some of these can't be reasons people don't follow advice, because they would have to follow the advice first to find out, right?
maybe the biggest reason is epistemic - "people don't know if your advice will work". this tracks with how people actually respond to advice. people listen to experts on specific topics. eg, we usually listen to plumbers. and PhD candidates I know listen to the advice in job market preparatory seminars. but there's no reason to believe random life advice from random person, even if they've had the same problem, because one experience with a problem does not make someone an expert. this is something we understand intuitively.
Certainly we might as well ignore advice from randos. But I feel like many people (and certainly I) also tend to ignore advice from people we know well and respect. I think part of what puzzles me about this is a kind of Aumann's agreement theorem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann%27s_agreement_theorem) kind of thing—in theory we should all be able to agree on what's best. But then, Aumann's agreement theorem pretty clearly fails to work in the real world in all sorts of situations beyond just advice.
I find that people are more likely to resist advice from family and spouses and then follow identical advice from friends. Family always involves issues of control that can’t be separated from the advice. With your friends, you typically don’t have to worry about that as much. So maybe there’s some kind of U-shaped curve for propensity to follow advice based on how close you are to someone.
Yes, I was thinking something similar while reading.
Most people don't realize they're in free fall when you offer them a parachute, and most advice is to take skydiving lessons in mid-drop. Giving advice is a bet; taking it is a risk. For both, awareness and context are key.
Instead of solving problems or handing out solutions, we should focus on helping people recognize their situation and whether that is a free fall. You might ask, 'Does the ground seem further away than usual?' And who knows they might reply, 'I'm Superman, it's okay!'
Your writing makes me smile (and it's also intelligent and interesting). But what i wanted to say in the comments here is that in this specific edition of the newsletter there are several paragraphs that could be converted into song lyrics with only the most modest changes for scansion. Someone should do that!
Thank you. Not sure what paragraphs you're referring to, but if Phife Dawg was still alive, I'd love to hear Tribe Called Quest do the story at the beginning from the Mahabharata.
well, this one: "Often the advice was good and there wasn’t anything difficult about it. But I didn’t understand it and didn’t take it seriously. Looking back, I should have thought, “There must be a reason all these smart people keep bringing this up.” But instead my brain sort of converted their words into a big whooshing sound."
I'm sort of vaguely hearing that as LCD Soundsystem-ish, with a big super-obvious synth whoosh as we go into the chorus (nothing at all wrong with a big super-obvious synth woosh, btw)
Thanks for the running tip, that seems surprisingly obvious, but worth trying. I often walk places, now I will try jogging at least a portion consistently.
I agree on the "try consumerism" advice. I've recently gotten a decent job and have extra money and I've been finding there are all sorts of things that are worth buying that I didn't know about.
My shortlist:
1. Bluetooth wireless earbuds
2. Creatine
3. A star projector(they look really cool)
4. Ear plugs if you go to concerts
5. A water flosser if you find it hard to be consistent about flossing
6. Nice bluetooth mouse and keyboard that are ergonomic and have lots of extra buttons
I took it while I was working out regularly, and have since lapsed, and I'm not sure which results are independent. But I felt my muscle tone was firmer, and I needed to drink more water. I didn't notice any mental effects.
For what it's worth, I do all of these except 3. (Though I advice a water flosser as a complement to regular flossing—if you have trouble flossing I suggest getting luxury floss.)
Incidentally, this is a nice demonstration of how we are funny about advice. Given that I like 6/7 of your list and have never tried the last, you'd think I would be strongly inclined to try the last. But I'm not!
The electric toothbrush I'd say is probably actually a very slightly more unpleasant experience than a regular toothbrush. But my dentist friend told me it's vastly more important. And on every reddit thread that's like "Old people, what do you regret?" Not taking care of their teeth was a top answer. So I accept a small amount of annoyingness to have cleaner teeth.
> Maybe your advice is incomplete without your lived experience.
When I think about what I would like to tell my younger self, this keeps coming up. I'd love to tell my younger self to understand that learning and failure are linked so closely that it's hard to tell them apart.
I'd love to tell my younger self that you can only really get familiar with a topic with book learning. To REALLY learn you have to try things, trying things means varying degrees of success, which feels like failing.
Your rock climbing example reminds me of physical therapy - contract your foot muscles like this but not like that, engage your hip flexors by doing this but not that.
