yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Reject Most Advice


3m read
·Nov 3, 2024

Processing might take a few minutes. Refresh later.

Regarding the guy that gets rich in five years, one of the tweets that you had on the cutting room floor was: avoid people who got rich quickly; they're just giving you their winning lottery ticket numbers. This is generally true of advice anyway, which is it's back to Scott Adams' systems, not goals.

If you ask a specific person what works for them, very often it’s just like they're reading out the exact set of things that work for them which may not be applicable for you. They're just reading your winning lottery ticket numbers. It's a little glib; there is something to be learned from them, but you can't just take their exact circumstance and map it onto yours.

The best founders I know, they listen and read to everyone, but then they ignore everybody and they make up their own mind. They have their own internal model of how to apply things to their situation, and they do not hesitate to discard information. If you survey enough people, all the advice will cancel to zero. So you do have to have your own point of view, and when something is said your way, you have to very quickly decide: is that true? Is that true outside of the context of what that person applied it in? Is it true in my context, and then do I want to apply it?

You have to reject most advice, but you have to listen to and read enough of it to know what to reject and what to accept. Even in this podcast, you should examine everything. If something does not feel true to you, put it down, set it aside. If too many things seem untrue, delete this podcast.

I think the most dangerous part of taking advice is that the person that gave it to you is not going to be around to tell you when it doesn't apply any longer. Yet I view the purpose of advice as a little different than most people. I just view it as helping me have anecdotes and maxims that I can then later recall when I have my own direct experience, and say: ah, that's what that person meant.

Ninety percent of my tweets are actually just maxims that I carve for myself. They are then little mental hooks to remind me when I'm in that situation again. Like, oh, I'm the one who tweeted: if you can't see yourself working with someone for life, then don't work with them for a day. So as soon as I know that this person is not going to be someone that I'm gonna be working with 10 years from now, I have to start extricating myself from that relationship or just not investing that much more effort into it.

So I use my tweets and other people's tweets as maxims that help compress my own learnings and be able to recall them. Because, you know, the brain space is finite; your finite neurons. So you can almost think of these as pointers, addresses, mnemonics to help you remember deep-seated principles where you have the underlying experience to back it up. If you don't have the underlying experience, then it just reads as a good collection of quotes. It's like it's cool; it’s inspirational for a moment. Maybe you make a nice poster out of it, but then you forget it and move on.

So all of these are really just compact ways for you to recall your own knowledge.

More Articles

View All
His House Survived a Devastating Wildfire. Now, It's an Island in the Ashes | Short Film Showcase
[Music] My name is Jerry Burs. I’ve been living in this house for the last ten years. [Music] Fountain Grove is one of the most beautiful spots in California. The weather is fantastic; the flora and the fauna are incredible. We have our little problems wi…
Creative algebra at work | Algebra 1 | Khan Academy
[Music] Hi everyone, Sal Khan here. I’ve always been drawn to creative things. I like to see change and new things in the world, and because of that, I’ve been drawn to careers where I can most apply my creativity, especially in an abstract sense. Algebra…
The Rescue | Official Trailer | National Geographic Documentary Films
Breaking News. Right now, out of Thailand. Rescue teams are working through the night to save 12 boys and their coach, trapped inside a cave. The monsoon had come early. The conditions in the cave were impossible. There was a very strong feeling that the …
The End Of Retirement - Major Changes Explained
All right, so we have some pretty big changes for anyone who’s investing their money, building wealth, and working towards financial independence. And that would be the end of the four percent rule and why it no longer works, according to the person who i…
Citing evidence in literary analysis | Reading | Khan Academy
Hello readers! The following video contains explicit content. Well, okay, not in the way you’re thinking. Uh, it doesn’t contain violence, obscenity, or profanity, or even anything that wouldn’t appear in a G-rated movie. But it will contain explicit evid…
Miyamoto Musashi - How to Build Self-Discipline
Miyamoto Musashi was a samurai who went undefeated in 61 duels, so it’s safe to say that he knew something about building self-discipline. And a week before he passed away, he wrote a short work called Dokkodo, which roughly translates to “The Way of Wal…