[rauljara]

The list is all phrased as commands. I can't stand that. There is no one way through life, and I wish people didn't act like just because it worked for them it will work for everyone.

Find people that are cooler than you and try to be even cooler than them seems like a particularly terrible command to give in general. So many of the people I admire the most just don't care so much about image. And I've met too many people who've exposed their own shallow foolishness trying too hard to be cool.

If it worked for the author, fine. And I'm sure there exist people for whom that is actually all right advice. But life is full of edge cases and exceptions, and no one should act like their life should be the prototype for everyone else's.

[orangecat]

Agreed. I find myself increasingly annoyed by the tone of people who have discovered that the Great Secret of Life is having kids/getting up at 5AM/exercising for hours every day/eating nothing but meat and vegetables, and if you don't do that you're a pathetic specimen who will never amount to anything.

[jwwest]

I'm curious to know if anyone who doesn't feel like they might be successful doing something someone else points out as a good practice has actually TRIED doing it.

If you've tried something and it didn't work out, write up a rebuttal and post it! Personally I'm a little dismayed at the negativity surrounding these posts when it's obvious that everyone is armchair quarterbacking here.

[wpietri]

But posts like this are armchair quarterbacking everybody else's lives. If the guy phrased these purely as personal lessons and talked some about how he learned them, he would be much less grating.

What really kills me is his bio. "Hi, I’m Julien Smith.I help people lead more productive, awesome lives— one day at a time. This is my blog. If you like it, please subscribe below."

For me that might as well read: "Hi! I'm an overconfident asshole who gets off on telling people I've never met how they should be awesome exactly like me. And I get paid for it! Please let me manipulate you into buying my stuff."

[ahoyhere]

So you kept reading it why?

You're armchair quarterbacking -- the OP isn't.

You're commenting on his actual web site, telling everybody how it should be. That is armchair quarterbacking.

He wrote a blog post for a general audience. It wasn't about you. It didn't describe specifics of your life. It didn't question your judgment.

[wpietri]

I'm not telling him what to do. He's welcome to carry on being a huckster. But I'm allowed to critique his writing and his business model, just like everybody else.

[lhnz]

Or you could look at it with a more positive outlook:

I don't think they're trying to prove that they're better than you, they could be genuinely trying to help you by telling you what worked for them.

Life is easier if you learn to trust by default.

[orangecat]

they could be genuinely trying to help you by telling you what worked for them

Sure, that's often the case. And then there's ridiculous arrogance like "All your accomplishments are pointless without your child next to you", from a recent parenting thread. (And that's a case where "trying" it to see if it works would be an exceptionally bad idea).

[eli_gottlieb]

Just give it a couple of decades. You'll get used to everyone around you spouting off about a Meaning Of Life that you think is total bullshit... eventually.

[_pius]

The list is all phrased as commands. I can't stand that. There is no one way through life, and I wish people didn't act like just because it worked for them it will work for everyone.

I've heard this sentiment before and I don't get it. If it makes you feel better to have authors qualify every sentence with "In my opinion ...," you ought to simply imagine it there, not force that kind of timid writing on everyone else.

Relevant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVoQ5jde1yQ

[hmottestad]

When I was taught about conflict resolution in secondary (yes, we have classes on that in Norway) the main theme was to separate fact from personal opinion.

The best way to do that (according to my teachers) was to ground your argument in a fact and apply your opinion in an obvious way. Ie. I think the goverment is .... because they .....; Rather than: The goverment is ....

Any scientific paper knows this, which is why they cite a dozen other papers. So then you can say "I think B because this person found out A".

[walterworm]

'In my opinion' isn't the only alternative to blank statements. One can explain one's ideas or provide some evidence.

[jerf]

It would not have improved the piece. Short & punchy would become long and meandering, with all sorts of little details and things to nitpick at and complain about.

(Indeed, the cynic in me can't help but read this as a complaint that the essay isn't full of such small things to nitpick about and use to casually dismiss it, as is our mental habit... but perhaps that's too cynical.)

Besides, all attempts at wisdom transfer like this have the problem that if you understood the explanation, you almost certainly didn't need it in the first place. You're better off just spending some time in thought about these sorts of essays, asking yourself how and why someone saw fit to write these things, wondering what experiences they had that led them to these conclusions...

... or, more likely, not, until about 15 years later.

[hv23]

This comment is all negative. I can't stand that. There is no one way to interpret a piece of writing, and I wish people didn't act like just because they were curmudgeonly in their reading, other people were as well.

[theorique]

Sounds like he's talking to his younger self, not commanding a gang of people on the the internet whom he doesn't even know.

This is just another one of the endless lists of N things posts that proliferate on the intarwebs. Take it if it benefits you or leave it if it doesn't.

... oops, was that a command? ;)

[westicle]

I feel a no true scotsman coming on, but are those people actually cool? Or are they just posers?

I read the advice not as "spend time with people who have a well engineered social image" but "spend time with people who are genuinely more interesting, knowledgeable, capable, effective than you are".

[bretthoerner]

Given the "I" in the title I'm pretty sure he's trying to speak to his past self.

[dfc]

But since it is not in his private diary it seems obvious that he is speaking to others.

[TheCowboy]

Sharing on the Internet on the off-chance that someone else might derive some benefit from it.

Or putting yourself and ideas out there to let people take them apart and see what holds or what you can improve.

[Void_]

I get easily annoyed by arrogant style, but this seems okay to me.

He's really just trying to share what he's learned and it seems very honest.

It's not like "you should follow me on Twitter" at all.

[epo]

Can you even read? It is entitled "...things I should have known", not "things you must do" or "things I am commanding you to do".

And for the record I am much older than him and his suggestions are pretty good ones.

[pacomerh]

A positive person extracts what he or she finds useful and dumps the rest. It's pretty obvious these "commands" worked for him, and you should take them with your own judgement. Getting annoyed by this is a waste of time, look at point 20. and see if it makes your life easier.

[EvilTerran]

look at point 20

That's a fully general counterargument.

[sophacles]

You know why they are called edge cases and exceptions? Because they are (sometimes) uncommon or (usually) rare. Statistically speaking, you are not at all special. You probably will never have a thought no one has thunk, and your opinion of what is great and awesome about how you are different will turn out to be nothing special in retrospect (like most people who ever live discover). Try taking some advice and actually be the outlier you are trying to be, not "rebelliously" rejecting it like every young person ever has done in some fucked up attempt to be unique the same way everyone else who ever lived has done.

You are not special, get over yourself (oh no! command... best rebel and complain, its lazier and easier than learning or thinking about it).

[prawn]

Think of "cooler" as "more like what you aspire to be." For some people, that might be dressing a certain way or acting tough. For others, it might be acting more confident or being more productive.

Cool is different things to different people.

[manmal]

Obviously, it did not work even for the author - he has learned these wisdoms while being on his way through life. Learning is achieved by doing, and not by reading through commandment lists. Try to follow more than 3 points at once - you won't manage. For most people, doing so would also go against their current state of mind (their nature). I don't get why this link has been upvoted so high.

[felipellrocha]

You'd be surprised how alike people's life can be...

[ahoyhere]

Why don't you just accept that the blog post isn't for you, instead of wasting your time trying to tear it down? Nobody made you read it. He's not actually ordering YOU to do anything. He wrote in a way that reaches his actual audience, which obviously isn't you.

Your comment's about as useful as the reviews I saw recently on Amazon for a Reader's Digest book on travel -- the angry reviewers complained, essentially, that it's Reader's Digest style for a Reader's Digest audience.

If you don't like it, don't read it.