---
I wonder if you know how to juggle? If not you should really learn how - it really doesn't take long, a few hours spread over a week should do it.
To me juggling is a great example of the duality of the mind - thinking fast and slow. My deliberative mind can put my reflexive mind in a situation where it can learn to juggle, but my deliberative mind cannot juggle.
---
This topic reminds me of the essay "How to ask questions the smart way" by Eric S Raymond - did you review that before writing this?
---
I'm kind of sad that the word contingent did not appear in your discussion.
When I think about telling younger people things, I always try to remember if older people told me the same thing when I was younger. Usually the answer is yes!
(Hadn't seen "how to ask questions the smart way" before. Someone should generalize that to not just explicitly be about software!)
I'm in a business group that functions as a mutual support group, and the primary approach for seeking advice is to not. Instead, you have someone coach you through a problem you're having, going deeper than the initial surface level complaint to try to identify any root cause or emotions showing up, and then you seek _experience shares_.
The coach helps frame the ask for experience shares with the group: "tell us of a time you've had to part with an employee everyone on the team loved", "tell us about a time where you and your spouse have had misalignment of priorities", etc. And then we share our experiences.
The entire purpose of this is several fold, in this environment:
1. Beyond people being horrible at taking advice, that also had the net effect of being incredibly obnoxious bordering on offensive to the advice giver: why ask me what's good on the menu for you to utterly ignore me seconds later anyway? Why make me waste my brainpower for you if you're ignoring it regardless.
2. In a group setting, if you just listened to other people prescribe advice to someone's specific problems, you'd go insane from boredom. It's not relevant and would start to sound repetitive. Instead, you're listening to (hopefully) compelling, captivating stories of similar emotions but very different circumstances, and you yourself can draw pearls of wisdom from those even if you're not the one presenting your issue.
3. People relate more to a narrative. It's easier for them to identify where in a narrative they recognize themselves, and (again, presuming a certain base level of engagement and intelligence here) decide which pieces of that story are relevant in their context, but very much on their terms.
This removes the prescriptive pressure of "advice" and is instead "an experience you should hear about that might be relevant to you."
It allows the receiver to still choose their own adventure, but it also allows them to formulate new thoughts and approaches for their circumstance by pulling the pieces most contextually relevant to them.
It's surprisingly effective with your spouse and kid, as well, and much better than "order the burger" or "lift with your legs" in isolation. Tell your experience and story, because that illustrates for others _how_ you came to identify this approach, and it gives it credibility and gravitas.
This is very good. My son is reflexively averse to being told what to do; he reads it as confrontational. So instead I invariably frame it as "when something like that happened to me, I did X and that helped."
Another approach I focus on is to ask people "what would happen if...?" I believe that people are the only expert in their own lives, so rather than offering suggestions, comments, or advice, I wait for them to tell me why my idea won't work. When I have a better idea of the potential obstacles to their success, with their details, we can workshop together to see if this is actually something they want to solve. If it is, we can work together to see what sort of solutions are actually viable.
Another variation I use is to ask questions about the issue the other person is trying to resolve. As I ask more detailed questions about the issue, I start asking questions that start looking like the advice I would give if I just blurted it out. It's a round-about way of getting them to solve their own problem or seeing how a solution might actually work.
The reason I prefer those methods is because it takes the burden of success off of MY shoulders.
I tend to find that I'm more inclined to offer advice when I'm personally stressed, myself. In a dysfunctional way, when I'm stressed, I'm inclined to take on the stress of others needlessly. I've found that the more stressed I am, the quicker I want others to solve their own issues because I'm already overwhelmed and I can't tolerate their struggle. When I hear myself giving too much advice, that's usually my sign that I need to get myself in order.
I think you're missing one really big element. Almost all the time, when people ask for advice, they don't want advice. They want sympathy (if they don't already have a decision in mind) or validation (if they do).
By the way, it's often worse when people do follow you advice. That nearly always ends in "look what you've made me do" or "look what you did to me".
Often, the best you can do is to listen actively (i.e. reflecting back understanding, soliciting more information) and hope they will come around to understanding what is right for them. I like to think that most people already do.
On a related note, in my experience nobody that tells you they have an ethical dilemma ever actually has an ethical dilemma. Invariably they have a choice between what they know to be right and what they know to be wrong. And depending on their character, they are either asking for your respect for doing the right thing at some cost for themselves; or your permission to the wrong thing to their own profit.
