It pains me to see people in distress during a time society deems their ‘golden years’. Aging does not take place in many species, but in humans at least, it is an unavoidable problem with the current technology.

But leaving such complex problems apart, it pains me even more to see regular people suffer the consequences of problems which were solvable and/or preventable, some of them with minimum effort and money. Too many patients find themselves in late stage preventable diseases after losing precious time and money on crooks.

The skill of finding experts is not taught in school. Even so, problems will come hitting at you no matter your age or past. And the way you solve them is the difference between smelling the roses or getting crushed by problems.
Your ability to solve problems is limited by your experience and the time you have available. This is why solving aging is the ultimate strategy game: there is only so much time and enthusiasm left before the game ends. But fortunately, most problems are not as complex as that one.

For more down-to-earth problems, here is an algorithm to use:

1 Identify and prioritize your problem.

You need feedback for that. Feedback from others and from your body. Like when something just doesn’t feel right and you realize it’s been weeks since you last ate a salad. Or you’ve been smoking for years and after this last cold, breathing ain’t what it used to be.  You work hard but you don’t seem to make ends meet. Or people keep giving you the silent treatment and you wonder why.
Yes, there are a ton of problems that can come up at you at the same time and the day only has 24 hours no matter who you are. That is where prioritizing comes. No matter how busy you are, you must carve out time to introspect and set your priorities right. Because there are urgent problems and then there are important problems to solve. And if you don’t know your priorities, you’ll waste time solving too many urgent problems you don’t care about. Not to mention that existential problems can’t be outsourced. For existential problems, there is introspection, meditation, education, you name it.You need to deal with them yourself.
Knowing your priorities is important for getting to step 2. Before you start asking for outside help, you need to know what are those core things you don’t want to outsource. Because if you outsource everything, why are you still living? There must be something that you like to do that there is no way you will let someone else have the fun and pay for that. And linked to that core thing, there are additional skills to learn and experiences to have. In the latter case, you must do things yourselves. Because sometimes you need an expert and sometimes you need a lesson or an experience.
For other problems where you don’t have the time or the willingness to check them off your list, go to step 2 and get outside help.

2 Do your homework.

Now that you decided you want/need outside help, study your options.
There is an inherent information gap between you and the expert. That’s why you’re asking for help, right? But the same information gap can cause problems down the line if you skip your homework. I learned at the school of hard knocks that getting bad advice is worse than not getting any advice at all.

There are 3 questions to ask at the end of your homework:
-is there any profession or niche out there focused on your type of problem?
-is that profession regulated? If it is, what is the major organization – national or international – that does that and which are the minimum requirements they demand from their members?
-does the expert have any kind of online presence?

How many smokers know there are hotlines available to counsel them on quitting smoking? How many smokers know there is a niche in addiction medicine called tabacology and several pneumologists specialize in that? Most probably, there is a profession and maybe even a narrow niche inside that profession for whatever problem you may have – find its name first because you’ll need it to check whether it’s regulated or not.
Professions can be regulated for setting up monopolies, but most often than not, they are regulated for safety reasons. Medicine is one such field. There is a lot of damage you can do by neglect, lack of experience or just giving out bad advice. This is why there is such a long road from getting into medical school to being allowed to practice independently. And even after passing the specialist exam, the physician’s board will still regulate the limits of your niche.  The only exception to the latter are emergencies because presumably all doctors know what to do in such situations and the benefit is larger than the risk of doing damage.
For every regulated profession there is a national organization in charge of it.  If you decide to work with an expert from a regulated profession, search his/her name there. Bureaucracy is a maze, but this doesn’t mean it can’t be navigated.
I included the online presence as something that I find extremely valuable. You may smile I’m a Millennial and professionals shouldn’t waste time online, but bear with me. I am the receiver of several degrees and I know their limits first-hand. Having the certificate or the degree makes you a specialist. Having the experience, initiative and creativity makes you an expert. It is often difficult for me to assess physicians outside my specialty before deciding to become their patient – outside emergencies, of course – and it is that much more difficult to assess someone in a field I have no experience in. That is where their online presence comes. I had the ugly experience of working with people who seemed to have lived under a rock – e.g. not being able to open a computer or send an email. Progress has been made in every area of human activity, not only in IT and medicine. So if you can’t access the largest repository of human knowledge and human contacts, how can I trust that expert to be minimally updated on his/her field?

Apart from telling me that person is able to use the Internet, having an online presence shows me their accomplishments and how they tick. If I don’t have access to all that, it’s a gamble I don’t wanna make.
And finally, people talk. No expert will have 100% satisfied clients. The surest way to avoid mistakes is to do no work and have no initiative. More experience, more mistakes. Yes, many online reviews are fake and competitors often tarnish each other. But I’m not looking for individual online reviews, I’m just checking up the patterns: how does that expert tick? How does one treat people?

