Find your own directions

Last weekend Alejandro was meeting some friends for lunch. I asked him where and he said they had said that at the Bow & Arrow sculpture, so he had asked his friends for the exact address. I told him he could have found the address online in seconds and to try to avoid asking others for things he can easily get himself. A silly example of this is asking for the time. Nico doesn't wear a watch and frequently asks me what time it is. I almost always tell him to find out on his own. There are dozens of devices all around that show the time (phones, computers, microwaves, etc). By asking me to stop whatever it is that I am doing to look at my watch and tell him the time, instead of looking up the time himself, Nico is implying that my time is less valuable than his.

An entrepreneur once asked me to meet with me to get my advise. I agreed and suggested the lobby of a hotel. The entrepreneur responded by asking me for the address of the hotel. Either the entrepreneur didn't know that you can look up addresses online in a matter of seconds (hard to believe) or he felt that my time was less valuable than his (also hard to believe!). This was a particularly egregious example, sometimes the information you need is not as trivial to get as a street address. Still, before bothering someone else for it, you should give it a try on your own.