People mostly don't know how to measure advice. You ask one person and they tell you "it's all about marketing", someone else will say that "technical excellence is more important than anything else". Even though a lot of advice is contradictory and very context-dependent, people don't notice this and lap it up.
The truth is that probably most successful people can't tell luck, serendipity and hard-work from wisdom. Times change, opportunities change etc. so how much is advice really worth?
The only good advice is an answer to a specific question with very clear boundaries: "How much is a good amount to spend on Facebook advertising?", "If you have a product aimed at the mass market and you can correlate success of click-throughs, spend as much as you want as long as it's less than what you make per-click".
Otherwise you get stuff like, "Facebook is great value for money" or "Facebook is a disaster" both useless pieces of advice.
I also suspect that those with the correct brain for business probably don't need very much advice because they will quickly work things out themselves.
The "learn the secrets of how $SUCCESSFUL_PERSON did $SUCCESSFUL_THING!" is almost always garbage content. Despite that, it's a massive, massive "industry," that will never die.
Once you see the extent of the Matthew Effect [1], it's hard to unsee it.
> The truth is that probably most successful people can't tell luck, serendipity and hard-work from wisdom. Times change, opportunities change etc. so how much is advice really worth?
The ability to work hard is also always 100% luck.
Humans do not control their DNA or what environment shaped them to be able and have the desire to work hard.
I'm a dev/tech blogger, and I can say, following the right people is half of the success.
Not just because of the things they say, but because they can share your work.
Every time my work was shared by an influencer in the field, I got one or multiple job/project offers and over the years I made a good living out of it.
"being good at tech" only helps in the next step, when you need to proof that you can write better about a tech topic than the average marketeer/content creator.
Success is multifaceted. If there's a formula or equation for success, it's a combination of luck, talent, work ethic, and several other things. And not to mention every facet is fungible with every other facet.
If you're lucky enough, talent and work ethic matter less. If you're talented enough, maybe you don't need as much luck. Etc. But for the vast majority, there's going to be a combination.
I think that's what people don't truly get. You can work as hard as possible, but you do need a little luck to get that work noticed.
Sorry to interject with something more generic but I feel it's somewhat pertinent. And sorry for the gray beard tone. Here it comes:
---
Obsessively following anything or anyone is not good for you and that's very likely a 99% universal advice.
I was super good at multi-tasking all my life... until 2-3 years ago my brain started resisting me and sabotaging me at every turn. Gradually I realized that I am gulping waaaaaaaay too much information online; not just HN but favourite forums like ElixirForum, Rust Users, OCaml, and a few very big subreddits on top of that.
Starting to gradually dial down things did wonders. Even today I still insist on checking 2 outlets from the above listing and I am working on eliminating my fear of missing out. So far a good compromise has been to never check them during this or that hours. And even that helps.
---
Here's something even more generic as an advice but I also feel it applies well, especially nowadays with all the distractions that bombard us:
Do your own thing. Develop problem-solving skills. All the out-of-context advice is still out there. If one day you need it, you can get metric tons of it in minutes.
Start focusing. Start analyzing your own life, your own personal / work faults, and optimize for your own unique circumstances. Treat your life (or whatever part of it you want improved) as an optimization problem and work on that.
>Obsessively following anything or anyone is not good for you and that's very likely a 99% universal advice.
I think the problem with reducing the advice to this level is that it reduces away the idea that some information is much less healthy than other information.
When you follow other people online, you are always learning from the information you gather. The problem is that you aren't always aware of what you are learning. If one is constantly following very successful people, they are learning how filled with the success the life of others are. This begins to contrast the lack of success in their own life. Not that their life lacks any success, but it isn't filled with only success. You get a false impression of the life of others which results in an unhealthy judgment of your own life.
This can become a significant problem on social media and one that I've seen brought up before in regards to teens and instagram. The older one is the more life experience and other sources of learning one has and thus the less susceptible to the effect, but less susceptible doesn't mean immune.
