There’s No Such Thing as Good Advice

Why specific directions tend to be the most useless

Woman responding to “Easy does it” and “Respect the hustle.” (Photo by Ivan Samkov from Pexels)

Most action-based advice is bad. It’s condescending. (Work hard!) And it’s frequently contradictory (Do whatever doesn’t feel like work!)

Fortunately, it’s not just me —a post I recently saw on Hacker News argued this very thing, making fun of the uselessness of truisms like “Be hard to compete with.” Some other favorites: Follow boring advice. Practice gratitude. Focus. Stay positive. Lean in. Give fewer fucks. Make your habits small. Surround yourself with good people.

These kind of platitudes are everywhere and pretty easy to spot — I know because I’ve written plenty. The post says that good advice has three main components:

• It is not obvious
• It is actionable
• It is based on some true insight

This seems like a great list! You don’t want clichés (Believe in yourself!), you want something concrete to do (Delete social media!), and, mostly, you don’t want follow bullshit. Sadly, I’ve come to the conclusion that these three things are largely impossible to find together in anything you’ll find online. Like the cliché about having to choose between 2 of the 3 (good, fast, and cheap) if you want to hire a freelancer, good advice can’t be actionable…