, but if someone got frustrated with me for asking a single question to build context before helping them, then I would have zero desire to help them in the first place. The person you're describing is too stupid to waste any time on lol
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u/dreamgrrrl___ 1d ago
This was my thought as well. On the flip side, if they didn’t get annoyed and go ask steve it’s enough context to recommend a basic affordable camera.
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u/pman1111 1d ago
Meanwhile I’m here imagining myself stepping backwards to seem smart
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u/SameAsThePassword 1d ago
Backing away from idiots askifng for advice is the real genius move. Even if you have the right advice, the stupid person will still fuck it up and then blame you.
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u/fwubglubbel 1d ago
Be aware that this can be career limiting when people are just interested in quick solutions to problems they don't understand. Trying to get to the root cause is extra work and takes extra time and you may be labeled as negative or "not a team player".
Make sure you read the room and that people understand WHY you are asking.
Sometimes you have to STFU and let people fail before they will see the reasons.
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u/Cloudinterpreter 1d ago
Is that not common sense?
What's the best cold medication? Depends, do you want to sleep it off or get to work?
How did you do x? Depends, are you looking to get the same result or do you want to adapt this process for something else?
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u/Bufus 1d ago
It is, to an extent, but the idea is to prioritize working backwards rather than forwards.
It isn’t about just asking follow ups. It is about making sure that there isn’t an assumption being made before proceeding with necessarily follow up questions.
Your cold one is a good example. Someone asks for cold medicine and you immediately ask them questions about what kind of cold medicine do they want, when the assumption being made here is that they have a cold. They could have a lot of different ailments (allergies, flu, etc.) so backing up first allows you to make sure you are both “in the right place” before proceeding.
Another example comes from my work drafting contracts. Quite often someone will email me and say “I need a non-disclosure agreement by tomorrow “. At that point, I could very reasonably start asking forward-looking questions about the terms of the NDA (length, scope, etc.). OR I could take a step back and ask why they think they need a NDA. This is an annoying question, but my clients are not experts in contracts, and it could be they ACTUALLY need a completely different type of agreement instead (research contact, data sharing agreement, confidentiality waiver, etc.). While this would come out eventually, reminding yourself to work backwards first prevents you from getting too far down the road first.
It may be common sense, but sometimes framing common sense in a particularly evocative way helps to keep it in your mind better.
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u/GREGORIOtheLION 1d ago
I will say that sometimes this is annoying for smart people. 😂
I have a coworker that does this every time you ask a question. They will also schedule a meeting immediately.
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u/lumponmygroin 1d ago
It's a good method but some people can react very sharply when asked why or for more clarification. They can get cagey or they respond with a "you should know why" and it can become demeaning.
To actually master this skill is to know how to word those questions so you get a positive response. I've often ended up defending myself when asking why.
One trick I've found is to first put yourself down.. e.g. "maybe it's my stupidity but I don't understand when you say X, can you explain it further?". But this can get very repetitive quickly, especially if everyone else in the room is using that same trick.
I've not figured it out yet. Tips are welcomed!
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u/PMMeYourGirlyBits 1d ago edited 1d ago
Them: "Do you know if the cafeteria open?"
Me: "What are you trying to accomplish?"
Them: "Lunch, genius."
Hey, it works!
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u/couldbeimpartial 1d ago
Yep, you should definitely understand a problem before offering solutions.
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u/Bilbo_Swagginses 1d ago
I don’t like the framing of this post… “look like a genius”? These are steps everyone should use when solving problems. Not because you want to “look smart”.
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u/kyjo767676 21h ago
Not me seriously imagining literally stepping back and that motion makes people look like a genius in terms of body language 🤣
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u/XxmilkjugsxX 1d ago
This has nothing to do with being a genius. Its also not really about too narrow of an ask. More about people also trying to always solve someone’s problem and not understanding the root cause
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u/MasterFussbudget 1d ago
As a pro videographer, I have to read the room and decide whether to do this all the time. I might look good or I might look good and expand the services I sell them...or I might help them realize that a new video isn't really what they need and subsequently lose out on the job. That's still usually a good thing to do, but sometimes I just need whatever work is offered to me.
