Day 636 - Why you shouldn't believe advice especially from prolific, successful people - https://golifelog.com/posts/why-you-shouldnt-believe-advice-especially-from-prolific-successful-people-1664326231437
People love asking advice from successful people. They all want to know the secrets to their wealth, fame and achievements. How did they do it? What was different about them? How can I be the same?
But here's the thing: ***Successful people are likely the worst people*** to ask advice from. Not because they're bad people in an ethical way. But this:
> Successful people have trouble answering the question "what's the one thing that worked for you?" because they did SO MUCH STUFF it's hard to pinpoint which one worked best. Like shooting 1,000 times and asking which bullet hit. No clue.
>
> – [@OneJKMolina](https://twitter.com/OneJKMolina/status/1574122810154295300)
By their success it's highly likely they are prolific and productive. That's usually what led them to their success. But because they are super productive people, they would have done a lot. Tried many ideas. Executed on loads of hacks. In that complex dynamics of trying so many things in an equally complex business environment, it's likely hard to have 100% certainty which efforts led to which results.
I know. You know.
It's like the saying of throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks. You know something stuck. But we can never be sure why, or if it's just [plain dumb luck](https://golifelog.com/posts/its-plain-dumb-luck-all-the-way-down-1663717145073). All you know is to keep trying.
Trying to get some deep insight into that chaos in order to replicate it, is just difficult, if not impossible.
And by the same reasoning, don't believe them if they tell you that ONE thing that led to their success (even if you're the one who asked).
Better yet, don't ask that kind of question that invites post-hoc narrative shaping (intentionally or unintentionally). Seriously, reality is 100-x more nuanced and complex. Most of the time, they might not even know. But because you asked them and they want to appear polite and because as a "successful person" they want to appear to know their sh\*t, they force an answer where there's usually none.
If you fall for it, you become a victim of insight porn.
I like to see advice more like ideas for doing your own experiments. That way you don't blindly apply them. You test them, analyze, discard what didnt work in your context, refine what worked, to make them your own.
I like to ask questions that gets to the broader context:
- What did you try but didn't work?
- What factors contributed to your product's success but you felt was outside of your influence?
- What was the business environment like then for your product?
- What was your life stage and family situation like?
Ask for facts. Ask for direct experiences and stories. Don't ask for opinions or inferences. Make your own inferences and discern your own patterns from the raw data, not the constructed interpretation of the data.
Tl;dr - Don't believe 99% advice, ***especially*** from prolific, successful people.
But here's the thing: ***Successful people are likely the worst people*** to ask advice from. Not because they're bad people in an ethical way. But this:
> Successful people have trouble answering the question "what's the one thing that worked for you?" because they did SO MUCH STUFF it's hard to pinpoint which one worked best. Like shooting 1,000 times and asking which bullet hit. No clue.
>
> – [@OneJKMolina](https://twitter.com/OneJKMolina/status/1574122810154295300)
By their success it's highly likely they are prolific and productive. That's usually what led them to their success. But because they are super productive people, they would have done a lot. Tried many ideas. Executed on loads of hacks. In that complex dynamics of trying so many things in an equally complex business environment, it's likely hard to have 100% certainty which efforts led to which results.
I know. You know.
It's like the saying of throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks. You know something stuck. But we can never be sure why, or if it's just [plain dumb luck](https://golifelog.com/posts/its-plain-dumb-luck-all-the-way-down-1663717145073). All you know is to keep trying.
Trying to get some deep insight into that chaos in order to replicate it, is just difficult, if not impossible.
And by the same reasoning, don't believe them if they tell you that ONE thing that led to their success (even if you're the one who asked).
Better yet, don't ask that kind of question that invites post-hoc narrative shaping (intentionally or unintentionally). Seriously, reality is 100-x more nuanced and complex. Most of the time, they might not even know. But because you asked them and they want to appear polite and because as a "successful person" they want to appear to know their sh\*t, they force an answer where there's usually none.
If you fall for it, you become a victim of insight porn.
I like to see advice more like ideas for doing your own experiments. That way you don't blindly apply them. You test them, analyze, discard what didnt work in your context, refine what worked, to make them your own.
I like to ask questions that gets to the broader context:
- What did you try but didn't work?
- What factors contributed to your product's success but you felt was outside of your influence?
- What was the business environment like then for your product?
- What was your life stage and family situation like?
Ask for facts. Ask for direct experiences and stories. Don't ask for opinions or inferences. Make your own inferences and discern your own patterns from the raw data, not the constructed interpretation of the data.
Tl;dr - Don't believe 99% advice, ***especially*** from prolific, successful people.