The Issue With Advice
Productivity, Stories, A You-Centric Universe, and Financial Advice
Reflections and stories not advice.
When I was beginning my journey of writing, I was struggling a bit. I hadn’t written regularly in a long time, honestly since high school, thanks to not having to take an English class in college. Naturally, there was some turbulence in trying to get off the ground. I wanted to try to write so that I am not talking down to someone. I was 23 at the time. My experience was limited. I couldn’t offer sage advice on most things; I had a lot of life to still experience. I was in no position to purposely try and tell someone how to live their life. I was still trying to figure out how to live mine. My sister, trying to lend a helping hand, had sent me a tweet where the author reflected on what they like to see in writing,
“I don’t want advice threads. I want stories, reflections, and notes from your life and work. I will naturally extract the advice and tips most relevant to me by reading your stories.”
Virality isn’t the end all be all, but the tweet resonated with enough people to go decently viral. When writing, I have reflected upon that tweet over the past few months, and I find it true as well. There is nothing quite like a good story that grips you and captivates your soul. Rarely, have I found the same to be true with advice.
Simon Sinek, an inspirational speaker himself, shared similar sentiments on The Diary of A CEO,
“Nobody wants to be explained to… people will listen to stories and remember stories. They will forget explanations and they won’t learn from explanations.”
Unwanted explanations can feel like a form of discipline, which transports you back to your childhood when you were inevitably getting disciplined by your parents. No one likes to be explained to. Advice and explanations have a connotation of “my way or the highway”. And in the case of your parents when you were young, it was in fact that way. But as adults, we no longer want that.
General advice is a fine line to walk. You ask someone for advice, and it is a rule based on their experiences. I always see advice threads on social media that ask people, who are either rich in money or experiences, for advice on how to get rich. It is great to see what people, who have seemingly reached their goals, have to say, but this fails to acknowledge many things:
It could be a path to wealth that is now on a much slower timeline than it was before. Plenty of people have taken advantage of that path already, slowing the wealth acceleration possibility.
Everyone has a different risk tolerance
It doesn’t acknowledge the “luck” they may have been afforded that others were not (i.e. coming out of college trying to get a job from 1997 to 2000 versus during COVID)
It glosses over the upbringing they may have had that others didn’t, and the opportunities that came as a result of that.
The world is constantly innovating and changing what once would get you rich now may no longer. General advice is specific to the person giving it and their unique experiences.
For everyone, we live in a you-centric universe. The world revolves around us. When the advice to get rich is “to never work corporate”, this could be a byproduct of a unique life experience where they took advantage of the dot-com boom by founding a startup right out of college that made a pretty penny from it. That advice to never work corporate wouldn’t help others too much today. Maybe, if you don’t have the same availability of opportunities, you should work at a corporation yourself.
It is a dangerous game of extrapolation. It is taking a conclusion from a previous point in time and extending it to today while assuming that nothing has or will change. But if we know anything about the world, it is constantly evolving. Now, thanks to extrapolation, we are exposed to a whole host of issues. What works for one may not work for another, and the same possibilities may no longer exist.
Another genre of this general advice is asking fit people for their advice on how to get in shape. It includes things such as
Eat 6,000 to 8,000 calories
No weights, all calisthenics
Buy your food, it is not about how you workout, but how you eat
Take testosterone, not ideal
But this overlooks a huge variable. Everyone has a different genetic makeup, and there is nowhere that genetics play a larger role than in your fitness journey. Someone could eat 12 eggs for breakfast to stay fit, but if you come from a family with a history of high cholesterol, it is safe to say eating 12 eggs might not do the same for you and instead could do the exact opposite. General advice lulls us into the illusion of being productive, convincing us that it is useful.
Rather it would be much more worthwhile to understand the idea behind why you shouldn’t work corporate or why you should eat 12 eggs in the morning. The reflections from those experiences on what they gained by never having a corporate job or why they eat so many eggs for breakfast. Then we can extract the parts that may apply to us.
This is part of why this makes finance advice so tough, especially in financial markets. Yes, sound frameworks exist. We should put our 401k in the S&P 500, save X% each month of our paycheck, and utilize our company match. But it does still highlight that everyone operates differently. How much should we save each month? How much of each paycheck should go into our 401k? The risk tolerance for everyone is different. People operate on different timelines. Financial goals for everyone are not aligned.
This is why it is tough to turn on CNBC and see Jim Cramer’s eyes bulging out of his head and screaming that CAVA is to be invested in right now. It doesn’t offer much to anyone. Some people want more risk, and others want to set their money and forget about it. Telling people to buy, with zero to little reasoning, helps absolutely no one.
And if you are really curious, you can always find someone on the other side who says CAVA is a must-sell.
Most general advice nets to zero. For one person saying one thing, there is inevitably another person on the other side saying the exact opposite. For everyone who has become successful one way, there is always someone who has become successful by doing the opposite. So if all general advice nets to zero, why do people give it?
For those giving it, it feels good. So good. I am not immune to this. It helps to put us on a pedestal and feel good about ourselves because someone wants our advice. It helps us feel better that we are helping someone and we know a thing or two. Except, what may apply to us may not apply to them.
On the other hand, when we are not giving advice but instead asking for it, it tricks us into thinking we are being productive. Twitter is littered with advice threads, namely for morning routines. Having morning routines is wonderful, but the one thing these threads help us to do is convince us we are getting things done. Say I am mindlessly scrolling on Twitter, but that is okay because I am learning how to have a killer morning routine. I tell myself I will do this, that, and the third tomorrow morning, and then I will undoubtedly start the day way ahead of the curve. I will already have three things done before 8 AM. It’s addictive. But most of this ends up being for enjoyment.
There is a great story about Mozart. A young boy asks Mozart how to write a symphony. Mozart tells the boy, that he's too young and should study more first.
The boy says, "But you were writing symphonies at age 10."
Mozart replies, "But I wasn't asking people how to do it."
This goes back to the idea of it feeling good to get advice. But I have found nothing can replace the act of doing work. Anytime I have been serious about something, I have found I shouldn’t seek advice but instead just get started. We will never be “ready”. It goes back to “one day” or “day one”. I can keep accumulating bits of advice to help me feel productive, but nothing will replace me just getting to work and getting busy. That is the ultimate productivity hack.
I am young in my career and really, life for that matter. In my early experiences, I have found that stories and reflections work. There is nothing that does better than a personal story. People seem to value the personal stuff and want to see the authenticity. They gravitate towards the glimpse into the real human life that stories provide. It allows us to connect to people. So as I reflect on my writing journey, I find I should have more reflections and stories, not advice.
Appreciate you for reading.
-Scantron