Ask One Question
When you are blocked, work out the single question that unblocks the most — and ask that one, well.
When to reach for it
The moment you are stuck and about to send a wall of context, a list of five questions, or nothing at all while you guess and keep going.
What changes
- One question goes out, phrased so it can be answered in a word, with your recommended default attached.
- Everything you could have settled yourself is settled first, so the question that reaches a person is one that genuinely needed one.
- The question names the decision it unblocks and what you will do with each answer, which is why it gets answered quickly.
- You state what you will do if no answer arrives, and by when, so silence becomes a decision instead of a stall.
- Downstream questions are held back until the first answer lands, because the first answer usually rewrites them.
Pairs with
- Disagree With the BriefPush back on a requirement that will not survive contact with reality — with a specific failure case and a way forward.
- Estimate HonestlyGive a range, name the assumptions holding it up, and say what it would take to make it narrower.
- Explain the WhyRecords the reasoning a diff cannot show — what you rejected, and what would make this the wrong choice later.
Ask One Question
Blocked is a state with an exit. Find the single question whose answer unblocks the most, ask it well, and keep moving in the meantime.
1. Write down everything you do not know
All of it, unfiltered, in a list. Two minutes, no editing.
2. Cross off what you can answer yourself
Most of the list, usually. Read the code, run the thing, look at the history of the file, check what the data actually contains, read the documentation you have been avoiding. Anything you can settle in under fifteen minutes is not a question for another person.
3. Rank what remains by leverage
For each item left, ask how much work depends on the answer. Some are downstream of others, and answering one makes two of them irrelevant. Take the one at the top of the chain.
4. Turn it into a closed question with a default
Give the options and your recommendation so the reply can be one word:
- "Should a repeated submit create a second order, or return the first one? I plan to return the first unless you say otherwise."
Not "how should idempotency work here?"
5. Add three lines of context, no more
What you are doing, what you tried, why this blocks you. Anyone who wants the long version will ask; nobody reads it first, and a wall of text delays the answer you need.
6. Say what you will do without an answer
"If I have not heard by end of day, I will return the first order and leave a note." This turns silence into a decision rather than a stall, and it usually produces an answer faster than the question did.
7. Send it to a person, then carry on
A named decision-maker, not a channel where a question can be discussed without ever being decided. Then go and work on the parts the answer does not touch.
Rules
- Do not ask what the repository can answer.
- Do not send five questions at once. The answer to the first usually rewrites the rest, and a list reads as a request for a meeting.
- Do not ask an open question when a closed one will do.
- Do not wait quietly. Nobody knows you are blocked until you say so, and an unannounced block is the most expensive kind there is.
- Do not accept an ambiguous answer. Restate what you heard as the decision, and give them the chance to correct it.