Most AdviceThe world is full of advice. An incredible amount of these thoughts and perspectives are now floating in cyber space, accessible to the…
The world is full of advice. An incredible amount of these thoughts and perspectives are now floating in cyber space, accessible to the masses of consumers. This advice comes in all forms — from top 1o lists to youtube videos, there is some sort of advice that’ll find you.
As a “young person,” I get the full fleet of advice from brands trying to crack my wallet open. As a person interested in technology, I get a whopping amount of advice from people enlightening others in the space. As someone who loves writing, I get all the actionable tips needed to improve my publication.
I GET ALL OF THIS ADVICE ALL OF THE TIME.
And here’s what I think about it:
Execution over everything.
For a while I was consuming far more than I was creating. I was listening to others talk and tell me about their pasts, and I just sat and watch.
WORTHLESS
Well, not entirely. I mean you do learn some stuff. But not nearly as much as you could by actually doing.
Doing is the best way to learn. No advice will help you grow as much as doing does (at least for me). I’m really for doing more than talking. I think, given the state of media today, it’s really easy to be a consumer first and creator second. But I at least get way more out of being a creator.
On that note, I’m not here to say that all advice is bad. It’s just really hard for most advice to make an impact.
I generally try and avoid advice that is generic. It does not really help me improve whatsoever. The next thought is that
Outliers are not the best case studies.
I think in school, often times, people will ask you if you want to be the next Mark Zuckerberg?
My answer: no. I am going to be the first Jordan Gonen
ok that is also now a cliche thing to say^
But what I mean is that studying outliers can be deceiving and often distracting. It’s easy to have hindsight bias and see outliers as huge successes. But studying what an outlier does can often lead you astray and down the complete wrong path.
I’ve learned that thinking for myself, trusting my gut, and ACTING on intuition is how I operate best.
Otherwise I spend all my time thinking about what ifs and long term career plays.
I’m curious what you think of advice? Do you think most is valuable? Any of it?
By jordangonen on August 31, 2016.
Exported from Medium on February 17, 2018.