The dangers of taking too much advice

I get a lot of DMs. Most of them consist of a few kind words, a mention of my books or the Netflix series, and then an immediate plea for advice. 

The other day, someone DMed me to tell me that she was stuck. She was confused, directionless, and had gotten so much advice from various sources that she didn’t know what to do. She essentially expressed that she wanted me to give her advice on how to take advice––what to listen to, what to ignore, and what to do with it all. 

I felt bad, but my response to her was simple: stop asking for advice. And although I know she didn’t get the advice she wanted, it was the advice she needed. 

While a lot of people consider asking advice a humble act, it can also be a bit narcissistic. I’ve been that person: emailing and texting friends and colleagues at 1am asking for their opinion, spraying questions to anyone who will listen like some kind of personal Quora thread. Oh, and the classic email forward with just the words “thoughts?”

Asking advice can be… lazy. And taking it can serve as a way to offload responsibility so that when things fail, they fail because someone else told you to do it. And that’s not cool. 

The Harvard Business Review researched and found that CEOs who make decisions fastest, whether the right or wrong move, have higher performing companies. That’s not to say that haste is a great idea, but there is a point where gazing not into your own navel but into the navels of others (gross!) can severely limit you, even if you eventually make the right decision. Sometimes the wrong decision now is just as effective as the right decision later, you know? 

So don’t let your opportunity collect dust. I’m curious: What advice did you decide to stop taking recently? Congratulations in advance. 

Wheels up,

Sophia