Even in your documentation example, some fruitless searching through outdated documents is going to teach you a lot about where all the outdated documents are, and how to find things.
Targetted questions are worse in some ways - if I want to do X, and ask someone a very specific question they can quickly answer, tomorrow I'm going to want to do XY, which is incredibly similar to X. If I'd spent more time doing research I'd probably know the answer already, but if I just found out about X, I'm going to have to go back and ask another question.
Most of the time management advice doesn't apply to people who come and talk to you, which is the main method of communication I have with people asking questions.
And I think people waste their own time - I think an awful lot of people who ask others how to do things would ACHIEVE THEIR OWN GOALS FASTER if they "worked it out the hard way". I vary myself in how much I do research and how much I ask people how to do it, and I almost always seem to be more productive when I do more research.
no subject
Targetted questions are worse in some ways - if I want to do X, and ask someone a very specific question they can quickly answer, tomorrow I'm going to want to do XY, which is incredibly similar to X. If I'd spent more time doing research I'd probably know the answer already, but if I just found out about X, I'm going to have to go back and ask another question.
Most of the time management advice doesn't apply to people who come and talk to you, which is the main method of communication I have with people asking questions.
And I think people waste their own time - I think an awful lot of people who ask others how to do things would ACHIEVE THEIR OWN GOALS FASTER if they "worked it out the hard way". I vary myself in how much I do research and how much I ask people how to do it, and I almost always seem to be more productive when I do more research.