All advice adds to 0

For every person telling you to go left, there’ll be an equal amount telling you to go right.

Thinking about this, you might start to believe the best way to give advice to someone is to say, “I don’t know.”

That’s one option. It’s the easy option. The other way is to show the person what you’ve done. Then let them decide if it’s right for them.

Since everyone has a unique worldview, everyone will have slightly different advice. Ask too many people on what you should be doing in any given situation and you’ll end up going in circles.

Seeing what someone else has done, where they went wrong, where they went right is the best kind. It’s trial and error. Reality is trial and error. Trying something, seeing how it goes and adjusting if need be.

Data is overrated. Have too much data on one thing and you’ll spend your life living out of a spreadsheet. Paying too much attention to data results in logical decisions at the expense of creative decisions.

Giving unsolicited advice has as much potential to harm as it does to help. Remember that one teacher who you told you something when you were younger, “you shouldn’t do that” and it changed your view of things. And only after a couple of decades did you realise they had about as much idea of what to do as you: not much.

A man who walks the same path as others enjoys the stroll but loses muscle as the path requires little effort.

A man who digs his own path builds strength and clears the road for others whilst demonstrating they might be able to do the same.