My inbox holds more than I can ever get to, and my calendar is rarely my own. Still, when a stranger reaches out and asks for a few minutes of help, I always try to say yes. I know I don’t have to, and people often tell me that. I know they are right, but I still try to do it anyway, and I want to explain why.
The Wall That Success Quietly Builds
There is a version of success that quietly walls you off. The busier you get, the more layers accumulate between you and the people who might need something from you: the gatekeepers, the filters, the reasonable-sounding logic that your time is too valuable to spend on someone who cannot do anything for you in return. I understand how people end up behind that wall. I just do not want to be one of them.
What It Was Like to Be on the Other Side
Part of the reason is that I remember being on the other side of it. I remember what it was like to need a little of someone’s time and have no idea how to get it, to send the message and assume it would vanish into a void. When someone actually answered, it changed things. Not always dramatically. Sometimes it was just one honest answer, or a name, or the plain fact that a person I admired had bothered to write back at all.
The Math Is Lopsided in the Best Possible Way
That is the part people underestimate about answering: how little it costs you and how much it can mean to them. A reply that takes me ten minutes can save someone ten months of guessing. The math is lopsided in the best possible way.
Being Reachable Is a Small Discipline
I am not naive about it. I cannot say yes to everything, and I do not. Some asks are not really asks; they are pitches wearing a costume. But the genuine ones, the person who has done their homework, who is stuck on something real, who simply needs a door pointed out, those I try never to ignore. Being reachable is a small discipline, and I have come to think it is one of the more important ones.
What Staying Accessible Does for Me
There is also something it does for me. Staying accessible keeps me honest about where I came from. It is a standing reminder that the distance between me and the person sending that nervous first message is a great deal shorter than it looks.
Leave the Door Open
So I keep answering. Not because I owe every stranger my time, but because someone once gave me theirs when they had no reason to, and I have never forgotten what it meant. If you have reached a point where people are starting to reach out to you, my advice is simple: do not build the wall. Leave the door open. You will be amazed at what walks through it.