In contrast there is a flood of other information that isn't as toxic. Follow your favorite hobby by someone who shows both their success and failures and you don't risk building the same unrealistic picture. Follow a bunch of information largely freed from daily grind, like watching videos that dig into math, history, and science and you would have even less risk. That's not to say you can just assume the information has no risks at all, addiction and such are still a concern, but short of some very specific scenarios I would find it much safer to consume.
It is like telling someone to not overeat. While that's good advice, it is important to make sure the person you are talking to understands that overeating refined sugar and fats are much more a threat than overeating vegetables. Such an example almost feels silly because of how common sense the information feels, but when it comes to following people and information sources online I find people aren't as well informed as to what is the deep fried refined sugar and what is the vitamin packed fiber.
The article points out "A delusion is created that progress is made." and I agree that consuming content should not be mistaken for progress, rather you should also actively act on the content you consume. Create something out of it.
I have a friend who is going through a harrowing divorce, cheating on both sides, lots of family drama, she tried to light his car on fire, police called by neighbors for fighting, etc.
On Instagram he and his (soon to be ex) wife just tagged themselves this weekend putting up Halloween decorations, all smiley buying pumpkins and cooking truffle mac and cheese, liking each other's posts.
Meanwhile he is calling me at 1:30am asking if he can come sleep on our couch. I kind of want to ask him about the discrepancy between his online persona vs real life, but I don't want to offend him.
Obviously I don't know your friend, but as someone who has dealt with depression and whatnot constantly for most of my life, and intermittently since I started medication four years ago, I can tell you that it's not terribly hard to make yourself seem happy and content online.
It's almost easier to appear happy online when you know you're not; you don't want people to try and offer you unsolicited advice about how "exercise worked for them" or "changing to this particular diet changed my life" or crap like that, so you fake it [1]. You only post things that you think are interesting, you minimize how much you talk about your personal life, and when you do it's only to flex about something cool you did. Whenever I did open up to friends later about my mental health stuff, they were always really surprised to hear it, and that was by design.
[1] To be clear, I'm not knocking diet and exercise. If you're feeling depressed, eating healthier and getting regular exercise is probably the best (and cheapest) place to start, and offers a bunch of other benefits too. My life did improve when I stopped eating Taco Bell ever day.
One of the reasons I quit FB was I didn’t recognize my close friends’ online personas. It was too bizarro-world for me. If I asked them about it, they felt attacked. So it turned out I simply preferred not to know what they were up to online.
Perfect Instagram is a skill you can deploy and unrelated to whether you are actually happy. Case in point: https://www.sltrib.com/news/2021/09/16/police-compare-notes/. There were multiple photogenic posts of smiling people in the weeks leading up to the murder, when they were fighting a lot of the time.
> I kind of want to ask him about the discrepancy between his online persona vs real life, but I don't want to offend him.
Struggling people are allowed to have, and share, enjoyable moments. Going through a divorce doesn't mean someone must be miserable 100% of the time, nor that you have to hate your spouse. Nobody is obligated to share the negative parts of their relationships and lives online, even if they're struggling.
Having a perfectly happy and problem-free marriage isn't a prerequisite for posting a happy family photo online with your kids. Nor should it be!
I don't understand why this is even a question. Just support your friend. Don't try to poke fun at the one moment of joy he shared online or call him out for some perceived discrepancy just because you know his struggles. It's not hypocritical for someone to have fun while going through tough times. It's bizarre that you'd even consider asking someone about this.
>Meanwhile he is calling me at 1:30am asking if he can come sleep on our couch. I kind of want to ask him about the discrepancy between his online persona vs real life, but I don't want to offend him.
In my house we call this 'Hashtag Blessed".
Because the people we know that write posts with #Blessed are the ones with a completely different reality online.
