“He Tells Me To Burn Things”

For those of you wondering, the title of this post is from The Simpsons, specifically the episode entitled, “This Little Wiggy.” Ralph tells Bart that a leprechaun in the deep end of his sandbox tells him to burn things. Hilarious…but I digress…

In keeping with that theme, how do you distinguish good advice from bad, how do you know when someone is just telling you to “burn things?” It’s a tough thing to do, perhaps one of the toughest problems I’ve dealt with personally. I’ve both asked for, and received, quite a bit of advice, the vast majority of which turned out to be crap. After years of trying to figure out a system to help me distinguish good advice from bad, I have to say that I’ve developed some great rules of thumb to keep from being led down the wrong path.

By its very nature, advice is a risky pill to swallow…the only reason we ask for advice to begin with is that we’re not sure what to do in a given situation. The problem is obvious: we wouldn’t ask for advice if we had enough information to make the decision on our own, so any advice we act on is largely an act of faith. Essentially, when we take advice, we’re just hoping that it turns out to be accurate. Many times it’s not.

A 2-Part Solution

The solution is really quite simple…two easy to follow rules that will help you ensure you’re not getting bad advice.

The first is:

Never take advice from someone who hasn’t already accomplished what you’re trying to accomplish.

In other words, if you’re training for a marathon, you probably shouldn’t take advice from your friend who’s never run a day in his or her life. This seems obvious, but the amount of advice the average person is bombarded with every year could fill a book, and most of it comes from people who don’t follow it themselves.

The second rule is:

Never mistake certainty for accuracy.

How many times have you heard someone speak about something with absolute conviction, only to find out they really had no idea what they were talking about? We tend to believe people who appear certain about what they’re saying, and for good reason, it helps us decide whether or not to believe someone when we don’t have much information to go on. It’s just one of those psychological we, as human beings, use to make decisions in a world where we are constantly bombarded with information. Unfortunately, it’s an easy shortcut to muck up by relying too heavily on it. It’s so easy to be swayed by someone with confidence and charisma; you think, “this person really seems to know what he’s talking about.” It’s an easy trap to fall into, and something you have to watch out for.