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Why doesn't advice work?

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Re: Why doesn't advice work?

#111

Post by OnionBlender »

firefoxd wrote: post #61

When I was leaving for America, my aunt pulled me aside and had a serious talk with me. "Be very careful," she ended. My thoughts? She was jealous that I was going to America and not her kids. I had just turned 18. But then, I found myself depressed, disappointed, and betrayed in the US. I thought of her advice. "Be very careful." I knew i needed to be careful, I wanted to be careful. But what does being careful mean…

What does "be very careful" even mean? Be careful of what? That's so vague to be completely unhelpful.

Re: Why doesn't advice work?

#115

Post by eastbound »

bityard wrote: post #45

I guess this is entirely tangential, but one of the stories in here resonated with me. I had much in common with a childhood friend. We bonded over similar interests in electronics, then video games, then computers in elementary school. He was definitely smarter than me when he could motivate himself to learn things. But in retrospect, I had dogged persistence on my side. As we moved past high school, I went into the…

Going to an art school sounds very hard, because the measure of success is very erratic, so you can never congratulate yourself or hold yourself to a plan. Maybe he has as much grit as anyone and such studies aren’t good for motivation.

Re: Why doesn't advice work?

#116

Post by MikeTheGreat »

resource_waste wrote: post #58
rdtsc wrote: post #19

> And for producers of advice: Step 0 I think should be "maybe don't give advice". You want to help, you think you're really good, you think it will improve things, but that's not how other people see it. They may seem like they need advice or seem like they are asking for it between the lines, but they just really want to unload or chit chat, or share some difficulty. The answer to that is sometimes to listen and no…

I was at a bakery grand opening from an uneducated rural family. Plenty of their rural friends listened to the difficulties, wished them the best. Bring in the MBA + Industrial Engineer, and tell them some advice on processes, economics, and as a bonus, I was an Electrical Engineer for a few years so I had some advice on their oven problem. What is better? The person that says "You look beautiful", or "You have a pie…

Thank you for sharing! Based on your last sentence I think we're in agreement that it's probably not great to give someone unsolicited advice (but it's fine if we disagree). I wanted to throw out a couple more thoughts:

I think that having experience in the business (or not) is important. I think that sometimes giving advice on an area that one doesn't have experience in can be a weird way to put oneself in a 'one up' position. Kind of a "Look, I don't even do your job, but let me tell you how to do it better" kind of statement.

I'm not saying that this was your intention or your effect but I think it's something engineers are prone to - I know I've done this. Wasn't there even a name for this? Something about "dinner party advice"? If this rings a bell for anyone I'd appreciate the help about this.

Sometimes I've found that if I have experience in the area I can suggest a small change with a substantial benefit (because I've actually done this enough times to know that the advice will actually help, actually) but even there I'd be really hesitant to offer unsolicited advice.

And, as an added bonus, consider that they may have already committed to what they're doing. In which case, even if you're right, you're basically telling them that they've done something wrong - maybe they can fix it (with more effort and/or money) maybe they can't, but that's gotta be an extra burden for them.

Re: Why doesn't advice work?

#117

Post by thaumasiotes »

resource_waste wrote: post #58
rdtsc wrote: post #19

> And for producers of advice: Step 0 I think should be "maybe don't give advice". You want to help, you think you're really good, you think it will improve things, but that's not how other people see it. They may seem like they need advice or seem like they are asking for it between the lines, but they just really want to unload or chit chat, or share some difficulty. The answer to that is sometimes to listen and no…

I was at a bakery grand opening from an uneducated rural family. Plenty of their rural friends listened to the difficulties, wished them the best. Bring in the MBA + Industrial Engineer, and tell them some advice on processes, economics, and as a bonus, I was an Electrical Engineer for a few years so I had some advice on their oven problem. What is better? The person that says "You look beautiful", or "You have a pie…

https://books.google.com/books?id=uJQbhDs4dMMC&pg=PA47&lpg=P...

Re: Why doesn't advice work?

#118

Post by paulryanrogers »

lelanthran wrote: post #92
jprete wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the problem is that, when you give someone advice, you're not giving them the whole thought-structure you've built that strongly implies the advice - you're just giving them the result. So they don't have any of the ideas that support the advice, just a blind aphorism. Maybe it would help to only give advice in long discussions where you show someone all the structure under the advice and then poke at it…

> I wonder if the problem is that, when you give someone advice, you're not giving them the whole thought-structure you've built that strongly implies the advice - you're just giving them the result. So they don't have any of the ideas that support the advice, just a blind aphorism. I'm skeptical. My observation is that it's the messenger that is ignored. Ignoring the advice is simply a side-effect of this. Consider…

> Consider how many people pay therapists many thousands of dollars to simply hear what their spouse was telling them for years.

An independent professional can confirm real problems. Sometimes they're significantly more useful than friends. Sometimes less.

Re: Why doesn't advice work?

#119

Post by sqeaky »

resource_waste wrote: post #58
rdtsc wrote: post #19

> And for producers of advice: Step 0 I think should be "maybe don't give advice". You want to help, you think you're really good, you think it will improve things, but that's not how other people see it. They may seem like they need advice or seem like they are asking for it between the lines, but they just really want to unload or chit chat, or share some difficulty. The answer to that is sometimes to listen and no…

I was at a bakery grand opening from an uneducated rural family. Plenty of their rural friends listened to the difficulties, wished them the best. Bring in the MBA + Industrial Engineer, and tell them some advice on processes, economics, and as a bonus, I was an Electrical Engineer for a few years so I had some advice on their oven problem. What is better? The person that says "You look beautiful", or "You have a pie…

Depends on context.

If someone just needs the emotional energy to get back into the fight then a compliment is often what is needed.

If someone is about to do something imminently that you see a correctable fault with and they don't then pointing it out is likely correct.

So many people up here thinking there is always 1 exactly right course of action! Why?! Why do so many otherwise smart people fall back to the silliest of binary thinking and heuristics?

Re: Why doesn't advice work?

#120

Post by kayodelycaon »

marcosdumay wrote: post #16

Maybe that ending question of "why won't you do obvious-thing-that-solves-the-problem?" is the best thing in the entire article. But only if you ask it literally, without irony. My guess is that each time somebody ignores a good advice, they do it for different reasons. So discovering the reason is the most impactful thing you can do.

> discovering the reason is the most impactful thing you can do

Most people do this by trying to give you more advice once they think they understand your problem, often before you finished explaining.

Being bipolar, I deal with this this all the time. It would be funny if it wasn't so frustrating. It would be a lot easier if people simply took my limitations for granted instead of making me explain until they realize they have no useful advice.

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