I try approach topics from many angles. One is to find the most honorable path, something for others to admire. This formula once gave me a great idea: if you follow advice or not will have great influence on future advice. People will actively seek your perspective if you actually do what they suggest. It means that one might ponder only the worse possible outcome and if you are guaranteed to come out of it without loss there is no further excuse not ro follow it.
If I pick up running thanks to this article and thank you for it you might reply with other ideas in the same category.
If people make a feature request and you implement them just because they asked then there will be small requests that normally wouldn't be made.
Agreed! When I ask people for advice, if in doubt, I try to follow the advice. If nothing else, it makes them feel good. But also, it seems to me that people in general should follow advice a bit more?
As an Indian a nit in “Krishna is blue”. Krishna is black - the name literally means black or dark. As in Sanskrit the new moon is called “Krishna paksha” the dark phase.
> I struggle to answer my email. I accumulate ever-larger numbers of emails marked REPLY ASAP
I have advice! Never reply to emails. If it looks important enough to bother with, ring back. If it's not important enough to ring back about, delete it.
I commented on Zvi's post linking to this, but I guess I should comment here as well:
I think this piece is missing what to my mind is the largest reason why advice isn’t helpful: Because the advice is just expressing one side of a generic tradeoff that you already know about and isn’t presenting any new considerations. More generally, they’ve heard it before and believe themselves to be already accounting for it.
When you’re trying to figure out how to trade off between two things, just being told “too far that way is bad!” isn’t helpful. Yeah, I know that, but where do I strike the balance? Such advice is helpful for people who weren’t aware that there was a tradeoff there, that there was anything to beware of on that side, but if you already do, it tells you nothing. If it brings in a new consideration — a new reason that too far that way is bad, that you weren’t previously aware of — then it can be helpful, but often it doesn’t.
(Your initial mythical example can easily be read as an example of this — “Yeah, I *know* war is destructive and that mutual annihilation is a possible outcome! What else is new?” If it’s not tailored to or backed up by an analysis of the specific situation, just saying “you’re going to get the worst-case outcome from your plan” isn’t helpful.)
The problem is that what you need is a target to hit, but the way people will express these is instead as a direction to push in. And this is made more difficult to make sense of because people will express the target as a direction *relative to their own idea of baseline*. But what that baseline is varies! So two people might actually agree on the best way to handle a given situation, but one tells you “look before you leap” while the other tells you “he who hesitates is lost” because what they’re thinking of as the baseline is different. (This is related to and overlaps with your “lived experience” category, I guess.)
(I guess it also overlaps with the “they don’t understand it” category. But it’s worth noting that once again that you seem to be discussing *generic* advice. The way to get past this barrier is to actually analyze the specific situation and back up what you say in terms of it, rather than presenting general considerations that your audience has probably heard before!)
So that’s why so much advice ends up useless — because I know that you should look before you leap, and I know that he who hesitates is lost, but how do I trade off between these (or whatever I’m trading off between) in this particular situation? So much advice fails to answer this!
Thanks for this. I'm not sure I agree that this is the largest reason, but I think it's *a* reason that helps explain some failures of advice, and one that I didn't clearly articulate. As you note, it's related to some of the existing categories ("it's too hard", "people are different", "people don't understand it") but I think it's distinct enough that it's probably best thought of as category of its own. And I would have made it a category of its own if I had thought of it!
I think you stick with the current writing style another couple years. I used to read your letter, enjoyed it so much I sent it to a writer friend. The writer friend said "Meh, I don't get it." Up till then I thought your letters were brilliant. Then my own definition of a good writer (friend) contradicted my belief (your writing was good and fun). Soon after I stopped reading your letter. But yesterday, I thought, "Wow Semafor is a bunch of great writers if they think Dynomight is worthy of mention in their sparse use of words, I'm gonna read more Dynomight again." Then I remembered my writer buddy (car mag guy) gave me advice on a vehicle to get - at my request. It was one of the cars he loves. His advice made a case to his preferences, not mine. The car recommendation sucked for me, I didn’t buy it. I still don't have a car. Jinx... Whenever I publicly decry something I'm made to eat my words -damn it!).
