The advice gap
Wisdom and good advice are everywhere, now more than ever.
And yet, despite the abundance that’s available, people often make errors in job searches, product launches, or even planning a party.
There might be three reasons:
- The advice might not be good, or it doesn’t appear to be valid. It’s hard to tell good advice from the not-so-good, so it may pay to simply ignore it.
- The advice might be good for “someone,” but it’s easy to imagine that it doesn’t apply to us. After all, the advice giver hardly knows us, we’re a special case and this is a special situation. Not to mention that good advice is often conservative and intended to maintain the status quo, which isn’t apparently helpful for someone who wants to make a ruckus.
- The person who needs advice might not actually want advice. They might simply want reassurance. Reassurance that their instincts are right, that they and they alone are the ones that can make a difference. Of course, reassurance is futile (because it needs constant replenishment) but that doesn’t keep this from being the biggest of the three categories.
We don’t have an advice shortage. We have a gap in selection and application.
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