[adventured]

I try to only give advice when asked, unless it's an unusual context and I'm certain I have a vast and specific experience advantage over the other person (and they appear to be in dire need of the advice in question; some people are afraid to ask for help, and sometimes people don't know they need it).

Narrow, specific, experience-backed advice is generally the best. I have found that most people will give you their opinion-as-advice, and it's most often worthless or worse (harmful). Only a very small fraction of people that will give you advice on a subject, are likely to have very relevant experience to offer you high quality actionable advice. Narrow, specific advice is good, general advice not nearly so much. General advice is better picked up on your own by living life, whereas narrow, specific advice can really jump you ahead in your thinking and learning curve (often you can plug it right into your puzzle, or at least see where the piece fits, and then grasp the broader picture better).

Advice that comes from a personal experience place will be drastically better received, along with the story that relates it, the story from which you learned the advice. It humanizes the advice, helps the other person relate, and makes it seem less pushy or judgmental (sometimes advice can rudely come across as telling the other person they're doing something wrong and should do it such and such way instead). By telling them your story, how you arrived at the conclusion you did, you demonstrate that you were in their shoes once.