People often ask "how do i do this?" I'm getting into the habit of first asking them right back "why do you want to do that?"

Sometimes the solution they are asking about is not suited to the problem they are trying to solve. The bad thing about that is they may not know enough about the solution to know it's unsuited.

So I find that a good thing to do is to dig dig dig until you get all the way down to the intent. Once you know intent you are in a better position to give your opinion. Intent itself is unbiased by a solution, which gives you more creativity and flexibility in your own suggestion for a solution.

This relates to software development in many ways but a common one is user feedback. A customer/user may not be very technically inclined but asks you to implement some specific feature or enhancement.

They fall into the common feedback trap and phrase the request in the form of a solution rather than a problem. Consider their suggested solution but also dig down to the intent of the problem, so you can integrate an intent-based solution into the current software architecture. You are responsible for maintaining the architecture and making sure everything fits, not them.