As a result of my broken laptop, I’m not able to release any fancy content, or even really add much multimedia at all to my posts. Yes, the old desktop computer I’m using while my laptop is being repaired is literally so old that it will take me about four minutes to finish opening, editing, and exporting a single photograph to upload to my website.

I decided that this would be a good idea to focus more on text-based blog posts, seeing as I don’t really have much of a choice. To get some ideas, I went back on WordPress’ Daily Post blog.

Is it easy for you to ask for help when you need it, or do you prefer to rely only on yourself? Why?

Source: http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/09/04/daily-prompt-self/

The way this prompt is written makes it seem as if you can only be one or the other – communicative or independent. I’m actually both – it’s very easy for me to ask for help when I need it, but I will generally always prefer to rely on myself.

Most people don’t like to ask for help from others because they feel awkward. Fortunately, I have some strange inability to feel awkwardness, and tend to take more of a logical, reasonable, and analytic approach to situations (rather than avoiding situations just because I feel “weird” about it). As a result, if I think the social setting is supportive of communication, I have no problem going up to someone and asking for help.

However, I tend to only do this in one of two situations – either as a last resort, or if the thing I need help with is something I don’t have to learn. For example, if I tried something for hours that should only take a few minutes, I will probably ask someone for help. On a related note, in the second scenario, if I need to spend hours doing something that I will only ever do once in my entire life (during that instance), I’ll probably ask someone with more experience for help, and/or ask them to do it for me.

The reason I like to do things independently is because figuring things out yourself through research, trial, and error helps you learn things more completely and lastingly due to the integrated experience you have while learning. Basically, figuring something out on your own and doing it yourself will set you up for an increased chance of future success upon repeating the task, rather than getting shortcut in­struc­tions from someone and cheating your way through to the end.

Some people might argue that if it’s something you really need to learn, you can finish the task now as quickly as possible and learn it later. However, I’m very supportive of taking opportunities as they come. To me, people are better off taking the opportunity of learning how to do something by actually doing it, rather than putting it off. If I was in that situation and I put off learning something, I probably won’t end up even learning it later anyway, because in the future, I’ll be too busy pursuing other opportunities that come up at that time.

Overall, my suggestion is to find a good balance of both asking for help and being independent. Someone is not always going to be there for you to help you through tough times, and practicing your problem-solving skills is definitely going to benefit you in the long run.