One dude is sleeping in his camper parked at work because wife saw a screen shot of pornhub on his phone (seriously Apple, so many accidental screen shots weren't a problem when the power button was on top), she's telling him he's cheating on her, and there was a couple in the picture, but the guy was clearly exposed, so while she's having a fit of over this and kicking him out she's seriously asking him if "Like, are you gay now!?"... Next day they need to do some cubscouts events, so it's smile #Blessed.
Most people want to deal with their shit internally.
I guess the wife could have put the picture of the burning car or a snap of an affair sex tape, but then they'd both have more drama to deal with from people contacting them trying to "fix" things.
Intimate moments are private, happy moments are okay for public. Bad moments can be used against you so you keep them private.
Before Instagram, many families would send out Christmas update letters to all their friends and relatives full of almost entirely happy news. Then you'd hear about the pending divorce a few months later. People haven't changed.
There are some interesting observations here, but the piece basically ends up in the same place all self-help content ends up: here are the x things you should do.
> Instead of just watching, reading, listening to other people doing fancy stuff. We need to get going. Overcome the general feeling of malaise by start running, failing, getting up, and trying again.
This is basically the same advice that a lot of self-help gurus give. The only difference is in the packaging.
Here's a tangential piece of advice about listening to "successful people online": not everything is as it appears. In fact, much of the time these days, it isn't. Never forget that you have no way of knowing whether people are as happy, rich, etc. as they say they are, and even if they are, you have no way of knowing whether or not the advice they're selling you is how they got to where they are.
I stopped reading after the fifth one sentence paragraph or so. Author needs to stop reading successful bloggers telling them how to write for the internet. It just seemed to me like the article style was a symptom of the problem it was supposedly about.
I agree. I don't even mind short paragraphs because I think they can be used for good effect but not if it's every single paragraph.
It just strikes me as lazy writing. If each sentence is its own paragraph then you don't have to worry about structuring the article well or writing transitions or intro/outro sentences.
This maybe just an anecdotal conjecture, but I've noticed this a lot lately with many news sites. It seems that with the advent of social media and smart phones, our attention spans have drastically shortened. Now all the articles have paragraphs that are 2-3 sentences long.
Yeah, it kind of reminds me of when they used to say we shouldn't panic about the coronavirus. Of course you shouldn't panic, because panic isn't a productive response, but you should anticipate, prepare for, and mitigate risks.
Of course, then the people who told us not to panic about the coronavirus ended up panicking about the coronavirus because when they said "don't panic", they meant, "ignore the problem until you are overwhelmed by it", which is exactly what leads people to panic in the first place.
Or an even more general one: Why Obsessing Over Vicarious Actions is Dangerous.
Everyone needs to live their own life and do what's right for them. Whether your life looks like your glamorous neighbors or not shouldn't matter to you.
I think the reason to not follow successful people online is that they did not get successful by following successful people online.
Meaning - they have a big online presence post-success. They use the online presence to bask in their own glory.
But this isn’t just for the sake of basking in ones glory. It is a sort of way for the successful person to leverage their success into more success. A positive feedback loop of sorts.
I was excited to click through to this but was a little disappointed when I read it because it wasn't discussing what I was hoping for.
I think there's also an issue where you can follow a bunch of people that are already very successful and at the top of their fields on Twitter; they comment on the latest news, post their big conference talks, their brand new tool on Github, etc. You may have had a very unproductive day (or week) at work, and seeing these other people continue to ascend and excel makes you feel like you are not working hard enough. If only you picked up that new front-end framework. If only you went and got another certification. If only you created your own side hustle and turned it into a profitable business.
There are benefits to surrounding yourself with motivated, successful people - it can also create and foster a drive in you. But it's also important that you can relax and take the night off after work , even if you're not keeping pace with the most vocal and prominent avatars.
Another thing this doesn't touch upon is – what made these online "influencers" successful in the first place? Was it following all the advice that they love to dole out on Twitter and LinkedIn? Or the fact that they got lucky with a tech investment and/or were at the right place at the right time? The tech world is full of these personalities. Ultimately most of them (and the rest of us) are monkeys throwing darts. Some get lucky, others don't.