Soooo, you alluded to the desire for writing advice... make some incremental changes.* They may hold you over for two years when you can wake up one day and completely revamp your writing so as to differentiate and throw off all the Al writers we’ll be reading.
*Changes you could try, by a person w/ no writing aptitude but chooses to attempt to write in your style (flattery… blah, blah, blah).
1) Double up or triple up punctuation?!?
2) Use 11x the amount of slang.
3) Pick three random rules From Otis & Strunk and do the opposite
4) Spell out all numbers over 9
5) Always include one typo so you get a least one extra response telling you about the error (engagement).
No one ever asks for my advice so I'm carelessly throwing around advice now. It's fun. I don't think you should follow any of my advice. My advice is not to follow any of my advice.
Thanks for the story. An interesting tale for how word of mouth can cause negative growth in readership!
Interestingly, I always unintentionally follow advice #5. (I'm somehow incapable of not following it, even when using multiple spelling and grammar checkers...) Very often people write to me to correct typos. But most often, these people use the anonymous email form at https://dynomight.net/about/ without leaving their email address, so I can't even thank them!
Feels like this is teetering to an actionable article, but not. Maybe because there are 10 "reason" and I can't hold them all in my head. A design class told me that the ideal number is 5-7 anyway. My "advice" (heh) is that this seems like something that can be made a hierarchy so that the list of reason (in each level) is much shorter.
The one that came to my mind immediately is to separate between whether the asker perceive your advice as bad or good. It neatly divides the first 5 and second 5, and they do seem to have different general "solution".
Its true that advice with certain upfront costs for possible later benefits are very difficult to apply.
The Jim situation. Even when the advice is good.
But consider in addition to that, people don't follow advice because (much of the time), they are NOT asking for advice, they are asking for connection and sympathy.
"I am overweight and feel bad about myself."
[Correct answer with a definite upfront cost]
"Replace sandwiches with salads at lunch."
[hint: they like the yummy sandwiches - its a definite loss to give them up]
[Nice answer]
"I like you."
[Connecting answer]
"Its nice outside. Lets take a walk."
So my advice is.... consider that often people are looking to talk about their foibles. Help them by sharing and caring.
How to tell tell the difference? ... pay attention if to what they are doing - not what they say.
Are they talking with you or are they on a "change journey".
If they are just talking, then sharing and caring.
If they are doing changes already and not getting result, ok then make a meaningful suggestion
"I been at the gym doing burpee for four weeks. I have better endurance, but the scale has stayed the same"
"ok - replace one meal in you day, with salad or plain veggie bowl. do it every day for a month and your weight will definitely drop. Keep it up for a year and the weight will stay off. The second part is super hard but you can do it."
Hmm. When I read the title the answer popped into my head and then I was surprised that you didn't even mention it.
The answer imo is that nobody who has a problem actually wants advice. Almost everybody knows how to solve their own problems. They're smart, usually just as smart as you. The problem is that they're afraid to do it for some (usually complicated) reason, and although it sounds like they want advice, what they actually need is encouragement to do the right thing, and to overcome their weakness and fear, and for you to believe in them. Otherwise they are trapped, reacting to their fear and unable to find or grasp the alternative.
If you add the consequences to the advice, people listen. I have lots of fun with people that park near my office. I'll say "Just a heads up, it against the law to parallel park in the wrong direction", if I get shit from them, then I say "have a good day and good luck." If they are nice, I will tell them that "The cops love giving tickets on this street for that."
Guess which ones, move or park correctly? The others get tickets and I thank the cop that gives it to them. I have lost count of the times, I seen them try and make a u-turn to leave from the wrong direction. It is always funny. Traffic backed up, they are in a rush and they cannot get out.
People should ask advice from people they actually respect on whatever topic they're asking advice about.
That saves the insult when they discard your advice, and also your time for giving advice when they won't respect your authority, wisdom or experience in anyway.
