[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.