Specifically Not Obvious

How do you figure out what advice to listen to?

Most of the advice that you come across from books, courses, teachers, articles etc is very general.

You know the type of advice intuitively as you’ve already heard the answers a million times.

For example, I recently came across an article where the interviewer was asking a successful entrepreneur; “what advice he would give to his twenty year old self”.  The answers he gave were general and obvious; “Work hard, stay close to family, be frugal….”.

The advice was so generalised as to not carry any meaning whatsoever.  It was literally the same as speaking without actually saying anything at all.  It seems that when advice is too generalised it’s too hard to extract any meaning and take any action from it.  This is probably the reason why the vast majority of “self-help” books and books on entrepreneurship are so bad.

The polar opposite of this type of advice is when you sit down with someone really close to you, who really knows you inside out and understands your situation exactly.

I remember when I was thinking about going to medical school.  The first people I went to get advice from was my father and brother.  The advice I got from close family members was certainly 10x better than the general and obvious advice I received from teachers or random doctors that I met.

The problem with family members and ultra close friends is that they give you specific and obvious advice.  Most of the time they say exactly what you thought they would say or give advice which may not be completely the truth, because they might be worried about hurting your feelings.

I think the holy grail of advice though is specific and not obvious.

Sometimes when you get lucky, you can get advice from someone who understands your position well, but is still removed enough to remain objective.  When you speak with someone like this it can lead you to re-examine things through a new lens which you hadn’t worn before.  It can help you re-assess your position and decide what the best way forward will be.

And isn’t this the reason we seek out advice in the first place?