My take is that most "advice is weak magic," that is, most often an conscious or unconscious attempt to influence reality—in the case of advice, someone else's reality. The overall result is less agency on the part of the advisee and. quite often. resentment of the advisor, even if the advice was "good."
Much advice is a sort of karmic theft, and people don't like being in debt. This is also why teenagers hate parents' advice, even if they might be well advised to take it. I still bridle at much of the advice people cast my way.
I try to remember to speak from personal experience—not "this is what I would do if I was you," but "I was once faced with a simliar situation, and this is what I did" or "what you're describing reminds me of a time that X happened, and I did Y." I am much more receptive to this kind of sharing of actual lived experience.
A pretty pragmatic take on advice giving and taking.
I think we also often expect too much out of the advising. Actions speak louder than words.
If you are a consumer of advice, it might be better to observe (successful) actions vs seek words of assurance. If you are a producer of advice, it might be better to lead with (successful) actions and let them speak for themselves.
Interesting topic - one that I have dealt with quite a bit as a startup mentor.
In order to understand why most people don't take advice, I think you need a better (more complex) model of human decision making.
All decisions require TRADE OFFs - when confronted with a NOVEL situation, most people are terrible decision makers because 1) they don't really understand the actual trade offs they are making and 2) once they DO understand the required inputs, they are UNACCEPTABLE and 3) they HOPE that another opportunity will present itself (and sometimes it does).
Here is an extreme example:
Your car breaks down in the desert. With your last bit of cell phone battery you contact road-side service. The tow truck driver arrives and realizes that if he doesn't help you, you will die by tomorrow.
He demands *all* your money (bank accounts, investments, house, everything).
The correct advice is give him the money - being broke is better than being dead.
But MOST people would rather "die" (or stay in the same circumstances) rather than make the "hard" decision to accept a difficult trade off. Most people will HOPE that someone else will come by and help them, which will give them a better trade off (but often it doesn't).
For most people the benefits of change (salvation) is not worth the cost required to achieve it because they have an flawed understanding of what change costs and what the benefits are worth (and they over value hope).
Thoreau said "Most men lead live of quiet desperation."
Perhaps because they are unwilling to pay the price of change.
I apologize that this is a total distraction from your broader point, but it struck me that your tow truck scenario is a very interesting adjunct to the classic desert hitchhiker scenario (https://dynomight.net/reasons-and-persons/#how-self-interest-gets-into-trouble). While in some sense it's illogical to refuse to hand over all your money, you could also see this as a kind of "rational irrationality"—if they driver knows that you're "irrational" like this, then the rational thing for THEM to do is to tone down their demands so they get something rather than nothing. I suspect this "rational irrationality" is programmed into us to some degree in our intuitive sense of fairness.
Again, I know this is a total distraction from your broader point, because it's just an example and you could easily change i example in a way that would preserve your point without bringing up these issues. Just thought it was interesting!
The first bit of ironic meta advice is that giving advice helps the advice-giver but backfires for the advice-receiver. (This is related to something we’ve discovered with customer support. Upside-down support, we call it.) Taking that idea to its logical conclusion leads us to Advice Clubs. Normally, unsolicited advice shakes a person’s confidence, but also giving someone else advice helps you by creating cognitive dissonance if you aren’t following your own advice. An Advice Club gets the best of both worlds. All the advice is solicited, by virtue of being given in Advice Club, and, most importantly, advice-givers are getting a commitment device. You feel like a hypocrite if you don’t follow the advice you’re giving someone else.
(Side tip that I picked up somewhere in the rationality community: Instead of offering advice to someone, pose an equivalent thought experiment. So instead of “you should do X” you can say “what do you think would happen if you did X?”)
I try approach topics from many angles. One is to find the most honorable path, something for others to admire. This formula once gave me a great idea: if you follow advice or not will have great influence on future advice. People will actively seek your perspective if you actually do what they suggest. It means that one might ponder only the worse possible outcome and if you are guaranteed to come out of it without loss there is no further excuse not ro follow it.
