The world is full of information, âgurusâ, and people wanting your money and attention.
Many people share advice on various topics, including life, work, technology, career, trends, and more.
Few of those people are adding reasoning behind what they share.
Blindly copying advice is becoming increasingly common and carries significant risks.
In the past, I made mistakes by blindly following advice from âmore experienced peopleâ.
It cost me time and money. And the time, I canât get it back.
In todayâs article Iâd like to put a more importance of being critical when seeing an advice, both offline and online.
This article serves as a reminder to myself to be extremely careful and critical of any advice.
Note: This is a bit different blog post than the ones I usually share. I hope itâs useful. Let me know what you think in the comments.
The Problem With Blindly Following Advice
There are many advice shared from many people.
While some of the generally shared advice like âsleep wellâ, âeat wellâ, âlearn javascriptâ, âlearn javascript before Reactâ might be true most of time, itâs crucial to understand why.
Once you understand why a piece of advice is reasonable, you might tweak it a bit regarding your situation, context, and problem.
This is where the true wisdom comes - knowing what to remove and what to keep.
Even though thereâre 8.2 billion people in the world, thereâre 8.2 unique billion people with their knowledge, context, and problems.
Itâs naive to think that following a random advice might solve all your problems.
No single piece of advice fits everyone.
I followed many advice blindly, without questioning them, without realizing whatâs their value, and without realizing how they fit my current situation, context, and problem.
So I spent time doing things that havenât add any value to my business, growth, or even personal life.
Looking back, this was a mistake, but Iâm grateful I learned an important lesson:
Always be critical about any advice.
Dissect the advice.
Understand why it might be good or bad.
Pick what resonates to you.
If you donât want to waste some time blindly following an advice, make sure to be critical about it.
You might âwasteâ a few minutes thinking and reading about the usefulness of an advice now, but youâll save yourself tremendous time in the future.
Be Critical About Any Advice
Including this one.
When you read or listen to an advice, make sure to understand what good things it might bring if you follow it and what bad things it might bring if you donât.
In life, universal principle is Yin & Yang.
It represents the duality of opposites that complement and attract each other.
Fundamentally, every thing in our life comes with its good and bad things.
Itâs not always black or white. Itâs something in between. Itâs a combination of both.
Remember the Yin-Yang principle and try to develop a reasoning habit in your daily life.
This way, youâll learn to filter out the non-relevant advice from the relevant one.
And thatâs crucial.
Iâm still learning and developing my critical reasoning about what I consume as an information.
I think itâs a never ending journey.
What differentiates critical thinkers from others is that they are curious, drop less helpful information and use the right ones.
Break Down Each Advice From First Principles
First principles thinking is a problem-solving method that involves breaking down complex issues into their most basic and fundamental parts.
Speaking to advice, itâs beneficial to break itâs relevance, helpfulness, and meaning.
For example, letâs say we read an advice about âApply Clean Architecture in your projectsâ.
This should trigger our curiosity and a serious of questions:
Why: âWhy this advice might be true?â
Context: âIf itâs true, when?â
Pros and Cons: âWhat are the pros and cons of the advice?â
Current situation: âIs it relevant to my situation?â
This way, we:
identify core reasons and assumptions
weight pros and cons
decide which parts apply to us
So before âApply Clean Architecture in your projectsâ, I first have to understand what clean architecture is, what are its pros and cons, then I can reason about when itâs suitable to apply or not.
Dissecting the advice is crucial to understand itâs usefulness.
Think from first principles.
Even if you donât apply it on 100%, you might pick parts of the advice that most resonates to you at that moment.
Turn generic advice into tailored advice and solution.
đ Recap
Question every advice from first principles.
Understand the core reasons before you act.
List pros and cons and match the advice to your context.
Adopt a daily reasoning habit to spot relevant tips.
Tailor generic advice to your unique situation.
Remember, always be critical about any advice - including this one.
That's all for today. I hope this was helpful. âď¸
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Pwter, simple and very clear advice. We forget the basic and elemental questions. Thanks for pointing out what should be the obvious and common train of thought
Great post Petar. An advice should just be treated as such--an advice. Not everything may be applicable to your context.