8 votes

What's your relationship with advice?

How often do you tend to give or receive advice?

If/when you're receiving it, from where/who? And about what?

If you're giving advice, what is it usually about?

If you're confident in your knowledge/advice in any given area, what places do you not reccomend people take advice in that area from?

What people/places do you get advice from?

Do you ever get or follow places that give advice you won't use until far later? (I admittedly do this quite a bit by lurking r/sex.)

3 comments

  1. MimicSquid
    Link
    I give advice more than I receive/ask for it. When I'm receiving advice it's from my parents or friends, mostly around interpersonal stuff I'm working on. Maybe every month or two. More than 50%...

    I give advice more than I receive/ask for it.

    When I'm receiving advice it's from my parents or friends, mostly around interpersonal stuff I'm working on. Maybe every month or two.

    More than 50% of my job is giving advice, specifically around business finances and administration, so pretty much every day I'm helping someone looking for guidance.

    When it comes to how to manage your business, don't look to the internet at large. Talk to a person with experience in your industry. There's plenty of fad advice which is fundamentally ok, but taking all the fads together will just make things a complete mess. You need guidance that incorporates an understanding of your situation.

    I will absolutely try to read up on stuff that I won't have a chance to use in practice until later, and also I've gotten a remarkable amount of unsolicited advice from my parents that turned out to be useful... 5 years later, once I understood the context for that advice.

    I think that fundamentally advice is a great social bonding thing, but its usefulness for your situation drops off quickly as the person giving the advice has a different set of experiences or situations than you find yourself in. This is why the old canards are so general. "A penny saved is a penny earned", sure, but when it comes to giving advice about your situation specifically you need advice from someone who understands you in particular and shares your experiences.

    5 votes
  2. mrbig
    Link
    Good advice is useful but relatively cheap and easy to find. In my experience, in adult life, knowing what to do is frequently not the issue. The correct answers are usually trivial, obvious, and...

    Good advice is useful but relatively cheap and easy to find.

    In my experience, in adult life, knowing what to do is frequently not the issue. The correct answers are usually trivial, obvious, and mundane. Carrying out all the actions required to achieve our set goals is much harder and that’s where most people fail, including me.

    4 votes
  3. skybrian
    Link
    When I want advice I do some web searches. When someone asks me about something I don't know much about (which is almost everything), I recommend that they do the same. Or for a few close...

    When I want advice I do some web searches. When someone asks me about something I don't know much about (which is almost everything), I recommend that they do the same. Or for a few close relatives, I might do it for them.

    Sometimes I'm not looking for direct advice, but rather to understand what other people do in similar situations.

    2 votes