The advice is separate from the number of successful people you follow online. The advice is simply to follow through with the tips you see from the successful people you follow with some tips on how to do that. Very meta.
I do find a bunch of irony in the dissing of self-help books, when you could copy-paste this entire article verbatim into like half the self-help books out of there and it'd fit right in.
Here's a reason that seems obvious to me: Cults of personality are dangerous, for cult members and for the community. Among other things, they are delusional; they aren't reality. Also, they give far too much power to the personality.
Why has that obvious knowledge been forgotten? Have we forgotten to be skeptical?
I stopped following a bunch of people on LinkedIn. It seemed like all they did was repost stuff from others - mostly infographics. None of the information was even helpful to an IC like me.
[+] [-] lbriner|4 years ago|reply
The truth is that probably most successful people can't tell luck, serendipity and hard-work from wisdom. Times change, opportunities change etc. so how much is advice really worth?
The only good advice is an answer to a specific question with very clear boundaries: "How much is a good amount to spend on Facebook advertising?", "If you have a product aimed at the mass market and you can correlate success of click-throughs, spend as much as you want as long as it's less than what you make per-click".
Otherwise you get stuff like, "Facebook is great value for money" or "Facebook is a disaster" both useless pieces of advice.
I also suspect that those with the correct brain for business probably don't need very much advice because they will quickly work things out themselves.
[+] [-] mattgreenrocks|4 years ago|reply
Once you see the extent of the Matthew Effect [1], it's hard to unsee it.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect
[+] [-] xorfish|4 years ago|reply
The ability to work hard is also always 100% luck.
Humans do not control their DNA or what environment shaped them to be able and have the desire to work hard.
[+] [-] k__|4 years ago|reply
I'm a dev/tech blogger, and I can say, following the right people is half of the success.
Not just because of the things they say, but because they can share your work.
Every time my work was shared by an influencer in the field, I got one or multiple job/project offers and over the years I made a good living out of it.
"being good at tech" only helps in the next step, when you need to proof that you can write better about a tech topic than the average marketeer/content creator.
[+] [-] bena|4 years ago|reply
If you're lucky enough, talent and work ethic matter less. If you're talented enough, maybe you don't need as much luck. Etc. But for the vast majority, there's going to be a combination.
I think that's what people don't truly get. You can work as hard as possible, but you do need a little luck to get that work noticed.
[+] [-] 2OEH8eoCRo0|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WalterBright|4 years ago|reply
Take responsibility for things that happen to you. Taking responsibility means you can do something about it if it isn't what you want.
Assigning responsibility to others means there's nothing you can do about your situation.
[+] [-] pdimitar|4 years ago|reply
---
Obsessively following anything or anyone is not good for you and that's very likely a 99% universal advice.
I was super good at multi-tasking all my life... until 2-3 years ago my brain started resisting me and sabotaging me at every turn. Gradually I realized that I am gulping waaaaaaaay too much information online; not just HN but favourite forums like ElixirForum, Rust Users, OCaml, and a few very big subreddits on top of that.
Starting to gradually dial down things did wonders. Even today I still insist on checking 2 outlets from the above listing and I am working on eliminating my fear of missing out. So far a good compromise has been to never check them during this or that hours. And even that helps.
---
Here's something even more generic as an advice but I also feel it applies well, especially nowadays with all the distractions that bombard us:
Do your own thing. Develop problem-solving skills. All the out-of-context advice is still out there. If one day you need it, you can get metric tons of it in minutes.
Start focusing. Start analyzing your own life, your own personal / work faults, and optimize for your own unique circumstances. Treat your life (or whatever part of it you want improved) as an optimization problem and work on that.
[+] [-] SkyBelow|4 years ago|reply
I think the problem with reducing the advice to this level is that it reduces away the idea that some information is much less healthy than other information.