If I pick up running thanks to this article and thank you for it you might reply with other ideas in the same category.
If people make a feature request and you implement them just because they asked then there will be small requests that normally wouldn't be made.
Agreed! When I ask people for advice, if in doubt, I try to follow the advice. If nothing else, it makes them feel good. But also, it seems to me that people in general should follow advice a bit more?
As an Indian a nit in “Krishna is blue”. Krishna is black - the name literally means black or dark. As in Sanskrit the new moon is called “Krishna paksha” the dark phase.
But… but he’s clearly blue at least sometimes! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krishna Maybe it depends on the avatar?
as if it were a novel
not:
as if it was novel
Thanks! I don't want "a" (I'm not talking about a book) but "were novel" seems better than "was novel".
> I struggle to answer my email. I accumulate ever-larger numbers of emails marked REPLY ASAP
I have advice! Never reply to emails. If it looks important enough to bother with, ring back. If it's not important enough to ring back about, delete it.
I commented on Zvi's post linking to this, but I guess I should comment here as well:
I think this piece is missing what to my mind is the largest reason why advice isn’t helpful: Because the advice is just expressing one side of a generic tradeoff that you already know about and isn’t presenting any new considerations. More generally, they’ve heard it before and believe themselves to be already accounting for it.
When you’re trying to figure out how to trade off between two things, just being told “too far that way is bad!” isn’t helpful. Yeah, I know that, but where do I strike the balance? Such advice is helpful for people who weren’t aware that there was a tradeoff there, that there was anything to beware of on that side, but if you already do, it tells you nothing. If it brings in a new consideration — a new reason that too far that way is bad, that you weren’t previously aware of — then it can be helpful, but often it doesn’t.
(Your initial mythical example can easily be read as an example of this — “Yeah, I *know* war is destructive and that mutual annihilation is a possible outcome! What else is new?” If it’s not tailored to or backed up by an analysis of the specific situation, just saying “you’re going to get the worst-case outcome from your plan” isn’t helpful.)
The problem is that what you need is a target to hit, but the way people will express these is instead as a direction to push in. And this is made more difficult to make sense of because people will express the target as a direction *relative to their own idea of baseline*. But what that baseline is varies! So two people might actually agree on the best way to handle a given situation, but one tells you “look before you leap” while the other tells you “he who hesitates is lost” because what they’re thinking of as the baseline is different. (This is related to and overlaps with your “lived experience” category, I guess.)
(I guess it also overlaps with the “they don’t understand it” category. But it’s worth noting that once again that you seem to be discussing *generic* advice. The way to get past this barrier is to actually analyze the specific situation and back up what you say in terms of it, rather than presenting general considerations that your audience has probably heard before!)
So that’s why so much advice ends up useless — because I know that you should look before you leap, and I know that he who hesitates is lost, but how do I trade off between these (or whatever I’m trading off between) in this particular situation? So much advice fails to answer this!
Thanks for this. I'm not sure I agree that this is the largest reason, but I think it's *a* reason that helps explain some failures of advice, and one that I didn't clearly articulate. As you note, it's related to some of the existing categories ("it's too hard", "people are different", "people don't understand it") but I think it's distinct enough that it's probably best thought of as category of its own. And I would have made it a category of its own if I had thought of it!
I think you stick with the current writing style another couple years. I used to read your letter, enjoyed it so much I sent it to a writer friend. The writer friend said "Meh, I don't get it." Up till then I thought your letters were brilliant. Then my own definition of a good writer (friend) contradicted my belief (your writing was good and fun). Soon after I stopped reading your letter. But yesterday, I thought, "Wow Semafor is a bunch of great writers if they think Dynomight is worthy of mention in their sparse use of words, I'm gonna read more Dynomight again." Then I remembered my writer buddy (car mag guy) gave me advice on a vehicle to get - at my request. It was one of the cars he loves. His advice made a case to his preferences, not mine. The car recommendation sucked for me, I didn’t buy it. I still don't have a car. Jinx... Whenever I publicly decry something I'm made to eat my words -damn it!).
