The Advice That Matters Most Is About Advice Itself

On meta-advice

View of Dresden, Karl Gottfried Traugott Faber, 1824

Most of what I share online is notes to self. When I write, “be a bookworm and a gym rat; be a jacked nerd,” as I have done only a few billion times, I’m talking to myself. I want you to be aware of this reality. I hope you never interpret anything I put out as advice. Because advice can be dangerous. Now, I’ve applied and benefited from a significant amount of advice from both friends and family, as well as books and people on the internet. But even still, I’ve come to the conclusion that the most important advice is about advice itself, and its potential harms. Meta-advice, if you like.

Meta-advice is about realizing that advice is often problematic because everyone has a unique situation. Everyone has a different set of specific problems they are trying to solve.

Context, friends, context. What works for someone else might not work for you, and what didn’t work for someone else might work for you. “If you survey enough people, all of the advice will cancel to zero,” said philosopher Naval Ravikant. “You have to have your own point of view…you have to reject most advice.” By rejecting most advice, you avoid wasting precious time doing things that don’t make sense for you to be doing.

You could say that by rejecting most advice, you start to take your own advice.

The challenge is that taking your own advice is notoriously hard. The biblical story of King Solomon illustrates this idea. Solomon was wise, and would give advice that helped many people. But in his life he did not apply his own wisdom so well. The disconnect highlights how your ego can cloud your ability to give yourself good advice. Meanwhile, you can give good advice to a friend if they ask for it. A potential solution I once heard? When you are seeking guidance, you can pretend you yourself are a friend who is asking you for advice.

Speaking of asking for advice, that brings us to another aspect of meta-advice: you should avoid giving advice to someone unless they ask for it. Yes, I realize this article could be an example of that, but let’s forget that for the sake of the message.

Anyway, at this gym I used to go to back home, there was this guy who was the king of unsolicited advice. I used to observe how it would bother people. He was pretty big, although he appeared to skip leg day. He would often walk around the gym and critique people on their form and offer tips. Whether they were good tips or not didn’t matter. People’s annoyed reactions seemed to say, “thanks I guess, but I didn’t ask?”

The problem was that, as writer Rob Henderson has pointed out, unsolicited advice often breeds resentment. When you give someone advice on something, there is an implicit assumption that you are more skilled or more knowledgeable than that person in that area. It’s better to let someone acknowledge this by asking for advice, than to assume you know better and offer it out of left field. If you offer advice out of left field—no matter how well-intentioned it is—you’re likely to turn people off. (Who are you to be giving me advice?)

I remember the day King Advice finally said something to me in the gym. It happened while I was doing cable pushdowns. It wasn’t quite advice. It was, however, an excellent example of a backhanded compliment. He applauded me for doing “light weight” and high reps, and encouraged me to keep it up. I think he meant well. I just nodded, said thanks, and let him speak. He explained to me that he is not a trainer. He just likes walking around the gym helping people. I considered giving him advice about giving advice no one asked for, but I bit my tongue.

Because don’t you ever just get sick of all the advice?