When you follow other people online, you are always learning from the information you gather. The problem is that you aren't always aware of what you are learning. If one is constantly following very successful people, they are learning how filled with the success the life of others are. This begins to contrast the lack of success in their own life. Not that their life lacks any success, but it isn't filled with only success. You get a false impression of the life of others which results in an unhealthy judgment of your own life.
This can become a significant problem on social media and one that I've seen brought up before in regards to teens and instagram. The older one is the more life experience and other sources of learning one has and thus the less susceptible to the effect, but less susceptible doesn't mean immune.
In contrast there is a flood of other information that isn't as toxic. Follow your favorite hobby by someone who shows both their success and failures and you don't risk building the same unrealistic picture. Follow a bunch of information largely freed from daily grind, like watching videos that dig into math, history, and science and you would have even less risk. That's not to say you can just assume the information has no risks at all, addiction and such are still a concern, but short of some very specific scenarios I would find it much safer to consume.
It is like telling someone to not overeat. While that's good advice, it is important to make sure the person you are talking to understands that overeating refined sugar and fats are much more a threat than overeating vegetables. Such an example almost feels silly because of how common sense the information feels, but when it comes to following people and information sources online I find people aren't as well informed as to what is the deep fried refined sugar and what is the vitamin packed fiber.
[+] [-] data_required|4 years ago|reply
>If one day you need it, you can get metric tons of it in minutes.
[+] [-] lewdev|4 years ago|reply
> Do your own thing.
The article points out "A delusion is created that progress is made." and I agree that consuming content should not be mistaken for progress, rather you should also actively act on the content you consume. Create something out of it.
[+] [-] mercurialfck|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] randycupertino|4 years ago|reply
On Instagram he and his (soon to be ex) wife just tagged themselves this weekend putting up Halloween decorations, all smiley buying pumpkins and cooking truffle mac and cheese, liking each other's posts.
Meanwhile he is calling me at 1:30am asking if he can come sleep on our couch. I kind of want to ask him about the discrepancy between his online persona vs real life, but I don't want to offend him.
[+] [-] tombert|4 years ago|reply
It's almost easier to appear happy online when you know you're not; you don't want people to try and offer you unsolicited advice about how "exercise worked for them" or "changing to this particular diet changed my life" or crap like that, so you fake it [1]. You only post things that you think are interesting, you minimize how much you talk about your personal life, and when you do it's only to flex about something cool you did. Whenever I did open up to friends later about my mental health stuff, they were always really surprised to hear it, and that was by design.
[1] To be clear, I'm not knocking diet and exercise. If you're feeling depressed, eating healthier and getting regular exercise is probably the best (and cheapest) place to start, and offers a bunch of other benefits too. My life did improve when I stopped eating Taco Bell ever day.
[+] [-] psyc|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhouston|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PragmaticPulp|4 years ago|reply
Struggling people are allowed to have, and share, enjoyable moments. Going through a divorce doesn't mean someone must be miserable 100% of the time, nor that you have to hate your spouse. Nobody is obligated to share the negative parts of their relationships and lives online, even if they're struggling.
Having a perfectly happy and problem-free marriage isn't a prerequisite for posting a happy family photo online with your kids. Nor should it be!
I don't understand why this is even a question. Just support your friend. Don't try to poke fun at the one moment of joy he shared online or call him out for some perceived discrepancy just because you know his struggles. It's not hypocritical for someone to have fun while going through tough times. It's bizarre that you'd even consider asking someone about this.
[+] [-] SV_BubbleTime|4 years ago|reply
In my house we call this 'Hashtag Blessed".
Because the people we know that write posts with #Blessed are the ones with a completely different reality online.
