[csallen]

Our obsession with non-obvious advice stems from our base addiction to novelty. For good reason, pathways in our brain become myelinated and more efficient the more often we use them, to the point where we can process well-worn thoughts almost subconsciously. Thus, toys we've played with too long become boring. Advice we've heard too many times before seems blah.

We're hardwired to notice more when we encounter things we've never heard or seen before. Novel advice just pops.

However, most good advice is common advice. In practically any field, grokking the fundamental advice and actually sticking to it will get you 99% of the way there. As Charlie Munger once said, "Take a simple idea, and take it seriously."

But the fundamentals are boring. We'd prefer to ignore them and say, "Yeah yeah I know that already," even if we're totally ignoring it. Then we retweet the next dopamine hit of novel advice we see on Twitter.

[jorgesborges]

The best advice — real wisdom, in fact — is often readily available as platitudes on door mats or fridge magnets but they don’t resonate with us. Because real wisdom and the best advice is useless without a certain time and experience to recognize it, and a great deal of practice in putting it to life.

I first recognized this learning to meditate. Life is impermanent and leads to suffering so stop cravings and avoiding! Okay, well I’ve heard that a million times so what. But then learning to observe my experience a lightbulb goes goes on.

[WJW]

Most advice is quite specific for people in certain circumstances and useless or even harmful for people outside those circumstances.

Should you save save up for retirement and be generally financially sensible? Of course, but there are plenty of exceptions. For example, for the terminally ill it is terrible advice, and neither is the traditional "save 10% of income and invest in index funds" advice applicable to newly minted millionaires who have just won the startup lottery.

"Turn the other cheek" is great advice 99% of the time, but terrible advice in a relationship with an abusive spouse.

"When in doubt, assume stupidity over malice" is extremely easy to abuse by malicious actors.

In general, even well-meaning advice givers on the internet often don't realize that their advice is not universally applicable or forget to add a warning label stating the same. (And, of course, not everyone on the internet is well-meaning in the first place)

[adventured]

> Should you save save up for retirement and be generally financially sensible? ... For example, for the terminally ill it is terrible advice

No it's not terrible advice. People that are terminally ill will quite commonly have loved ones that can benefit after their passing from their being financially prudent rather than spendthrift. That can involve children, young adults, widow/ers, and all manner of contexts (disabled brother that you've helped across your lifetime, and you worry about their situation after you're gone).

[atoav]

As someone's loved one I'd rather have them go broke and inherit nothing than see them choose death to give me money.

[mjr00]

> However, most good advice is common advice. In practically any field, grokking the fundamental advice and actually sticking to it will get you 99% of the way there. As Charlie Munger once said, "Take a simple idea, and take it seriously."

Definitely. There's also an issue on the flip side of it: many people asking for advice are not doing so sincerely. You'll see it in the new year on fitness forums. People asking for advice on which fad routine (coughCrossfitcough) will make this the year they keep that weight off, or whether they should get a Peloton or a Bowflex. If you give them the simple, obvious advice that most experienced lifters would agree on--do a barbell strength program and count your calories--they get extremely defensive. That isn't an option for them because it's boring. It requires repetitive, uninteresting, and physically strenuous effort multiple times per week. They're actively looking for, as you say, the new and novel advice that gives them the dopamine hit.

So yeah, I disagree with the article's assertion that good advice is not obvious. There's a reason the advice is obvious; it's likely pretty good advice!

[maximus-decimus]

I don't think this is the same thing. They're asking for a fun activity they can use to lose weight, not for a novel fun advice about losing weight.

It's not the advice itself that's boring, it's the activity the person will have to do every other day.

[MattGaiser]

This depends on whether the field is an arms race. In plenty of areas, common advice is quickly implemented by most competitive participants. See college admissions or even getting jobs after university.

At one point founding a charity was considered evidence of leadership. By my graduating class for high school, half the class had a charity. The person I know who has been the best at admissions has founded 4. But now there is nothing special about charity creation.

Same with getting jobs after university. It used to be that you earned your degree and a good job awaited you. But then lots of extra people went to university and you started needing better grades, an internship, and now several internships to be competitive.

In those cases you need something novel to stay ahead.

Or consider unlimited vacation for developers. At one point that was a fairly novel perk. Now, everyone has that. I would be surprised to work for a company with fixed vacation ever again.

It was once a perk that would win you staff. Now, it is just being competitive for certain kinds of people.

[nicoburns]

> Or consider unlimited vacation for developers. At one point that was a fairly novel perk. Now, everyone has that.

I would argue that nobody (or hardly anyone) has this. Otherwise you’d find most developer only working 6 months a year.

[MattGaiser]

Fair, it is not truly unlimited, but for plenty of people (at least where I have worked) it has still ended up being 5-8 weeks a year.

In contrast to the more traditional employers who say that you can start with two weeks and after 3 years of loyal service with no real raises, you can have three.

