The framing of your request dictates the response you receive. Asking for 'feedback' puts someone in the mindset of a critic, inviting judgment. Asking for 'advice,' however, reframes them as a collaborative partner, making them an ally invested in your success.
Competing to be the 'best' places you on a crowded leaderboard defined by others. Instead, focus on creating a unique category, skill set, or niche where you are the 'only' one who does what you do. This strategic move sidesteps direct competition and creates a powerful, uncontested space.
To get past surface-level answers and understand someone's true motivations, ask them to go deeper than their initial statement. Then ask again, and a third time. This simple technique pushes past rehearsed responses, and the third answer is typically the one closest to the real truth.
Originality is fragile at birth. Great innovators like Henry Ford and Pixar's Ed Catmull understood that new ideas need a protected environment—a 'maternity ward'—to be nurtured with time and patience before they are strong enough to face scrutiny and the pressures of execution.
Deadlines weed out extraneous details and prevent the quest for perfection. They force decisive action, which, as leaders like Ed Catmull and Christopher Nolan have found, can accelerate the creative process rather than hinder it, forcing you to make something different, not just perfect.
We often try to think our way into new behaviors, which is difficult and frequently fails. A more effective path is to 'act out the change you seek.' By altering your actions first, your mindset and beliefs will shift to align with your new behavior, making personal transformation easier.
To find the answer to a difficult question, commit to going seven levels deep. If your first source doesn't know, ask them who you should ask next, and repeat the process. By relentlessly following this chain to the seventh source, you can almost always find the information you seek.