Soooo, you alluded to the desire for writing advice... make some incremental changes.* They may hold you over for two years when you can wake up one day and completely revamp your writing so as to differentiate and throw off all the Al writers we’ll be reading.
*Changes you could try, by a person w/ no writing aptitude but chooses to attempt to write in your style (flattery… blah, blah, blah).
1) Double up or triple up punctuation?!?
2) Use 11x the amount of slang.
3) Pick three random rules From Otis & Strunk and do the opposite
4) Spell out all numbers over 9
5) Always include one typo so you get a least one extra response telling you about the error (engagement).
No one ever asks for my advice so I'm carelessly throwing around advice now. It's fun. I don't think you should follow any of my advice. My advice is not to follow any of my advice.
Thanks for the story. An interesting tale for how word of mouth can cause negative growth in readership!
Interestingly, I always unintentionally follow advice #5. (I'm somehow incapable of not following it, even when using multiple spelling and grammar checkers...) Very often people write to me to correct typos. But most often, these people use the anonymous email form at https://dynomight.net/about/ without leaving their email address, so I can't even thank them!
Feels like this is teetering to an actionable article, but not. Maybe because there are 10 "reason" and I can't hold them all in my head. A design class told me that the ideal number is 5-7 anyway. My "advice" (heh) is that this seems like something that can be made a hierarchy so that the list of reason (in each level) is much shorter.
The one that came to my mind immediately is to separate between whether the asker perceive your advice as bad or good. It neatly divides the first 5 and second 5, and they do seem to have different general "solution".
Its true that advice with certain upfront costs for possible later benefits are very difficult to apply.
The Jim situation. Even when the advice is good.
But consider in addition to that, people don't follow advice because (much of the time), they are NOT asking for advice, they are asking for connection and sympathy.
"I am overweight and feel bad about myself."
[Correct answer with a definite upfront cost]
"Replace sandwiches with salads at lunch."
[hint: they like the yummy sandwiches - its a definite loss to give them up]
[Nice answer]
"I like you."
[Connecting answer]
"Its nice outside. Lets take a walk."
So my advice is.... consider that often people are looking to talk about their foibles. Help them by sharing and caring.
How to tell tell the difference? ... pay attention if to what they are doing - not what they say.
Are they talking with you or are they on a "change journey".
If they are just talking, then sharing and caring.
If they are doing changes already and not getting result, ok then make a meaningful suggestion
"I been at the gym doing burpee for four weeks. I have better endurance, but the scale has stayed the same"
"ok - replace one meal in you day, with salad or plain veggie bowl. do it every day for a month and your weight will definitely drop. Keep it up for a year and the weight will stay off. The second part is super hard but you can do it."
Hmm. When I read the title the answer popped into my head and then I was surprised that you didn't even mention it.
The answer imo is that nobody who has a problem actually wants advice. Almost everybody knows how to solve their own problems. They're smart, usually just as smart as you. The problem is that they're afraid to do it for some (usually complicated) reason, and although it sounds like they want advice, what they actually need is encouragement to do the right thing, and to overcome their weakness and fear, and for you to believe in them. Otherwise they are trapped, reacting to their fear and unable to find or grasp the alternative.
If you add the consequences to the advice, people listen. I have lots of fun with people that park near my office. I'll say "Just a heads up, it against the law to parallel park in the wrong direction", if I get shit from them, then I say "have a good day and good luck." If they are nice, I will tell them that "The cops love giving tickets on this street for that."
Guess which ones, move or park correctly? The others get tickets and I thank the cop that gives it to them. I have lost count of the times, I seen them try and make a u-turn to leave from the wrong direction. It is always funny. Traffic backed up, they are in a rush and they cannot get out.
People should ask advice from people they actually respect on whatever topic they're asking advice about.
That saves the insult when they discard your advice, and also your time for giving advice when they won't respect your authority, wisdom or experience in anyway.
Perhaps people aren't seeking my advice at all, ever.