In my experience advice *does* work quite a bit. It just sticks in your mind more often when it doesn't. Also some ppl are way better at giving advice than others, so to some degree it's just a skill issue.
People ask me for advice a lot. It can range from, struggling to overcome something, validation, asking my direct opinion, looking for sympathy, even just wanting a conversation outside their own head. In the end, I feel that people just want to have options.
After giving my opinions and options, I try to end it with the fact that; it's your choice, you have to decide what's best for you. And if you need any of the options, it may or may not work for you, or be something else entirely.
They ask, you give, they take it or leave it. Not up to you.
Hi! I read your post on running when it came out and it turned me into a consistent runner! It has changed my life for the better, more than any other single post you’ve written or any other single piece of writing on running.
I can run a pathetic 10k in a bit less than an hour now. This is a terrible speed but I can do that 3 days a week no problem. I suck at running and also, simultaneously, I now love running. Sometimes I’m walking along on the sidewalk and I’ll burst into a run, sprint down the block until I’m out of breath. Sometimes in the evening I’ll go on a run just for fun.
I used to hate running and now I love it, and your post made all the difference. It’s been great for my cardiovascular health and weight. I’ll probably keep running for the rest of my life because it’s so convenient and fun.
All that being said, I didn’t think of that post as “advice”. Rather, it re-framed running for me as (paraphrasing from memory slash what I’ve kept from that post) “just run in the way and quantity that feels good, then just stop or walk for a bit, and remember that it’s a lifelong thing so don’t sweat it if you don’t seem to be making a ton of quote unquote progress on how fast or far or continuously you can run”.
I also sent that post to my lil brother and he’s been running consistently. He ran continuously for an hour and got to about 9k which is pretty good for a noob! Nobody else in our family runs; I didn’t see anyone running when I was growing up (in India), so when I moved to the US and saw people running I had a similar reaction to yours: “this isn’t for me. These people are different from my people. I cannot possibly do this.”
So, your post was also convincing because it told a story of transformation (yours) where the starting point happened to be similar to mine, at least in this respect. Hearing that story unfucked me by deleting an incorrect limiting belief that I had developed. Seems relevant to this post.
I think most (all?) of these points are equally valid not just to producers/consumers of advice outside yourself but to the person in your head (Jim's cousin, Will[power]?).
There's so much context and complex social-psycho-dynamics game theory between you and other parties - it was already useful/interesting to pose all these same questions/thoughts to the version of me that seeks to improve something about myself.
Deeply understanding the dynamic and history between you and said person is probably a first order consideration when applying externally.
Key to convincing people is typically a) to appeal to emotional instincts (typically some combination of fear and hope) over rational thought and b) get the person to think it was their own idea (to get around the defensive and 'not invented here' instinct). I would typically leave the logical argument to last so they can post-hoc rationalise the decision they have already instinctively made. Humans are hard to persuade logically (slow thinking) but often pretty easily convinced if fast thinking processes are prioritised. Some people (both good and bad actors) just have a knack for doing this.
This is probably factually correct. However, I'd be hesitant to use such strategies in an "advice" situation. (At least usually... I could certain imagine a situation where I thought a loved one was making a TRAGIC MISTAKE and I'd be tempted...)
I think another point to make is that even if people are seemingly not taking your advice, or even if the advice "sounds obvious" and you think they must have heard it 100 times before, if you really think the advice would be helpful to them, and you are in a place to be giving advice, I would encourage you to keep giving the advice.
I have on my mind a study I recall reading which was an RCT of family doctors either giving the advice to stop smoking (just a quick "you really should consider quitting smoking, let me know if you need any help") versus not giving the advice. I recall only about 1 in 50 people more "listened to the advice" on the active arm of the trial, but if you think about it, if people who quit smoking live 2-10 years longer as a result, and in your career you give this advice 1000 times, by giving the advice versus not, you might be saving 20*2=40 to 20*10 = 200 years of life, i.e. somewhere between 0.5 to 3 people's lives, just by doing something really quite easy, even though it feels like you are doing nothing (because 49/50 times people "don't listen to you"). And you never know who is the person that it is going to make the difference to, or whether they just needed to hear it one more time to finally commit to making a change, etc.
I feel like when giving advice one should first figure out why the person is stuck in a behavior. In other words, figure out how to make Jim go away. In your email example, there is clearly something that is blocking you, and it isn’t lack of “tips and tricks”.
