Advice is Too Prescriptive
We all feel like we should be doing more. Exercising more, reading more, working more. You get up at 6am but you can’t help comparing yourself...
You form any good habits yet you feel like they’re not enough because you heard about that person doing 4 times more than you.
If you listened to advice your day would look something like this. Wake up 3.59AM, workout for 2 hours, eat only spinach and kale smoothies, meditate for 60 minutes, only work on things you “love” [whatever that means] then spend 4 hours reading.
Advice isn’t necessarily bad, it’s the way we take it on board and process it that’s the issue. We take everything people say at face value, we think it’s a yes or a no, we either do what they suggested to the letter or we don’t do it at all.
When in reality all advice should be followed with an experimenters mindset. This thing may work for that person but they have different goals to you, they want different things, have a different personality and different biases.
No two humans are the same, so why would you try copy someone else’s routine?
The simple solutions to taking advice is to understand what works for others, experiment in your own life and not feel guilty or worry that you’re missing out if something doesn’t work for you.
We all want quick fixes to our problems, but there are no quick fixes. Taking aspects from others can offer shortcuts, but blindly following others will not solve your problems.
Most advice is too prescriptive, take aspects from others, figure out what works for you and discard the rest. The aim is not to become any one else, it’s to become the best version of yourself.
