This is just so perfect, and a great explanation of what I regularly struggle with…
Someone will ask me a series of really strange questions, which leads me to ask “So.. what are you actually trying to achieve?”
Put down the chocolate-covered banana and step away from the European currency systems.
What you are asking for makes no sense.
All that you are going to receive by way of responses are bodges that attempt to do the nonsensical task that you have set, from people who are either making wild guesses as to what you are actually trying to achieve, or who don’t understand enough about the tool that you have chosen to know that what you are asking makes no sense. In both cases, that isn’t going to help you.
State the actual thing that you are trying to achieve. State what your actual problem is. Stop focussing on the minutiae of a particular solution. Stop forcing people to guess what it is that you are actually trying to do.
Forcing people to guess is wasting your time. More importantly, it is wasting their time. Many people will choose not to waste their time on you.
Conversely, when you state your actual goal, people can often quite quickly help you to achieve it. But they are not clairvoyant, and cannot help you to achieve your goal if you never state what your goal is.
Pilfered from here so that it never gets lost.