This comment section needs fewer posts on giving advice, and more examples when you took advice that was given to you.
I think most people can take advice in a technical sense at work, but I'll give an example that stuck with me:
When I was back to work after the birth of my eldest, I was obviously struggling and in zombie mode. An older, and senior, female colleague with three kids took me aside one day and said: "Sleep train your kids. That is the only way being a parent works with this job."
She was right! Perhaps in parenting advice especially there's a hesitation to give firm advice, but there are situations where there's a correct answer, and if you're in a position where you clearly have the relevant experience, I at least am inclined to take you seriously.
Also, I can't take time management advice seriously from anyone who doesn't have kids *, it's a different ball game.
* "Fathers" where the wife does 90% of the work don't count
This is a topic I have some very superficially deep interest in. I've seen most starkly the uselessness of many advices mostly when given unsolicited. In situations that people think I need advice on something they've observed about me when in truth I'm most convinced of my decision.
When I was learning to swim, the instructions were so hard for me to execute but not for others we were learning together. I had to go watch a bunch of YouTube videos to eventually catch-up. Though I remember the important distinction Agnes Callard made between advice about some life choices and instructions about some procedural task. The former is the more impossible intervention.
I have a friend who when asked for advice doesn't give one. What he does is that he highlights all your possible options and leave it to you to decide on one.
You made very valuable points about advice and its exchange. One more heuristic about advice I'll add is that for people of below average capacity when it comes to judgment and insight, they'll benefit the most from advice most of the time owing to the law of average. For those of above average capacity in judgment and insight, they'll be better off sticking to their own intuition most of the time.
I have nothing intelligent to add, but I'm reminded of a song from my favorite musical ("My Fair Lady"), as sung by the Henry Higgins character:
I'm a very gentle man
Even-tempered and good-natured who you never hear complain
Who has the milk of human kindness by the quart in every vein
[...]
But, let a woman in your life
And patience hasn't got a chance
She will beg you for advice, your reply will be concise
And she'll listen very nicely, and then go out and do precisely what she wants
I think this is it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEMf2CwcrEg
Worth noting he starts his whole rant by saying all he wants in life is... to do precisely what he wants. (We should all do precisely what we want!)
some of these can't be reasons people don't follow advice, because they would have to follow the advice first to find out, right?
maybe the biggest reason is epistemic - "people don't know if your advice will work". this tracks with how people actually respond to advice. people listen to experts on specific topics. eg, we usually listen to plumbers. and PhD candidates I know listen to the advice in job market preparatory seminars. but there's no reason to believe random life advice from random person, even if they've had the same problem, because one experience with a problem does not make someone an expert. this is something we understand intuitively.
Certainly we might as well ignore advice from randos. But I feel like many people (and certainly I) also tend to ignore advice from people we know well and respect. I think part of what puzzles me about this is a kind of Aumann's agreement theorem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann%27s_agreement_theorem) kind of thing—in theory we should all be able to agree on what's best. But then, Aumann's agreement theorem pretty clearly fails to work in the real world in all sorts of situations beyond just advice.
I find that people are more likely to resist advice from family and spouses and then follow identical advice from friends. Family always involves issues of control that can’t be separated from the advice. With your friends, you typically don’t have to worry about that as much. So maybe there’s some kind of U-shaped curve for propensity to follow advice based on how close you are to someone.
Yes, I was thinking something similar while reading.
Most people don't realize they're in free fall when you offer them a parachute, and most advice is to take skydiving lessons in mid-drop. Giving advice is a bet; taking it is a risk. For both, awareness and context are key.
Instead of solving problems or handing out solutions, we should focus on helping people recognize their situation and whether that is a free fall. You might ask, 'Does the ground seem further away than usual?' And who knows they might reply, 'I'm Superman, it's okay!'
Your writing makes me smile (and it's also intelligent and interesting). But what i wanted to say in the comments here is that in this specific edition of the newsletter there are several paragraphs that could be converted into song lyrics with only the most modest changes for scansion. Someone should do that!
Thank you. Not sure what paragraphs you're referring to, but if Phife Dawg was still alive, I'd love to hear Tribe Called Quest do the story at the beginning from the Mahabharata.
well, this one: "Often the advice was good and there wasn’t anything difficult about it. But I didn’t understand it and didn’t take it seriously. Looking back, I should have thought, “There must be a reason all these smart people keep bringing this up.” But instead my brain sort of converted their words into a big whooshing sound."
