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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 6199515" data-attributes="member: 150">I think we're mostly saying the same thing -- communication skills -- listening and communication your solution -- can be lacking, especially when it's necessary as a survival instinct for the expert in question.  I also made a case for the recipient being an advocate for themselves, which is hard to support if those folks are mostly "stupid, ignorant, or inept". Nobody, except the person who has to live with the consequences.   Experience and Expertise provides a whole lot of authority in a conversation about how to deal with a problem. They entitle a person to better salaries and a free meal from friends who need the expert's help. All I'm trying to say is that, the more important it is to you and the way you go about your day, the more you need to be an advocate for your own needs, even if you aren't the expert.  I think BG is doing exactly what he should be -- seeking other opinions and ideas until he feels like he has an understanding of the situation.  And I'm not saying anyone else is doing the wrong thing, either -- hell, odds are the people you deal with every day ARE stupid, ignorant, or inept. Sorry for that (hope I'm not all three). But the higher the stakes, the more those stupid, ignorant, inept folks need to buckle down and get some understanding on their own, so that even when the expert gives them options, they can make a decision they can live with. Obviously there's a little scale difference between cancer treatment and configuring email clients, but in BG's case, I think he expressed very well why his old system worked for him, and why he liked it.  It's important to him -- probably more important than a lot of other, more trivial decisions he might trust to experts without giving them a second thought.  Like, when the experts say "don't watch Once upon a Time", we don't question that advice. So what I think he's getting out of the conversation in this thread (except for this hijack we're indulging in) is the higher level of understanding that he needed to accept the newer solutions.  So, yay!-rg</blockquote>

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