On The Futility of Offering Advice

Commonplace Newsletter #88

One of the things about writing non-fiction (such as this is) is that there can be an instinctive tendency to offer the reader uninvited advice. Perhaps this is only natural, perhaps it is inevitable even, but still I think that this is a practise best avoided as much as possible.

You could say that my advice here then, is to not give out advice, unless explicitly asked a certain specific question by a certain specific individual. Say, if we were meeting in person, you and I, and you were trying and failing to make that extremely cool squealing pinched harmonic sound with a guitar that you just so happened to be playing at that moment, I could probably give you some specific advice regarding how you should hold your plectrum or attack the note or something. Because even though I am no guitar god by any means, this particular skill is something that I do know a little something about.

But, if whilst we were both trying to get screaming noises to come out of a guitar, if during that moment, I also started to offer you unsolicited life advice/ career advice/relationship advice then this would be a little intrusive. Perhaps a little uncomfortable. And even if it somehow weren’t (which would only be the case if you were either unusually polite or unusually unattuned to what are considered to be normal social mores), me going to all that advisory effort would probably be a waste of time anyway.

And yet- on the internet especially- this is how so many of us conduct ourselves.

My advice is that we all just stop doing this. Immediately.

A visual metaphor for the reams and reams of unsolicited advice the average online user has imbibed in their lifetime. Photo by Julia Joppien on Unsplash

Don’t get me wrong, by temperament I am inclined to dish out advice. Perhaps because I have made so many mistakes in my life and feel the urge to interject when I see people in the midst of falling into one of the many proverbial potholes that I myself have previously fallen into. It’s only natural, right? It’s just a small act of kindness, a small courtesy that you are offering an interlocutor as you both make you way through life. I advise because I care. Right?

Well, that’s what I used to think, but now I’m not so sure. Because myself as advice-giver will receive a certain satisfaction, a certain ego bolstering by being able to regale and pontificate in such a manner; whereas on reflection I see that myself as advice-receiver is often merely nodding along out of politeness, all the while only half listening at best.

But the satisfaction of being advice-giver is short lived, as the advice I have dispensed, whether directly solicited or not, will almost certainly not be followed up on with any real action. This is a virtual guarantee, seemingly regardless of the enthusiasm, energy and attributes of the receiver in question. It just seems to be one of those things.

So why do we continue with this game, with this charade? Is it merely an unconscious joint ruse, a format within which sociability can occur that feels more elevated than small talk or sports talk or weather talk, even though beneath the guise of problem solving, such advice-giving conversation is really only there to pass the time, to serve the same purpose as those other forms of small talk?

I don’t know, and I should point out that this piece has been brought about by mere tea drinking and abstract pondering and not because some particular person has hurt my feelings by not following a gem of advice I happened to give them, or because I have resented advice recently imposed upon me.

Like I said, I am generally not in the business of giving advice unless I am explicitly asked about a specific (often technical, often writing related) issue that I believe I may be able to be of some particular assistance with.

See, expertise and experts are not necessarily synonymous terms. Expertise is usually sought out for a specific (usually highly technical) purpose. On the other hand, experts (self-appointed or by institution) can actually hinder insight, development and breakthroughs. Once their subordinates (or fans) start to defer to the authority of the expert, a feedback loop is created which the expert is then further buoyed by. This leads to a hierarchical stagnation, with the same old experts staying at the forefront due to their pre-existing eminence alone, which is the opposite of the adaptation and creativity that’s needed to tackle many modern dilemmas¹.

Anyway, the point I’m trying to get to is that if giving direct advice to one individual in the real world is often a waste of breath then what does this say about the generic, scattershot, shouting-through-a-bullhorn advice that people dish out online each and every day? Not only am I convinced that such actions- whose motive is to build a pliant audience to sell info products to- is useless, I am in truth certain that it can in fact be harmful.

Generic, uncontextualized advice is a menace- by definition it attracts the lost and the confused and only makes them more lost and more confused. Even the seemingly most universal, failsafe advice of the ‘work hard’, ‘try your best’, and ‘believe in yourself’ ilk, can be disastrous for certain people. It can merely act as a motivator and energy boost for someone to keep digging the same sorry hole that they are in. Likewise, ‘take it easy’, ‘be kind to yourself’, and ‘accept yourself as you are’ type sentiments can also be terrible if what a particular person truly needs is more intensity, structure and forward thrust in their life.

If something is one size fits all then it will never actually fit any individual perfectly, whether it be a t-shirt or a tip on how to live your life. This should be obvious, but it seems that the further one wonders down the advice path the more intellectual baggage they accumulate that needs to be shrugged off to actually move forward in any kind of meaningful way. The weight of platitudes is cumulative and the most useful form of ‘minimalism’ for most people is to try and forget as many of the online self-improvement tips and hacks and ideas that they have accumulated as possible.

Personally, if I could access a Men in Black flashy pen that could wipe all the glib life advice that has ever been transmitted to me via a social media feed I would turn that thing on myself in a heartbeat. Such practical information without practical application can be damaging- it can fool us into thinking that some influencer’s advice is improving us in some way- and we may feel worse than we did before taking this advice when it almost inevitably doesn’t help.

Advice can rob us of the chance of learning for ourselves. It can make us think that intuition cultivated by direct experience- by actually trying and failing and trying again- is not the true be all and end all of learning how to do something.

This is why I am trying as hard as I can to not give generic advice- no matter how nuanced- unless asked directly. Yet this is easier said than done. And the sad thing is when it comes to writing online you are confronted with the question- if not giving unsolicited advice or giving hot take reactions to the issue of the day- what else is there to talk about? What else it there that we still know how to talk about?

This can be a bleak question to ponder. But I advise that the more people do it, the sooner we can move beyond endless pontificating and start properly conversing.

Dialogue begins when monologue ends.   

Until next time,

Live well

Tom.

1. This short, anecdotal medical paper called The Sins of Experts and a Proposal for Redemption (originally published in the British Medical Journal back in 2000) outlines the paradoxical issues that come from always deferring to experts. It is written from the perspective of a self-described ‘chastened expert.’ It is well worth the few minutes it takes to read.