3 Think globally, act locally – alternatives to local experts

I love big cities and I consider their high real estate prices well justified. If you have a specialized complex problem to solve while living in a rural area or in a small town, good luck with finding the right person . Travel may not be feasible or affordable.
Fortunately, the Internet makes the world flatter each day and that opens up opportunities both to deliver and receive products and services. Some problems need to be acted upon locally. And many professions are regulated locally first and nationally/internationally second – which makes the international delivery of some services impossible. Except for the client traveling to the desired expert, there is no way to bypass this limitation.

If your problem is simple, you can get away with a self-help book/audio/video or even getting an answer on a Q&A site. But if it is very unique and you need a custom solution, you must deal with an expert. There is no shortcut here. But experts are not equal. The unspoken truth is that the more experience an expert has, the less tolerance one has for routine work. This is why it’s important to work with top professionals for the most complex problems only. And not postpone solving an urgent problem when the expert of today will do just to see a top one. By the time you reach there, the problem may have been irreversibly aggravated.
I remember a patient in medical school who refused to be operated on by any local physician, dismissive of trained surgeons who could help him even if practicing medicine in an ex-communist country meant they were paid peanuts. He wasted months to save money to go abroad even if his medical problem was not an unusually complex one. By the time he had half his sum, his disease was not operable anymore. On that day, a perfectionist like me learned a harsh lesson.

4 Describe your problem clearly.

This takes practice. In medical school they say listening to the patient gives you 90% of the diagnosis. After a couple of years in clinical practice, I find more value in objective lab and imagery tests for the diagnosis itself. But thinking about ordering a certain test or giving a certain piece of advice has a lot to do with how patients present their problem.
I believe that’s the case in any other field. Some clients love to ramble on and on and forget precisely those details that make up all the difference. The way an expert asks questions is just as important, of course. But that expert may have a bad day and giving a precise description of your problem goes a long way towards the best advice that you may get.
If you’ve never been to this kind of expert, learn a little bit of the jargon, especially when you deal with bureaucrats. Presumably, you already did that in step 2. And that is the perfect opportunity to learn the limits of that profession too.

5 Determine how much responsibility the expert assumes.

I am the last person to stumble over paperwork when I have to solve a problem. But an expert that shows me a contract and an invoice goes a long way into viewing that person as a professional who takes their work seriously. If there is no paperwork, this is a sign that the person declines the minimum level of responsibility and I will take everything with a grain of salt.
There is no way of knowing the responsibility an expert assumes if there is no contract written and signed by both parties. In the case of online consultancy, this contract is digital and you find it in the terms and agreement of that website. You accept it when you start using the website’s services.

6 Ask questions.
That’s why you’re paying for the consultancy. It’s not to be lectured, but to make a decision and get the right information applied to your problem. Ask what are the consequences of doing it one way or another. Yes, there is an information gap between you and the expert. That’s why you’re paying, remember? So while experts can impress us – especially in professions deemed prestigious -, forget about this during the actual consultancy and ask what you don’t understand. Finish by thanking for the expert’s time and wisdom – it goes a long way for a busy, stressed out professional.

7 Get a second opinion.
This one is especially important when decisions have massive consequences. When it comes to medicine, getting a second opinion is desirable when suspecting cancer. Getting bad advice is worse than not getting any advice at all, so if you get a second opinion in such a case, get it from a board-certified oncologist only, NOT from the latest hyped alternative practitioner who promises you a cure with no science – aka clinical trials – to back it up. If things would be that simple, we’d all do it. No doctor likes to see patients suffer or worse, die. Getting a second opinion could be beneficial in cases of elective surgery or biopsy results.
I wouldn’t abuse getting second opinions for any decision as information overload is just as bad.

8 Identify conflicts of interest.
It would be illegal for a physician – in my country at least – to prescribe drugs or make a referral and at the same time earn commission fees or own stock in pharma/medical device companies. This doesn’t mean such things don’t happen, but it’s punishable and discouraged by the community. So it boggles my mind that professionals in other fields are legally able to recommend products/services and earn commissions from referrals at the same time. Always check how that professional earns a living to avoid conflicts of interest. Because whoever pays the money is actually the client.

Conflicts of interest can arise even when experts earn salaries. Whether being civil servants or not, a salaried professional’s duty is towards one’s employer. Health insurance companies could also mingle by paying some services more than others or even rewarding certain behaviors such as curing at the expense of prevention.

Finding the right expert for your problem is a skill where practice makes perfect.

To sum it all up:

• identify and prioritize your problem
• do your homework
• think globally, act locally
• describe your problem clearly
• determine how much responsibility the expert assumes
• ask questions
• get a second opinion
• identify conflicts of interest

If this algorithm helped you in solving a problem, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below!

Anca Ioviţă is the author of Eat Less Live Longer: Your Practical Guide to Calorie Restriction with Optimal Nutrition ,The Aging Gap Between Species and What Is Your Legacy? 101Ways on Getting Started to Create and Build One available on Amazon and several other places. If you enjoyed this article, don’t forget to sign up to receive updates on longevity news and novel book projects!

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