To Give Advice Is Better Than to Receive Advice
How advising others can bring you closer to achieving your own goals
If you’ve ever coached a friend through a breakup or helped a co-worker figure out how to manage your difficult boss, you know how good it can feel to give someone wanted, genuinely helpful advice: that warm, fuzzy knowledge that you made a difference. The quiet pride in having someone seek out your thoughts. The satisfaction of realizing you actually know what you’re talking about.
In fact, mounting evidence suggests that giving advice benefits the giver as much as (or even more than) the receiver, particularly when it comes to achieving your own goals.
In one 2018 study, for example, middle schoolers who gave motivational advice to younger students spent more time on homework over the following month than their peers who received advice from teachers, and 72% of participants said they found giving advice to be more motivating than getting it. In another study from 2019, randomly chosen students assigned to dole out advice on classroom success got consistently higher grades than their peers in the control group.
The benefits aren’t limited to students. In the same 2018 study, researchers found that people struggling to save money or lose weight were more motivated in…
