Before you help, ask who you’re doing it for. Honest answers make better helpers.

Help comes with motives attached, and they are not all bad. Sometimes you want to be useful, sometimes you want to be seen as useful, sometimes you want the other person to owe you a little. Knowing which one is driving changes what you actually do, because help aimed at your own feelings tends to be the kind nobody asked for.

Before you step in, ask what this person actually needs rather than what you would like to give. Then ask the shorter question out loud: what would help. If the answer is nothing right now, that is also help, and it is the hardest kind to offer.