In fact, they have already made up their minds for what they are going to do, or act or whatever.. and I either validate their decision or I don't.
Giving advice is a waste of time.
My take is that most "advice is weak magic," that is, most often an conscious or unconscious attempt to influence reality—in the case of advice, someone else's reality. The overall result is less agency on the part of the advisee and. quite often. resentment of the advisor, even if the advice was "good."
Much advice is a sort of karmic theft, and people don't like being in debt. This is also why teenagers hate parents' advice, even if they might be well advised to take it. I still bridle at much of the advice people cast my way.
I try to remember to speak from personal experience—not "this is what I would do if I was you," but "I was once faced with a simliar situation, and this is what I did" or "what you're describing reminds me of a time that X happened, and I did Y." I am much more receptive to this kind of sharing of actual lived experience.
A pretty pragmatic take on advice giving and taking.
I think we also often expect too much out of the advising. Actions speak louder than words.
If you are a consumer of advice, it might be better to observe (successful) actions vs seek words of assurance. If you are a producer of advice, it might be better to lead with (successful) actions and let them speak for themselves.
Interesting topic - one that I have dealt with quite a bit as a startup mentor.
In order to understand why most people don't take advice, I think you need a better (more complex) model of human decision making.
All decisions require TRADE OFFs - when confronted with a NOVEL situation, most people are terrible decision makers because 1) they don't really understand the actual trade offs they are making and 2) once they DO understand the required inputs, they are UNACCEPTABLE and 3) they HOPE that another opportunity will present itself (and sometimes it does).
Here is an extreme example:
Your car breaks down in the desert. With your last bit of cell phone battery you contact road-side service. The tow truck driver arrives and realizes that if he doesn't help you, you will die by tomorrow.
He demands *all* your money (bank accounts, investments, house, everything).
The correct advice is give him the money - being broke is better than being dead.
But MOST people would rather "die" (or stay in the same circumstances) rather than make the "hard" decision to accept a difficult trade off. Most people will HOPE that someone else will come by and help them, which will give them a better trade off (but often it doesn't).
For most people the benefits of change (salvation) is not worth the cost required to achieve it because they have an flawed understanding of what change costs and what the benefits are worth (and they over value hope).
Thoreau said "Most men lead live of quiet desperation."
Perhaps because they are unwilling to pay the price of change.
I apologize that this is a total distraction from your broader point, but it struck me that your tow truck scenario is a very interesting adjunct to the classic desert hitchhiker scenario (https://dynomight.net/reasons-and-persons/#how-self-interest-gets-into-trouble). While in some sense it's illogical to refuse to hand over all your money, you could also see this as a kind of "rational irrationality"—if they driver knows that you're "irrational" like this, then the rational thing for THEM to do is to tone down their demands so they get something rather than nothing. I suspect this "rational irrationality" is programmed into us to some degree in our intuitive sense of fairness.
Again, I know this is a total distraction from your broader point, because it's just an example and you could easily change i example in a way that would preserve your point without bringing up these issues. Just thought it was interesting!
A while back I wrote a book review for Katy Milkman's _How To Change_ and it included some advice on advice.
https://blog.beeminder.com/milkman (see chapter 6)
Excerpt:
The first bit of ironic meta advice is that giving advice helps the advice-giver but backfires for the advice-receiver. (This is related to something we’ve discovered with customer support. Upside-down support, we call it.) Taking that idea to its logical conclusion leads us to Advice Clubs. Normally, unsolicited advice shakes a person’s confidence, but also giving someone else advice helps you by creating cognitive dissonance if you aren’t following your own advice. An Advice Club gets the best of both worlds. All the advice is solicited, by virtue of being given in Advice Club, and, most importantly, advice-givers are getting a commitment device. You feel like a hypocrite if you don’t follow the advice you’re giving someone else.
(Side tip that I picked up somewhere in the rationality community: Instead of offering advice to someone, pose an equivalent thought experiment. So instead of “you should do X” you can say “what do you think would happen if you did X?”)