The cursor blinks. It’s a patient, rhythmic pulse of white against a sea of unread messages, each one a polite little hand reaching out of the screen. I’ve come to recognize the shape of them before I even click. They’re almost always variations on a theme, a familiar chord played in a slightly different key. ‘I know you’re busy, but…’ or ‘Just a quick question…’ and the heavyweight champion of them all, ‘I’d love to pick your brain for five minutes.’

It’s the conversational equivalent of asking to borrow a pen. Except it isn’t. Not really. Asking to ‘pick my brain’ is like asking a foley artist to ‘just make a quick sound.’

The Cathedral of Sound: Expertise Distilled

I know one. Her name is Robin Z., and her studio is a chaotic wonderland of seemingly useless objects: a rusted wheelbarrow, a bin of broken glass, 31 different kinds of dried leaves, a stalk of celery. To you, it’s junk. To her, it’s the sound of a T-Rex’s footsteps, a starship’s hull groaning under pressure, or a hero’s heart breaking. When someone asks to pick her brain about ‘how to get into foley,’ they aren’t asking for five minutes. They are asking her to distill 21 years of calloused hands, of listening to the world in a way most of us can’t even imagine, of discovering that a frozen cabbage being smashed with a hammer sounds exactly like a skull fracturing. They are asking for the blueprint to her cathedral of sound, and they think it fits on a sticktail napkin.

That’s the core of the delusion. The asker believes they are requesting a single screw. The expert knows they’ve been handed that screw and implicitly asked to build the entire piece of furniture it belongs to, without instructions, on a Tuesday afternoon when they were supposed to be doing something else entirely. I recently assembled a bookshelf where the manufacturer had forgotten to include 11 essential bolts. The box looked complete. The instructions seemed simple. But the missing pieces made the entire structure an exercise in futility and quiet rage. The five-minute favor is that box. It presents itself as a complete, simple package, but it’s missing the most critical components: the cost of context switching, the weight of preparation, and the value of the expert’s time.

The Hidden Cost: A 31-Minute Hole

Research I’ve seen suggests it can take over 21 minutes to regain deep focus after an interruption. A five-minute chat, therefore, is never five minutes. It’s a 31-minute hole punched into the most productive part of someone’s day. First, there’s the scheduling back-and-forth (11 emails). Then, there’s the pre-call mental prep, where the expert has to guess what the asker actually wants to know and organize their thoughts. Then the call itself, which inevitably runs to 11 or 21 minutes. And finally, the slow, painful process of re-engaging with the complex task that was so rudely interrupted. The cost isn’t five minutes; it’s a significant slice of cognitive real estate.

From Asker to Enlightened: A Personal Revelation

I’ll admit, I used to be the one asking. In my early twenties, armed with networking advice from books that probably had a stock photo of a handshake on the cover, I sent dozens of these messages. I genuinely believed it was a sign of respect-‘I value your time so much, I’m only asking for a tiny piece of it!’ I didn’t understand that I was framing their life’s work as a free sample at a warehouse store. A quick, extractable resource to be consumed, not a relationship to be built. One person, a designer I deeply admired, replied with a single, devastatingly polite sentence: ‘My brain is not available for picking, but I’ve written extensively about my process on my blog.’ He sent a link. I was mortified, then enlightened. He wasn’t being rude; he was protecting his focus and valuing his own expertise. He had already done the work of sharing his knowledge, but he’d done it on his own terms, in a scalable way.

The Broken Model: Liquid vs. Solid Expertise

This is where the model is broken. We treat expertise as a liquid that can be siphoned off in small increments. But it’s not. It’s a solid structure, built over thousands of hours of failure, practice, and study. Asking for a five-minute chat is like asking a master carpenter to teach you joinery by letting you watch them sand a single leg of a chair. You’re missing everything that matters.

The Invisible Labor of Expertise

I find it fascinating that we do this. We wouldn’t ask a surgeon for a ‘quick tip on stitches’ while she’s in the middle of a consult, or ask a pilot to ‘just show me how the flaps work’ during takeoff. Yet because knowledge work is invisible, we assume the labor involved in accessing and articulating that knowledge is negligible. Robin, the foley artist, once spent 41 hours trying to create the perfect sound for a single drop of alien blood hitting a metal floor. The final sound involved layering the sizzle of a hot pan, the pitch-shifted chirp of a dying insect, and the sound of a single drop of honey falling on a heated cymbal. If you asked her to ‘pick her brain’ on sound design, what piece of that process could she possibly convey in five minutes without devaluing the entire 41-hour struggle?

From One-to-One to One-to-Many: The Scalable Solution

So I started saying no. Mostly. But then I felt like a gatekeeper, the very thing I despised. And this is the contradiction I live with: I hate the transactional nature of the ‘quick chat,’ but I also believe in mentorship and helping others. So I changed my approach. I realized the problem wasn’t the ask; it was the format. The one-to-one, synchronous brain-pick is horrifically inefficient. Instead of giving one person a fish, you can teach hundreds to fish by creating content. Robin could spend an afternoon recording her process for creating that alien blood drop sound, explaining her thought process and methodology. She could turn that knowledge into a durable asset, an article or a video. For those who learn by listening while they work or commute, she could even use a service that converts her written process into a shareable asset, turning her detailed blog post or script into texto em audio for a wider audience. Instead of 11 one-on-one calls that drain her energy, she creates one asset that serves 1,001 people. It’s about respecting her own expertise enough to package it effectively, and respecting the learners enough to give them something of real substance.

Redirection, Not Rejection: Building Genuine Connections

Now, when I get those requests, I have a new response. It’s a polite refusal of the format, but an enthusiastic acceptance of the intent. I point them to articles I’ve written, talks I’ve given, or resources I trust. It’s not a rejection; it’s a redirection. It’s my version of the designer’s polite but firm reply that changed my perspective years ago. Some people get it. They’re grateful and dig into the resources. Others vanish. They weren’t interested in the knowledge, only in the access. They wanted the feeling of connection to an ‘expert’ more than the expertise itself. And that’s a fine goal, but the ‘five-minute favor’ is a dishonest backdoor to get there.

Building a genuine relationship takes time and reciprocity. It starts with following someone’s work, engaging with their ideas thoughtfully, offering something of value first, however small. The ‘pick your brain’ request attempts to shortcut that entire process. It’s a withdrawal from a bank account you’ve never deposited into. The next time you feel the urge to ask for just five minutes of someone’s time, ask yourself a better question: ‘How can I engage with this person’s work in a way that respects the thousands of hours they’ve already invested?’ The answer to that is where real connection begins.