I Hate Advice Posts

I don’t know what I’m doing and neither do you

Every time I spend more than 3 minutes on Medium, I feel like the world’s biggest failure. And that I’m lazy and bad and if I just keep clicking and skimming, I’ll eventually become successful and rich and happy and loved. Wherever you look, there are people promising they know the secret to sales, the secret to pitching a story, the secret to freelancing, the secret to finding love.

In my mind, I know most of it is bullshit that we’re scraping together for content. I know that at least half of these posts are recycling the same tired advice I’ve heard a thousand times before. I know most of the people writing it don’t live more successful, fulfilled lives than I do. But I also know that advice posts are the bedrock of digital content. No matter what industry you’re in, it’s all about providing value.

The trouble is almost anything valuable can’t really be related in 600 words you wrote before doing 80 minutes on your Peloton and then going to work, where you only check your email twice a day, but also answer every asinine comment on everything you’re ever written.

In my experience, the big important lessons come through the accumulation of experience. They come through hindsight. They come through doing the wrong thing over and over again until my thick…