The internet provides us with an embarrassment of riches when it comes to shitty advice. I mean, it is an absolute treasure trove out there.
A few gems I read today:
“You can compound your own time if you build the right assets” Huh?
“Kill the idea that excellence can be achieved with mediocre effort” Um, okay.
“If they don’t like you, they’re just jealous” Unlikely.
An unfortunate product of the creator/attention economy is its tendency to incentivize this sort of lazy, vague, pseudo-motivational content because people actually engage with it. Entire businesses are built around drip streams of messages like this. It’s sort of funny, in the same way that this picture from two years ago is funny:
To be clear, I’m not anti-advice or anti-motivation. But when I read motivational content about creating motivational content which comes from someone who is essentially repurposing someone else’s motivational content, it makes me wonder whether anyone is actually doing anything.
So in the spirit of useful advice, I’d like to share two of my favorite aphorisms that have actually helped provide clarity and inspired me toward action:
“If you don’t like a situation, you have three options: accept it, change it, or leave it. If you can’t accept it, change it. If you can’t change it, leave it. Anything else is madness.”
The source of this quote is unknown, but it’s a fantastic piece of advice and a great way to shake out of a mindset of victimhood. This speaks for itself and should be on billboards everywhere.
2. “Don’t talk about it, be about it.”
Catchy, isn’t it? This one comes courtesy of a close friend of mine circa 2011, likely in response to me rambling on about some idea I wanted to pursue. It has a nice way of cutting through both internal and external noise and serving as a reminder that action is all that counts.
Hopefully these thoughts are helpful next time you find yourself in a rut. They’ve certainly served me over the years.
If nothing else, you could probably post them on Twitter and gain a big following.