Dealing with conflicting advice

The Daily Drip

The answer is so often "it depends."

I feel like I've heard so much conflicting advice.

"Don't worry about your weaknesses, double down on your strengths."

"Train where you're weakest."

I think the important part of listening to advice comes after that moment where we resonate with it and feel inspired.

After we get the little head rush of "wow that sounds a lot like truth," I think it's helpful to follow up with the thought of "in what contexts is this true?"

The effort here is to uncover the root of the truth--or why it's true.

That's the only way we'll be able to apply (or not apply) this advice to our own lives and work.

It's the same as anything else we do.

When I hear part of a guitar solo that I like, and that I'm inspired to learn, I will listen to the song and play along.

I will start to understand the key and why that solo sounds good the way it does.

Once I start getting into the mechanics and technique of how the solo works, I start diving into why it works. What are those three notes? Why do they sound good together? What is it about playing those three notes at this part of the guitar neck, rather than lower on the guitar neck?

By breaking down why we like or resonate with something, we afford ourselves the ability to apply it to more contexts accurately.

You can do this with anything you like. Go after it. Understand why you like it.

You'll do better.