#advicegiving

Hey guys and gals,

Everyone has pearls of wisdom to share. There are countless articles, blogs and books advising people on personal or professional development. There almost seems to be a surge of this material being created, consumed and circulated. People have an inherent desire to improve themselves and/or their situation for personal reasons. Everyone understands this basic desire. Yet, has anyone actually thought about HOW and WHY this advice will actually improve their lives? 

Read more books. This advice is typically tossed to children to encourage them in the pursuit of learning. But what exactly is reading more books supposed to do for a child? Will reading Harry Potter really make you a better person? Advice has a real issue, it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Real advice, like most advertisements, comes with the disclaimer: “Results may vary.” The person giving advice is doing so because they believe that it will help. The advice is not necessarily bad, it’s just a simple truth that even though it worked previously, it may not necessarily work for the advice taker. This means taking advice is not simply about following the rules. Taking advice is a process. A process of understanding how and why the advice helps and understanding how it fits into your needs. 

To understand how a piece of advice works, we must first verify it’s credibility. We understand this intuitively when we take our aunt’s advice to read more books, yet reject her advice when she teaches us how to “win” online dating. This has nothing to do with the quality of advice. For all of our aunt’s best intentions, the situation, the people, and the experience are all lacking. There is nothing to prove that our aunt’s knowledge of romance (however extensive) will improve your abilities in online dating. Her advice is not as valuable because the same circumstances that kindled her love probably do not exist in online dating. The validity of the advice must be established before we can even consider it. 

Once the advice is deemed valid, the next step is understanding how to follow the advice. What is necessary for the advice taker to follow the advice? For example, in order to read more books, we need to set aside some quiet time to read. Duh? But think about it, how hard is it to make quiet time for yourself? This is choosing not to browse Netflix or social media. This is being able to work a full-time job, cook dinner, clean up, and still make time to read. AND there is still one more requirement, the mental strength to concentrate on a book. Although not said in the advice, these are necessary to follow the advice. Being able to allot a small amount of quiet time, as well as being mentally prepared to read are not always easy to do. It is by understanding these requirements, implied or not, that demonstrates how feasible the advice is to accomplish. 

Now that the advice is possible to do, it must be aligned correctly. The advice needs to help the advice taker to achieve some of his/her own goals. This is where the advice taker needs to clearly define (such as the using the SMART method) what they hope to achieve from following the advice. Without this, the advice taker has no idea if the advice is actually helping them or not, because there is no basis of comparison or way to measure improvement. Moreover, understanding these goals helps tailor the strategy into something that works more for you. If you want to become a better writer, for example, then read literature and literary criticism. As an investor, read investing books and articles on business and current events. Sometimes your goals don’t align with advice. As a gamer, reading books will not suffice. Gamers would be better off watching replays and strategy commentary. Each of these approaches is a way to encounter new ideas and hone individual skills. Not all of these involve reading books, in fact depending on your goals, it may not even be necessary. This ensures that the advice given is useful to you. 

Now that the advice is relevant, works, and is useful, the last step is to figure out whether or not it is a good fit. In the 21st century, goals of learning diverse ideas and honing individual skills do not have to be accomplished through reading books. Maybe reading books isn’t for you. To stay fresh with new ideas, you intend to listen to pod-casts, watch ted talks and network with professionals in your field. Every piece of advice may not work well for everyone, but it is still possible to benefit from its core ideas.