One dude is sleeping in his camper parked at work because wife saw a screen shot of pornhub on his phone (seriously Apple, so many accidental screen shots weren't a problem when the power button was on top), she's telling him he's cheating on her, and there was a couple in the picture, but the guy was clearly exposed, so while she's having a fit of over this and kicking him out she's seriously asking him if "Like, are you gay now!?"... Next day they need to do some cubscouts events, so it's smile #Blessed.
[+] [-] hunterb123|4 years ago|reply
Most people want to deal with their shit internally.
I guess the wife could have put the picture of the burning car or a snap of an affair sex tape, but then they'd both have more drama to deal with from people contacting them trying to "fix" things.
Intimate moments are private, happy moments are okay for public. Bad moments can be used against you so you keep them private.
[+] [-] nsonha|4 years ago|reply
The person might not be vain, it's just we're all trapped in this system of toxic positivity & unrealistic expectation created by social media.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nradov|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] LurkingPenguin|4 years ago|reply
> Instead of just watching, reading, listening to other people doing fancy stuff. We need to get going. Overcome the general feeling of malaise by start running, failing, getting up, and trying again.
This is basically the same advice that a lot of self-help gurus give. The only difference is in the packaging.
Here's a tangential piece of advice about listening to "successful people online": not everything is as it appears. In fact, much of the time these days, it isn't. Never forget that you have no way of knowing whether people are as happy, rich, etc. as they say they are, and even if they are, you have no way of knowing whether or not the advice they're selling you is how they got to where they are.
[+] [-] iainctduncan|4 years ago|reply
That kind of writing
is so bloody annoying
please read some books
and then write more.
[+] [-] xmprt|4 years ago|reply
It just strikes me as lazy writing. If each sentence is its own paragraph then you don't have to worry about structuring the article well or writing transitions or intro/outro sentences.
[+] [-] tonyedgecombe|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robohoe|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danuker|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] slightwinder|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philwelch|4 years ago|reply
Of course, then the people who told us not to panic about the coronavirus ended up panicking about the coronavirus because when they said "don't panic", they meant, "ignore the problem until you are overwhelmed by it", which is exactly what leads people to panic in the first place.
[+] [-] tus89|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mikeInAlaska|4 years ago|reply
Facebook Network Admins Are Doing Their Part To Reduce The Risk
[+] [-] marcodiego|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] munk-a|4 years ago|reply
Everyone needs to live their own life and do what's right for them. Whether your life looks like your glamorous neighbors or not shouldn't matter to you.
[+] [-] WalterBright|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ssimoni|4 years ago|reply
Meaning - they have a big online presence post-success. They use the online presence to bask in their own glory.
But this isn’t just for the sake of basking in ones glory. It is a sort of way for the successful person to leverage their success into more success. A positive feedback loop of sorts.
[+] [-] sylens|4 years ago|reply
I think there's also an issue where you can follow a bunch of people that are already very successful and at the top of their fields on Twitter; they comment on the latest news, post their big conference talks, their brand new tool on Github, etc. You may have had a very unproductive day (or week) at work, and seeing these other people continue to ascend and excel makes you feel like you are not working hard enough. If only you picked up that new front-end framework. If only you went and got another certification. If only you created your own side hustle and turned it into a profitable business.
There are benefits to surrounding yourself with motivated, successful people - it can also create and foster a drive in you. But it's also important that you can relax and take the night off after work , even if you're not keeping pace with the most vocal and prominent avatars.
[+] [-] raspasov|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paxys|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yupper32|4 years ago|reply
The advice is separate from the number of successful people you follow online. The advice is simply to follow through with the tips you see from the successful people you follow with some tips on how to do that. Very meta.
I do find a bunch of irony in the dissing of self-help books, when you could copy-paste this entire article verbatim into like half the self-help books out of there and it'd fit right in.
[+] [-] iratewizard|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wolverine876|4 years ago|reply
Why has that obvious knowledge been forgotten? Have we forgotten to be skeptical?
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] giantg2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ducktective|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jordanmorgan10|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hidden-spyder|4 years ago|reply