[nicoburns]

Ah, I guess that makes sense from an American perspective. For context, 5.6 weeks (28 days) is the legal minimum for absolutely every full time employee here in the UK, and I believe that’s one of the lower legal minimums in Europe. Higher allowances are not uncommon here.

My employer considered introducing unlimited holiday, but we said no once they admitted that they were hoping it would result in us taking less holiday in practice. I’d rather have my 5 weeks guaranteed, no guilt, than be worrying about whether I’ve taken too much unlimited holiday.

[mc32]

Indeed. It’s a wolf in sheeps clothing.

It’s like letting the kids mind the house by themselves while you go on holidays.

If they take too much liberty, they never get that privilege again. If they do it within implied constraints they get to have the house more often.

If you have power (not necessarily managerial) you can exploit thus and be okay, if you’re mediocre and you take the same advantage, you could very well have signed your own pink slip.

Now if you have a minimum everyone takes, then even as a mediocre worker, you’re not an outlier.

[simplestats]

People I know take about four weeks a year. 8 weeks seems nuts. Do their managers push back all the deadlines related to their projects since they take a lot of vacation? I'd imagine managers don't even consider it and plan deadlines according to a typical (e.g., 50 weeks a year) worker output.

[MattGaiser]

I haven't ever worked for a company with hard deadlines. Always enterprise software, so delays are of seemingly no consequence.

[fvdessen]

The managers indeed push back the deadlines or hire more people

[_jal]

> Or consider unlimited vacation for developers.

Is there any evidence that developers (or anyone else with "unlimited vacation") take more time than they did previously?

I've assumed that was more akin to "open offices" - selling a cost-cutting measure as something hip.

[milkytron]

My company recently switched to unlimited, and everyone has been consistently taking more than we were offered prior, which was a generous amount compared to previous places I've worked for.

So far in the 4 months we've had unlimited, I've taken 40-50% more time off than I would have otherwise. I think many employees know of the issue you mentioned, and we're collectively taking steps to prevent that from happening. It mainly has to do with culture and not have too many key person dependencies.

[MattGaiser]

I only have anecdotes from the two companies I have worked for with it, but developers taking 5-8 weeks off is not uncommon.

And whether or not you do take it, you can if you need/desire to do so.

It stands in contrast to more traditional companies that offer you two weeks to start and an extra week after three years of service without a raise.

[jacobr1]

I too only have anecdotes from myself and friends/colleagues, but a few experiences stand out:

* The accountability culture really matters. Are teams responsible for their own commitments/deadlines? If you think you might get fired, or at least a lower performance review for taking vacation (because you shipped less while out) then you are less likely to take vacation. Of course the problem here isn't the PTO policy, but unlimited PTO in a company like this is worse than a defined amount of time.

* Are senior leaders work-a-holics? If so, that might breed a culture where, even these same leaders always say the right things about everyone needing to recharge and take advantage, the ambitions see those above them, and ape the behavior of working more. This trickles down, though it might be inconsistent across the company.

* As time has gone on with these being more common, some strategies have emerged to take advantage of them more effectively. Such as being more aggressive with 3 day weekends, or flex schedules, or remote work, or vacation hybrids (like going abroad for a 6 weeks and working every other week). Taking a bunch of multi-week vacations may or may not work in your company, but figuring out the broader category of "flex work" seems to be getting a ton of experiment.

[namelessoracle]

Best of both worlds is guaranteed vacation with unlimited sick in my experience. People for sure take their vacation, and people slip in days to not be around when they need a break and need an extra 3 day weekend.

[rocqua]

I have vague memories of stories that it leads to less time off taken. Something about people feeling more guilty taking vacation when they have to pick their own limit.

[fastball]

I myself like Mary Schmich's definition of advice from the "Wear Sunscreen" column:

> Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

[1] https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/chi-schmich-sunscreen...

[vaxman]

Good point. How to classify:

'Don't risk catching Omicron and passing on to others who may die by going to see the latest, widely panned, episode of The Matrix starring Doogie Howser as a psychotherapist, a middle aged woman as an action hero all set against a stalker's perspective on romance. Same goes for Yaamava which opportunistically released a commercial with a Morphius-like narrator over slow motion scenes.'

Is this obvious, non-obvious, common (or novel) advice?

[mc32]

Not everyone is “addicted” to novelty. I’ve travelled a bit and there are places where people repeat and repeat old advice about lots of general things and don’t go for novelty… but that may be because they’re not plugged in to a bias of novelty = modern = more savvy = better = more admiration.

[roenxi]

One other - more subtle - point is that nothing is easy and nothing is obvious. There are people in the world to whom "you need to make eye contact when you talk to someone" is a new idea.

Good advice is based on evidence that the receiver does not understand something. Nothing is novel to an expert.

[WalterBright]

Good advice:

1. Try, try until you succeed.

2. Stop beating a dead horse.

[HPsquared]

Hence the attention economy promoting informational junk food.

[dwaltrip]

> grokking the fundamental advice

This is much harder than it sounds! The roots of true fundamental understanding go very deep.