My Advice: Never Take Advice From Anyone

A little while ago, I tweeted a thing.

Never take anyone's advice unless it's about something that has a high probability of actually killing you.

Electricity. Disarming a bomb.

That's pretty much it.

— Matthew Oliphant (@matto) September 10, 2020

At the time I thought, oh my, what a lovely quip. For it is a lovely quip. And then I thought more about it.

I think it’s probably, literally, the best advice ever.

How Advice Works

If you are working through something and think to yourself, “I should get so-and-so’s advice about this,” here’s what you’re going to get.

Imagine. You explain the issue du jour to your friend/relative/industry expert/The Aether™. They listen intently. Then they go through the following thought process:

1. They think of past experiences that match as closely as possible to what you have explained

2. They summarise those experiences in their mind—summarise in such a way as to categorise the experiences into as few buckets as possible so they can more easily explain it to you

3. They take all that and share it with you in a manner which they think is what you need to hear

Are they helping? Yes. Trying to at least. But over the course of those few seconds—speed of thought, mind you—they’ve reduced their experiences, potentially vast and highly contextual, to a few sound bites to help make you feel better or get unstuck.

And that may not be actually helping you.

Does that mean you should never reach out to people and struggle alone through everything like Riker-walking¹ through doors? Feck no.

Seek Perspectives

You should reach out. To people you know, to people you don’t (if you have the constitution for hearing variations of “just do it”²).

Reach out and ask, “Tell me about a time when you…” Then listen to what they have to say. If they veer into the summarise-and-contextualise lane, gently guide them back to talking directly about their experiences.

Once you have a few perspectives, it’s your job to summarise, categorise, contextualise, and then give yourself the advice you need to hear.

Or, more intentionally, make the decision to move forward with—or stop—X, Y, or Z.

Closure

One thing that makes people feel good is being able to give good advice. And if you aren’t explicitly asking for any advice, it can be difficult for people to get that dopamine hit of “I helped!”

It would be kind of you to reach back out to everyone from whom you sought perspectives and give them the closure they need. They want to know they helped. Tell them. And, ideally, tell them how.

“Sharing your experience with X helped me understand I was approaching Y incorrectly.”

Done and done.

¹ The Riker Walk. Bonus endnote: The Riker Lean.

² “Just” is a word I think we need to be a lot more careful with. Also, Just Do It is the patriarchy.