Let People Know When You're Doing Them A Favor

The finest internet writers have converged on the wisdom that most advice doesn't work due to some combination of being bad, incomplete, inapplicable, confusing, difficult, unpleasant, or all of the above.

This means that we should expect that a lot of the advice that does work to be relatively small wins – the value of the outcome should be small enough that it only just overcomes the friction of implementing it, or e.g. spending the time to read a blogpost containing it.

So without further ado, here's a thing I believe is of limited (but positive) value but often true and not widely articulated: when you're doing someone a favour, let them know it's a favour.

Too often, I've seen (or been involved in) a dynamic where Alice asks for Bob for something that is somewhat-costly for Bob, Bob decides to do it on a one-off basis, but Alice doesn't realise this and just thinks the request was granted because it's either customary or costless.

In the worst case, Alice then starts doing the thing (or asking for it repeatedly), or even tells other people they can ask or do it. As a result, either Bob gets increasingly vexed, or Alice becomes unhappy when the "right" gets taken away.

And this doesn't do anyone any favors.

The whole thing can be fixed by Bob just saying up front "I can't generally do that, but as a one-off favor I'll do it just for you." This allows Alice to either withdraw the request or appreciate the favor, building up the web of small gifts that social goodwill rests on.