Advice

If you’ve been alive for more than 3 hours, you’ve probably been given some advice. Some of it might have been good, the rest probably wasn’t.

How are you supposed to tell the difference?
Allow me to give you some advice on that.

My Metaphor

Imagine every person on Earth was a mountaineer with one goal:
Find the highest place they can and stay there as long as possible.

Everyone would be trying all different methods to gain altitude.

Everyone would be climbing hills and mountains and building skyscrapers and riding hot air balloons and building rockets.

And of course, everyone would be sharing advice on how you, the protagonist of your story, can or cannot get some elevation of your own.

What would that advice look like?

1. “Just climb the mountain to your North!”
2. “Use a hot air balloon! It’s quicker and easier than climbing!”
3. “Never descend and you’ll get there eventually!”
4. “You need a rocket to truly get anywhere!”
5. “Read a map, find the tallest mountain close to you, and climb that!”
6. “Don’t even bother trying to climb, those on the top will just push you down!”
7. “Take the Northeast Ridge route on Mount Everest”

Here’s the problem with all of that advice:
These people are just describing their own mountains.

Let me break it down: Let’s start with advice #1. This advice came from someone that had a mountain North of where they started. Perhaps they got very high with this approach, and for people that start where they started, it would be good advice. You might see an army of
people saying that this advice worked for them.

However, if the biggest mountain to you is to the South, this would be bad advice for you. If you blindly follow this advice, you’d set off North and waste your time until you came to your senses.

And so it goes for the rest of the advice in that list. #2 and #4 are both unsustainable, but that advice was given by people at great heights. #3 only works if you start with the right mountain and the right path the first time, otherwise you’ll have to backtrack a little here and there to keep moving forward.

#6 was given by someone with very mean mountaineers above them, but many successful mountaineers that I’ve met were very kind, and you would be doing yourself a disservice assuming that they wouldn’t help you out.

“But what about number 5.” I hear you shout. “It’s good general advice, surely I should listen to it!”

And generally, I think you’d be correct. But suppose you start your mountaineering journey in an exceedingly flat place, where the best strategy is to build a very tall structure to get elevation. Then this otherwise sage advice would only waste your time.

And what of #7? Overlooking the fact that someone just told you to embark on an adventure that is very likely to kill you, this advice may be out of date. An avalanche or earthquake that makes that trail unusable may have happened since that person climbed that route. If you just blindly follow advice you may end up in a very bad situation.

“So is all advice bad?” I can hear you quietly ask.

No. I don’t think so. Although I do think that blindly following any advice is certain to lead you to doom eventually, I think there is good advice out there that you should follow.

I think you can use a simple litmus test to find the gemstones amongst the sand.

Simply ask yourself “Would this advice work on my mountain today?”

Back to the Real World

Of course, the real world isn’t just mountaineers. It’s merchants and engineers and single mothers and venture captalists and singers and forklift operators and fast food managers and mountaineers and everyone else.

So when you read advice on the internet telling you to do ANYTHING, any career advice, financial advice, fitness advice, etc. just stop and ask yourself if that advice would work on your mountain today.

Now of course, that also applies to everything that you’ve read in this blog post. I’ve only just started climbing my mountain, and I have no idea what your mountain looks like, dear reader.

So take my advice for what it is: just a tool I use on my climb.