I'm sort of vaguely hearing that as LCD Soundsystem-ish, with a big super-obvious synth whoosh as we go into the chorus (nothing at all wrong with a big super-obvious synth woosh, btw)
Surely someone can use AI and make this happen. (Anyone? Please?)
Thanks for the running tip, that seems surprisingly obvious, but worth trying. I often walk places, now I will try jogging at least a portion consistently.
I agree on the "try consumerism" advice. I've recently gotten a decent job and have extra money and I've been finding there are all sorts of things that are worth buying that I didn't know about.
My shortlist:
1. Bluetooth wireless earbuds
2. Creatine
3. A star projector(they look really cool)
4. Ear plugs if you go to concerts
5. A water flosser if you find it hard to be consistent about flossing
6. Nice bluetooth mouse and keyboard that are ergonomic and have lots of extra buttons
7. An electric toothbrush
Can you explain how creatine has affected you? I'm currently doing an "n=1" investigation on it to see if it works as a cognitive enhancer.
I took it while I was working out regularly, and have since lapsed, and I'm not sure which results are independent. But I felt my muscle tone was firmer, and I needed to drink more water. I didn't notice any mental effects.
For what it's worth, I do all of these except 3. (Though I advice a water flosser as a complement to regular flossing—if you have trouble flossing I suggest getting luxury floss.)
Incidentally, this is a nice demonstration of how we are funny about advice. Given that I like 6/7 of your list and have never tried the last, you'd think I would be strongly inclined to try the last. But I'm not!
The electric toothbrush I'd say is probably actually a very slightly more unpleasant experience than a regular toothbrush. But my dentist friend told me it's vastly more important. And on every reddit thread that's like "Old people, what do you regret?" Not taking care of their teeth was a top answer. So I accept a small amount of annoyingness to have cleaner teeth.
> Maybe your advice is incomplete without your lived experience.
When I think about what I would like to tell my younger self, this keeps coming up. I'd love to tell my younger self to understand that learning and failure are linked so closely that it's hard to tell them apart.
I'd love to tell my younger self that you can only really get familiar with a topic with book learning. To REALLY learn you have to try things, trying things means varying degrees of success, which feels like failing.
Your rock climbing example reminds me of physical therapy - contract your foot muscles like this but not like that, engage your hip flexors by doing this but not that.
---
I wonder if you know how to juggle? If not you should really learn how - it really doesn't take long, a few hours spread over a week should do it.
To me juggling is a great example of the duality of the mind - thinking fast and slow. My deliberative mind can put my reflexive mind in a situation where it can learn to juggle, but my deliberative mind cannot juggle.
---
This topic reminds me of the essay "How to ask questions the smart way" by Eric S Raymond - did you review that before writing this?
---
I'm kind of sad that the word contingent did not appear in your discussion.
When I think about telling younger people things, I always try to remember if older people told me the same thing when I was younger. Usually the answer is yes!
(Hadn't seen "how to ask questions the smart way" before. Someone should generalize that to not just explicitly be about software!)
I'm in a business group that functions as a mutual support group, and the primary approach for seeking advice is to not. Instead, you have someone coach you through a problem you're having, going deeper than the initial surface level complaint to try to identify any root cause or emotions showing up, and then you seek _experience shares_.
The coach helps frame the ask for experience shares with the group: "tell us of a time you've had to part with an employee everyone on the team loved", "tell us about a time where you and your spouse have had misalignment of priorities", etc. And then we share our experiences.
The entire purpose of this is several fold, in this environment:
1. Beyond people being horrible at taking advice, that also had the net effect of being incredibly obnoxious bordering on offensive to the advice giver: why ask me what's good on the menu for you to utterly ignore me seconds later anyway? Why make me waste my brainpower for you if you're ignoring it regardless.
2. In a group setting, if you just listened to other people prescribe advice to someone's specific problems, you'd go insane from boredom. It's not relevant and would start to sound repetitive. Instead, you're listening to (hopefully) compelling, captivating stories of similar emotions but very different circumstances, and you yourself can draw pearls of wisdom from those even if you're not the one presenting your issue.
3. People relate more to a narrative. It's easier for them to identify where in a narrative they recognize themselves, and (again, presuming a certain base level of engagement and intelligence here) decide which pieces of that story are relevant in their context, but very much on their terms.
