Most Advice is Useless
I stumbled upon a recent post of All That is Solid, “Most advice is pretty bad,” which made fun of the uselessness of advice like “work hard.” This kind of advice is everywhere and pretty easy to spot 1I know because I’ve written plenty:
- Stay positive.
- Lean in.
- Give fewer fucks.
- Make YES your default.
- Make NO your default.
- Surround yourself with good people.
“Most advice is pretty bad” theorizes that good advice has three main components:
It is not obvious
It is actionable
It is based on some true insight
Let’s focus on 1 and 2. 2We’ll ignore the “true insight” part for now, because isn’t that redundant?
Say you have a goal to get to the mall and you want some actionable advice:
“When you get out of here, take a left onto the main road. Drive down a few miles, get on the 217, and then get off at exit 291. Make the first left, and then follow the signs from there.”
“Drive towards the 217, get off at 291.”
“Take the bus and get off at the stop at the mall. Or get an Uber or a Lyft.”
If you were driving from my house, these would all work. #1 seems like the most actionable; #2 requires a lot of insider knowledge, and #3 is so generic that it’s useless.
But #3—the most generic advice—is the only one that works for everybody.
I used to love a good “best practices” list. They felt reassuring—like someone had already done all the hard thinking for me, and all I had to do was follow the steps and boom, success. But, in real life, most best practices are completely useless.
Not because they’re wrong, but because they ignore the single most important factor in any decision: context.
Even “good” advice only works when it matches your specific situation. The moment you change where, when, or who, you get a totally different outcome.
Let’s take a simple example: eating ice cream.
Is it a good idea?
- Yes! If it’s a hot summer day and you want to enjoy life.
- No! If you’re lactose intolerant and currently on a first date.
- Yes! If you’re trying to bribe a child into behaving.
- No! If you just had six scoops and are about to get on a roller coaster.
Same practice. Different context. Completely different results.
So why do we act like business, leadership, and creativity work any differently?
I run into this all the time when I’m writing: there’s a great temptation to say something that’s helpful and immediately useful. It’s helpful to have a specific reader in mind—many might say that you should write to yourself, a few years ago or the advice you know you need to take—but “ask your mother to take your dog for a walk” or “put her in a kennel and just workout already” wouldn’t make much sense to other people, only those who are in my exact situation.
The way you translate “specific advice” to “the useful, underlying principle” is to ask what is this really all about? In my case, it’s about the importance of clearing out everything that’s getting in the way of my goals—in this case, my guilt that I shouldn’t work out in front of my dog because of that one time with the dumbbells.
- Clear out everything that is standing between you and your goal
- Complete your goal
What would be helpful is looking at the underlying mechanisms, and helping people figure out how to get there.
The Myth of Best Practices
As people move up the ladder of status and become a boss/manager/the type of person prone to giving advice, they also tend to become more prone to give advice. They think that because they’ve, say, caught a fish, that their own fish-catching steps will lead to success for everyone.
The Myth of Best Practices
Let’s say you want to start a business.
Would it be helpful for Jeff Bezos to personally coach you? Probably not.
Not because he isn’t smart, but because his context is so wildly different from yours that most of his advice would be irrelevant. He has unlimited resources, a massive network, and an army of underpaid warehouse workers. His strategies might work for Amazon, but if you’re a solo entrepreneur trying to make rent, “disrupting supply chains” isn’t going to help you.
Yet we keep listening to billionaires, thinking we can copy-paste their strategies into our own lives.
Best practices are not universal laws—they are snapshots of what worked in one specific situation. Instead of asking “What’s the best practice?” the real question should be:
“What works best for this specific system, in this specific moment, with these specific constraints?”
That’s what systems thinking is all about.
At Best, Advice is Incomplete
People’s lives are complex systems: we’re all going in a different direction.
What the Heck is Systems Thinking?
If best practices are a recipe, then systems thinking is understanding how the whole kitchen works.
Instead of blindly following steps, you look at how things interact. What are the inputs, outputs, feedback loops, constraints, and relationships at play?
Think of it like this:
- If you’re trying to improve your company’s customer service, you don’t just copy-paste what Zappos did—you figure out what your customers need.
- If you’re designing a work-life balance strategy, you don’t just adopt some CEO’s morning routine—you look at how your energy, workload, and priorities interact.
Context drives everything.
Want proof? Let’s look at some classic “best practices” that completely fall apart when you apply a systems thinking lens.
Three “Best Practices” That Are Actually Terrible Advice
1. “Work Harder, and You’ll Succeed”
Sure, if you’re in a meritocracy, working harder might get you ahead. But in the real world?
- Some people work insanely hard and get nowhere.
- Some people are mediocre at best but were born into the right networks.
- Some people work long hours but are just inefficient.
If the system is rigged, broken, or designed to reward something other than effort, working harder won’t help.
2. “Always Hire for Culture Fit”
Ah, the favorite excuse of every company that somehow only hires people who look, act, and think exactly like the CEO.
When people say “culture fit,” they often mean hiring people who won’t challenge the status quo. But in a rapidly changing world, the last thing you want is an echo chamber.
A systems thinker would ask:
- What does “culture” even mean in our company?
- Do we need more alignment, or more diversity of thought?
- How do new hires change our system instead of just reinforcing it?
3. “Follow the Data”
Data is useful. But here’s the thing:
- Data only measures what you decide to track.
- Numbers don’t tell you why something is happening.
- Some of the most important things (trust, creativity, intuition) aren’t easy to measure.
Blindly following data without context is like making all your decisions based on Yelp reviews—sure, it’s helpful, but you’re still going to end up at a few overhyped restaurants that serve $17 toast.
A systems thinker asks:
- What assumptions are baked into this data?
- What blind spots aren’t being measured?
- How does this metric fit into the bigger picture?
How to Think in Context Instead of Best Practices
If best practices aren’t reliable, what’s the alternative? Frameworks. 3(Yes, this is the part where I shamelessly promote what I do.)
Instead of one-size-fits-all advice, a good framework helps you see your own system so you can make better decisions.
Here’s how:
1. Identify the Key Variables
What factors actually matter in your situation? Instead of copying someone else’s playbook, figure out what’s actually driving success or failure in your unique system.
2. Look for Feedback Loops
What happens when you change one part of the system? If you push harder in one area, does it create unintended consequences elsewhere?
3. Embrace Experimentation
No one knows what’s going to work ahead of time. The best way to find out is to run small experiments and learn from real-world results.
4. Be Skeptical of “One Right Way” Thinking
If someone tells you there’s only one best way to do something, they’re either selling something or they haven’t thought very hard about it.
Final Thought: Context is King
Best practices can be useful as a starting point, but they should never be the final answer.
The world is too complex for copy-paste solutions. If you want to make better decisions—whether in business, leadership, or just life—you need to think in systems, adapt to context, and build flexible frameworks instead of chasing “best practices.”
And if you want help figuring out how to create a system that actually works for you instead of blindly following what worked for someone else, hit me up.
Because the only “best practice” that actually exists?
Think for yourself.