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Follow boring advice

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Re: Follow boring advice

#41

Post by derbOac »

smoyer wrote: post #22

Nope ... there are a ton of 30-somethings writing "easy" advice like this and bemoaning the ignorance of their twenties. I'm a few decades older yet and can tell you that I'm still learning and integrating new ideas into my framework of how business (and the world in general) work. Creating a simple idea is easy but think about how many counter-examples there are to just this one rule (and you can find 100k more simp…

My problem I run into with these sorts of things, and to some extent normative ethics, is that they frequently contradict one another in reality. So you might be in a situation, and one piece of the advice would suggest one course of action, and another would suggest the opposite, and there wasn't any way to reconcile them.

I think they're well intended and can be useful to think about but beyond something like "these are useful things to be aware of or to keep in mind" it's hard to apply things in life.

Perhaps it's reading too much into what's intended by the authors of these sorts of pieces, and maybe they're just trying to communicate some help, but this particular piece is "advice about advice" so in that regard I think these issues are relevant.

Re: Follow boring advice

#42

Post by tekromancr »

kiba wrote: post #16
ceilingcorner wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eat less calories than you burn. Spend less money than you make. Boring advice, yet the majority of people are overweight and in debt.

They're not really advice, so much as goals? Also, CICO seems to be actually incorrect from what I read on it. Body's more like a thermostat than a steam engine and will work against you such as burning calories slower as you eat less. If you really want to save money, then you need to think in terms of emotions and how to combat that rather than attempting to brute force it with willpower.

CICO is just physics; but you need to work BOTH sides of that equation. If you ONLY try to shift the balance to deficit by limiting intake, of COURSE your body is going to react to the new starvation environment. That's why you should moderately reduce intake while ALSO moderately increasing output (i.e. do physical activity)

Re: Follow boring advice

#43

Post by PebblesRox »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #25
PebblesRox wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is a feelings problem. This is a exaggeration of course, but I've been struck by just how many sticky problems have an emotional component. I have a tendency to ignore emotions in favor of (what seems to me like) the main content, but I limit myself when I do this. Enthusiasm, despair, excitement, fear - these are too powerful to ignore. But naming them and uncovering the deeper values they reveal helps me…

> To get rid of that I never use involves confronting the fact that I'm not a person. It's painful to realize that I'm not who I wish I was. My solution to these feelings is to remind myself that my hobbies don't define me, whether I do them a little or a lot. And it's OK to save some unused stuff until a season when I can use them. (Assuming that's not too far off.,)

Very true. And as I reflect on why I used the identity language, I'm realizing that expressing my irrational feelings in an exaggerated form also helps to reduce the impact they have. By announcing dramatically to my husband, "I'm not a sewing person anymore!" I'm able to see just how silly it is to have that thought as a subconscious burden holding me back.

Re: Follow boring advice

#44

Post by PebblesRox »

gonzo41 wrote: post #28
paulryanrogers wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To get rid of that I never use involves confronting the fact that I'm not a person. It's painful to realize that I'm not who I wish I was. My solution to these feelings is to remind myself that my hobbies don't define me, whether I do them a little or a lot. And it's OK to save some unused stuff until a season when I can use them. (Assuming that's not too far off.,)

I have another technique for this. I like to paint, and I'm ok, generally what I paint now is recognizable. But I've given myself a really long time line on getting good. Like 25 more years of practice. If you have a desire for a hobby there's no reason you can't think of it like golfing in retirement, or something similar. I'm ramping up to doing it more over a really long time.

In my case I kept the core supplies but got rid of a big stash of stuff that I was keeping in order to be able to "go make something on a whim" after realizing that right now it's the lack of time more than the lack of supplies that has been keeping me from creating. If it's going to happen, it will have to be a deliberate effort for a particular project and in that case I can also make the effort to go out and buy what I need.

But coming to terms with the fact that I don't have that kind of time in my life right now is hard, even though it's my own choice to prioritize other stuff. We're putting extra time into work right now with the goal of early retirement within the decade. This fact combined with the number of small children in the house means time-consuming hobbies with lots of small pieces are off the table for the next few years. I'm definitely looking forward to coming back to it in the future though!

I think the sacrifice is worth it but it's still a sacrifice. Usually I'm caught up in the busyness of life and don't think about it, but spending time on big-picture stuff like minimalism really brings the feelings to the surface. So no wonder I keep putting it off!

Re: Follow boring advice

#47

Post by cudgy »

tomhoward wrote: post #27

I've seen PG [1] say/write versions of this: "The Y Combinator founders who followed our advice succeeded. The ones who didn't, didn't." The advice is so simple, it's hard for a lot of outsiders to believe it's worth anything. "Make something people want." "Talk to your users." "Do things that don't scale." "Keep typing and avoid dying." People hear about this and ask "You gave away 7% of your company for that?" No,…

AirBnb provides a platform for people to break laws and covenants in their community. Maybe they got lucky that they were not shut down before they got big enough to fight back?

Re: Follow boring advice

#48

Post by tomhoward »

cudgy wrote: post #47
tomhoward wrote: post #27

I've seen PG [1] say/write versions of this: "The Y Combinator founders who followed our advice succeeded. The ones who didn't, didn't." The advice is so simple, it's hard for a lot of outsiders to believe it's worth anything. "Make something people want." "Talk to your users." "Do things that don't scale." "Keep typing and avoid dying." People hear about this and ask "You gave away 7% of your company for that?" No,…

AirBnb provides a platform for people to break laws and covenants in their community. Maybe they got lucky that they were not shut down before they got big enough to fight back?

This is mostly tangential to my point, but for what it’s worth, they’ve been engaging with local governments from very early on in their history, and they got to the position of being able to work with governments by starting out focusing on building something people wanted and talking to their users.

I don’t dispute that there are negative externalities to what they do and that their existence and growth are not without controversy, but my comment has nothing to do with that controversy, it’s about the useful advice in building a financially successful company.

Re: Follow boring advice

#49

Post by throw1234651234 »

bordercases wrote: post #34
throw1234651234 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Because you actually need protein to gain muscle mass, so there goes your "mostly plants" without a caveat about "vegetarian protein", which has its own set of problems. 2. Exercise regularly - what is regularly? What kind of exercise? You never had over-work injuries? Injuries from muscle / postural imbalances? Etc. I concede that most of this advice is available for free, but unless you have a GOOD coach, you wi…

None of these are terminal criticisms, and in fact can be rectified with just a bit more information or expert advisement. You might argue that it means the advice isn't simple. I would counter that in the average case, it's simple enough. We are surrounded with material, examples and non-examples of the advice being followed to the point of it being tiresome. For cases like injury and plant protein sources the infor…

I am personally unable to program my diet / workouts to effective result, even with significant effort and over a decade of experience.

Re: Follow boring advice

#50

Post by sopooneo »

amelius wrote: post #2

Author should explain this: everyone can follow boring advice, so why aren't far more people successful?

Perhaps because boring things, and often even simple things, can still be extremely difficult. They can be exhausting. It's very tempting to believe that more exciting and/or complicated approaches, will be easier.
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