This removes the prescriptive pressure of "advice" and is instead "an experience you should hear about that might be relevant to you."
It allows the receiver to still choose their own adventure, but it also allows them to formulate new thoughts and approaches for their circumstance by pulling the pieces most contextually relevant to them.
It's surprisingly effective with your spouse and kid, as well, and much better than "order the burger" or "lift with your legs" in isolation. Tell your experience and story, because that illustrates for others _how_ you came to identify this approach, and it gives it credibility and gravitas.
This is very good. My son is reflexively averse to being told what to do; he reads it as confrontational. So instead I invariably frame it as "when something like that happened to me, I did X and that helped."
I agree with you, Chris.
Another approach I focus on is to ask people "what would happen if...?" I believe that people are the only expert in their own lives, so rather than offering suggestions, comments, or advice, I wait for them to tell me why my idea won't work. When I have a better idea of the potential obstacles to their success, with their details, we can workshop together to see if this is actually something they want to solve. If it is, we can work together to see what sort of solutions are actually viable.
Another variation I use is to ask questions about the issue the other person is trying to resolve. As I ask more detailed questions about the issue, I start asking questions that start looking like the advice I would give if I just blurted it out. It's a round-about way of getting them to solve their own problem or seeing how a solution might actually work.
The reason I prefer those methods is because it takes the burden of success off of MY shoulders.
I tend to find that I'm more inclined to offer advice when I'm personally stressed, myself. In a dysfunctional way, when I'm stressed, I'm inclined to take on the stress of others needlessly. I've found that the more stressed I am, the quicker I want others to solve their own issues because I'm already overwhelmed and I can't tolerate their struggle. When I hear myself giving too much advice, that's usually my sign that I need to get myself in order.
I think you're missing one really big element. Almost all the time, when people ask for advice, they don't want advice. They want sympathy (if they don't already have a decision in mind) or validation (if they do).
By the way, it's often worse when people do follow you advice. That nearly always ends in "look what you've made me do" or "look what you did to me".
Often, the best you can do is to listen actively (i.e. reflecting back understanding, soliciting more information) and hope they will come around to understanding what is right for them. I like to think that most people already do.
On a related note, in my experience nobody that tells you they have an ethical dilemma ever actually has an ethical dilemma. Invariably they have a choice between what they know to be right and what they know to be wrong. And depending on their character, they are either asking for your respect for doing the right thing at some cost for themselves; or your permission to the wrong thing to their own profit.
In my experience advice *does* work quite a bit. It just sticks in your mind more often when it doesn't. Also some ppl are way better at giving advice than others, so to some degree it's just a skill issue.
People ask me for advice a lot. It can range from, struggling to overcome something, validation, asking my direct opinion, looking for sympathy, even just wanting a conversation outside their own head. In the end, I feel that people just want to have options.
After giving my opinions and options, I try to end it with the fact that; it's your choice, you have to decide what's best for you. And if you need any of the options, it may or may not work for you, or be something else entirely.
They ask, you give, they take it or leave it. Not up to you.
Hi! I read your post on running when it came out and it turned me into a consistent runner! It has changed my life for the better, more than any other single post you’ve written or any other single piece of writing on running.
I can run a pathetic 10k in a bit less than an hour now. This is a terrible speed but I can do that 3 days a week no problem. I suck at running and also, simultaneously, I now love running. Sometimes I’m walking along on the sidewalk and I’ll burst into a run, sprint down the block until I’m out of breath. Sometimes in the evening I’ll go on a run just for fun.
I used to hate running and now I love it, and your post made all the difference. It’s been great for my cardiovascular health and weight. I’ll probably keep running for the rest of my life because it’s so convenient and fun.
All that being said, I didn’t think of that post as “advice”. Rather, it re-framed running for me as (paraphrasing from memory slash what I’ve kept from that post) “just run in the way and quantity that feels good, then just stop or walk for a bit, and remember that it’s a lifelong thing so don’t sweat it if you don’t seem to be making a ton of quote unquote progress on how fast or far or continuously you can run”.
This IS AWESOME. Thank you SO MUCH for letting me know. I struggle to express how happy this makes me. ♡♡♡
I also sent that post to my lil brother and he’s been running consistently. He ran continuously for an hour and got to about 9k which is pretty good for a noob! Nobody else in our family runs; I didn’t see anyone running when I was growing up (in India), so when I moved to the US and saw people running I had a similar reaction to yours: “this isn’t for me. These people are different from my people. I cannot possibly do this.”