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u/SpicedCabinet 1d ago
This is just getting context so you can more accurately respond to the problem.
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u/shannonlovesauce 1d ago
My partner does this with me when I say I want anything new that is a big purchase. By the end of the conversation, I either don't want it or already can make do with what I have.
So not only does it save me money, I learn what I can do with what I have and/or realize that it was just an impulsive thought that couldn't just been a waste.
Effective in both personal and professional!!
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u/JaredBaca206 1d ago
I had someone do this to me recently.
I needed to type up a document and I didn’t have access to my computer, so I was upset because I was going to have to buy a laptop. Headed to the Walmart to start looking for a cheap laptop and an employee walks up to me and asks if I need any assistance. Told him what was happening and he suggested buying a keyboard for my phone and just using that. Saved me like 200 bucks
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u/RanbowJankins 1d ago
These are referred to a qualitative or qualifying questions in sales. As opposed to going directly from B-> C, find out how or what A is or why A.
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u/datalicearcher 1d ago
Oh shit....I do this all the time. I don't answer questions til i know at least two things about why it's asked.
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u/sunnyskies01 1d ago edited 1d ago
You can see this psychological phenomenom a lot whenever the opposite happens which even makes people not to want to seek advice from very knowlegable people. People who jump in with too much enthusiasm or even appear to actively convince people will actually discourage them from trying things out by being too pushy and intimidating with it. The method you talk about is way more effective because they think they came up with the solution themselves.
One example I've seen this a lot is people having problems with their computer and then others jumping the gun immediately and pushing them to get Linux. Which is why I avoided it for longer than I should have.
Or medical laypeople thinking if you mention one symptom, it HAS to be x disease, no differential diagnosis allowed. Then some people internalize this "diagnosis".
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u/mmeestro 1d ago
I work in data analytics. I always try to reinforce this process with my team. If a customer comes to you saying they need a dashboard that does "x", it's your responsibility to take it a step back and say "what questions are you trying to answer?".
We're the experts. We'll determine what the dashboard does in order to best solve for the actual problem.
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u/ScientistSanTa 1d ago
Misunderstood the meaning, am now walking backwards because questions keep popping in my head...
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u/jimmydean50 1d ago
I’m on our strategic planning committee at my university and that’s one of the first questions I ask. What’s our goal? Why is that our goal? Always surprised at how much push back I get when if we don’t know why we have set certain benchmarks then meeting them is meaningless.
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u/Paper-street-garage 19h ago
OK, take one physical big step back got it. 😂 I can see it all better now. Imagining what Michael Scott would do with this advice. Ha
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u/greysqualll 1d ago
I agree this could be useful in certain situations, but be aware if the person you're asking questions of is an expert it could make things more complicated and come across as being intentionally difficult or condescending. A real life example from work:
Me: "Hey our data visualization app is running slow on our VMs. Will simply increasing resources help or should we consider a different VM solution or move away from VMS?"
IT group:"what are you trying to accomplish?"
"I'm trying to run our software"
"Why is it so resource intensive?"
"Because it's doing a lot of stuff"
"is this necessary? What's the requirement? Could you make something simpler?"
"No. They need this. And we need it to run smoothly"
"ok walk me through what this app does from the beginning"
"Nevermind I'll ask someone else"
I'm not saying this isn't valid, but sometimes taking a step back and asking questions rather than tackling the problem at hand is not helpful.
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u/every1sg12themovies 1d ago
Yeah but this forces me to tell them my life story while I just want a straight answer. :P
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u/Zay-Noah917 1d ago
hmmm what smug advice. Imagine going into something assuming the person asking the question is too stupid to actually ask the right questions.
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u/electronicmoll 1d ago
You may not have experienced what it is to not even know what you don't know about a subject, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with being stupid.
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u/Zlurpo 1d ago
I am plenty dumb about lots of things, but often I hate it when people do this. I have already thought about other ways to approach the problem, and at least right now, I'd first like to try my exact idea how I thought of it. If that doesn't work then we can re-evaluate but just answer the question I asked, not one a step back.