So, your post was also convincing because it told a story of transformation (yours) where the starting point happened to be similar to mine, at least in this respect. Hearing that story unfucked me by deleting an incorrect limiting belief that I had developed. Seems relevant to this post.
I think most (all?) of these points are equally valid not just to producers/consumers of advice outside yourself but to the person in your head (Jim's cousin, Will[power]?).
There's so much context and complex social-psycho-dynamics game theory between you and other parties - it was already useful/interesting to pose all these same questions/thoughts to the version of me that seeks to improve something about myself.
Deeply understanding the dynamic and history between you and said person is probably a first order consideration when applying externally.
Key to convincing people is typically a) to appeal to emotional instincts (typically some combination of fear and hope) over rational thought and b) get the person to think it was their own idea (to get around the defensive and 'not invented here' instinct). I would typically leave the logical argument to last so they can post-hoc rationalise the decision they have already instinctively made. Humans are hard to persuade logically (slow thinking) but often pretty easily convinced if fast thinking processes are prioritised. Some people (both good and bad actors) just have a knack for doing this.
This is probably factually correct. However, I'd be hesitant to use such strategies in an "advice" situation. (At least usually... I could certain imagine a situation where I thought a loved one was making a TRAGIC MISTAKE and I'd be tempted...)
Thanks for the article, I enjoyed it.
I think another point to make is that even if people are seemingly not taking your advice, or even if the advice "sounds obvious" and you think they must have heard it 100 times before, if you really think the advice would be helpful to them, and you are in a place to be giving advice, I would encourage you to keep giving the advice.
I have on my mind a study I recall reading which was an RCT of family doctors either giving the advice to stop smoking (just a quick "you really should consider quitting smoking, let me know if you need any help") versus not giving the advice. I recall only about 1 in 50 people more "listened to the advice" on the active arm of the trial, but if you think about it, if people who quit smoking live 2-10 years longer as a result, and in your career you give this advice 1000 times, by giving the advice versus not, you might be saving 20*2=40 to 20*10 = 200 years of life, i.e. somewhere between 0.5 to 3 people's lives, just by doing something really quite easy, even though it feels like you are doing nothing (because 49/50 times people "don't listen to you"). And you never know who is the person that it is going to make the difference to, or whether they just needed to hear it one more time to finally commit to making a change, etc.
Good point! The cost of giving advice is very low. So you might as well give it a shot. (At least for advice as high-certainty-good as "stop smoking")
I feel like when giving advice one should first figure out why the person is stuck in a behavior. In other words, figure out how to make Jim go away. In your email example, there is clearly something that is blocking you, and it isn’t lack of “tips and tricks”.
This comment section needs fewer posts on giving advice, and more examples when you took advice that was given to you.
I think most people can take advice in a technical sense at work, but I'll give an example that stuck with me:
When I was back to work after the birth of my eldest, I was obviously struggling and in zombie mode. An older, and senior, female colleague with three kids took me aside one day and said: "Sleep train your kids. That is the only way being a parent works with this job."
She was right! Perhaps in parenting advice especially there's a hesitation to give firm advice, but there are situations where there's a correct answer, and if you're in a position where you clearly have the relevant experience, I at least am inclined to take you seriously.
Also, I can't take time management advice seriously from anyone who doesn't have kids *, it's a different ball game.
* "Fathers" where the wife does 90% of the work don't count
This is a topic I have some very superficially deep interest in. I've seen most starkly the uselessness of many advices mostly when given unsolicited. In situations that people think I need advice on something they've observed about me when in truth I'm most convinced of my decision.
When I was learning to swim, the instructions were so hard for me to execute but not for others we were learning together. I had to go watch a bunch of YouTube videos to eventually catch-up. Though I remember the important distinction Agnes Callard made between advice about some life choices and instructions about some procedural task. The former is the more impossible intervention.
I have a friend who when asked for advice doesn't give one. What he does is that he highlights all your possible options and leave it to you to decide on one.
You made very valuable points about advice and its exchange. One more heuristic about advice I'll add is that for people of below average capacity when it comes to judgment and insight, they'll benefit the most from advice most of the time owing to the law of average. For those of above average capacity in judgment and insight, they'll be better off sticking to their own intuition most of the time.