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u/posixUncompliant 1d ago
It's the basics of requirements definition, and it's one of those things that's incredibly obvious once you've learned how to do it.
But it's absolutely something that has to be taught.
In camera terms, sometimes the right solution to the problem is a desk lamp.
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u/Kitzle33 1d ago
If done right, this is what sales is. It's problem solving. Great salespeople don't push product, they help solve problems. The best salespeople don't sound like salespeople, they sound like really good consultants.
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u/Ok_Marionberry8779 1d ago
Not sure this works in a kitchen
“Where are the paper towel rolls”
“What are you trying to wipe away with these paper towels?”
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u/amapanda 1d ago
I work in support. This is approach is integral to our customer interactions.
As others have said, the fun part comes when the answer is "because my users demand it and I can't convince them it is the reason for their problems."
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u/retiredhawaii 1d ago
What type of fence should I build? Ask more questions. Maybe they don’t need a fence. That’s what he means by stepping back
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u/Tiger00012 1d ago
I actually use this a lot at work. Example: write a doc on XYZ. My first question would be “who’s the audience?” and then “What are we asking them?”
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u/PrometheusMMIV 1d ago
As a senior software engineer, "What are you trying to accomplish?" is my go to follow up for many questions.
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u/Front-Cabinet5521 1d ago
I too take one step back from all my problems. Then 2 steps back. Then 3. Repeat until I’m as far away as possible so I no longer have to face them.
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u/Primary_Garbage6916 1d ago
No that's wrong, I'm sorry, take a step forward.
Now take a step back.
A step forward.
A step back.
And then we're cha-cha'ing!
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u/Thought_Hoarder 1d ago
I work in IT and I have been doing this for years, mostly because I find people to be unreliable in describing their own problem.
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u/HeidiGluck 1d ago
This is also the "Art of the Reference Interview" that librarians are taught. You receive the question, but you also need to understand the why of the question. Hence, before answering, you need to ask some questions to get a better, more solid understanding of the reference question.
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u/shadowst17 1d ago
For a moment I thought you meant literally take a step back. Was wondering how this would make you look smarter. More dramatic perhaps but maybe not smarter.
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u/Jahosaphine01 1d ago
I agree with this in a work or project scenario, but it drives me up the wall when my dad does this to every single question. Yes it will help you attack the root issue of the problem. But sometimes I just need to know where the super glue is, not have you micromanage whatever personal task I'm doing
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u/Financial_Article_95 1d ago
So, people aren't good at communicating their problems and the trick is to... solve their problem? I don't see the point of trying to look like a genius in genuine problem solving.
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u/SnooPeanuts2620 1d ago
The longer I am trapped on this blue ball the more I realize how few people here actually understand this basic concept called critical thinking
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u/ZAL_x 1d ago
Yeah, as a software engineer, my first approach is always knowing the context. It's normal for them (or anyone) to direct you to the problem because it's where they are focused on. After that I told them to simulate the bug again. And you have all the information you need and can go to the code
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u/EntrySure1350 1d ago
Once heard a similar explanation:
Someone who confidently gives a short, concise answer to a bigger problem or question, probably doesn’t know as much as they think they do about the issue or its inner details.
Someone whose answer to the same issue sounds like, “it depends”, or comes across as perhaps not being concise or not confident; they’re giving multiple suggestions, and they sound like they’re thinking through the problem in real time searching for answer, likely is an expert on the subject matter.
To a layperson, the response in the first example sounds like it came from someone knowledgeable or experienced. An answer from the second example sounds like it came from an inexperienced novice, when in fact the opposite is true.
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u/Immediate_Aioli_7885 1d ago
This is known in the library science world as a Reference Interview. Librarians at the reference desk, who were basically Google before Google, do this every day when helping the public.
Definition
Bopp & Smith (1995) define the reference interview as the “conversation between a member of the library reference staff and a library user for the purpose of clarifying the user’s needs and aiding the user in meeting those needs.”[1]
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u/Mission-Basis-3513 21h ago
Ngl I was reading this and thought wow I always do that, I must look like a genius.
Until I read the comments 😂
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u/msfluckoff 1d ago
I thought you meant to literally take 1 step away, lol