“What Tip Or Piece Of Advice Do You Constantly See That You Strongly Disagree With?” (31 Answers)

"Follow your heart" literally the worst advice to give someone.
Your heart is deceptive and illogical, never follow your heart unless your brain is involved as well. If you just do everything on a wim without any plan or reason you'll get yourself into a lot different situations and 8/10 times they don't go well.
DO NOT FOLLOW YOUR HEART.

"There's always a light at the end of the tunnel."
What if that light is a train?

"Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life"
The only people who don't work are people who already have money, they can afford to do what they love.

Meanwhile, the majority of us are stuck in this weird limbo where we had a passion/developing skill early in life, were told to study it academically and subsequently lost our taste for it and are either working out of our field of study or in it and both instances we're miserably cobbling together a living and have had our passions either eliminated or severely reduced.

I'm not opposed to the idea that people are driven from day one to pursue a certain field and are able to both put in the work and maintain their passion for it. But I don't like it when parents encourage their kids to adapt this mindset from day one. Instead I would focus on exposing them to a variety of activities and experiences and have them prioritize which ones they can tolerate and do well career-wise in realistically to support the constructive activities that give them joy and stimulate their minds.

*Drink more water, more, more, even if you're not thirsty.*

None of the X-cups-per-day rules are based on empirical evidence. Just drink when you're thirsty and you will be fine.

"Screw what everyone else thinks about you; you're perfect just the way you are."

This one falls into gray area a bit, because while yes, you shouldn't judge your self-worth on others' opinions of you, sometimes it is a good idea to listen to what they have to say. Sometimes people just suck--terrible personality, lack of basic hygiene, disrespecting others, etc. and they would benefit from changing so they don't hurt themselves or other people.

How people view you is important, and how you behave and appear in public will affect how society views you. Sure, you can walk out of your house without having a shower for a month, in old sweats, and sneering at the morning sun, but most people will have a negative reaction to you; that's just human nature.

So yes, you should feel free to present yourself how you wish, but don't expect everyone to accept you.

All the bs quotes about "don't let others dull your sparkle, other people don't understand what you're trying to achieve, if they don't benefit you cut them off" most of the time these quotes just enable narcissists to be selfish and not consider others. Just don't be an a*****e it's not hard.

For prospective US-based law students: going to the best school you get in. I hear this time and again. This is really horrible advice for most people. Firstly, most people shouldn’t be going to law school, period. Secondly, rankings only matter if the difference puts you in or out of a top 14 ranked school. These top 14 schools benefit from better employment opportunities with elite firms (known as big law) and better opportunities with federal clerkships and academia. However, a lot of these jobs actually suck (like you will die internally suck). And going to these schools pretty much guarantees you’ll have over $200k of law debt. So for most people that go to law school (which again, shouldn’t be many people), I often say to go somewhere that minimizes your debt. That should be the biggest consideration for most people.

"live every day like it's your last."

Begrudgingly doing something because you think you'll miss out is pretty toxic and desperate behaviour, not to mention selfish in certain situations as well as impulsive.

I prefer "live every day like it's your first," meaning free of prejudices or judgement. You're an open book who is curious about your surroundings and also has no pre-conceived notions about the new things you'll encounter.

Our high school chorus director had a large group but no tenors.

So he constantly advised bass-baritones:"Keep trying to sing higher and eventually you'll be able to sing tenor."

(Since then, I've known other choir directors who've coerced baritones into attempting high-tenor parts, despite the strain on their vocal cords, just to "cover" the part in performance.)

The end result was a chorus with baritones that had chronic sore throats and who were discouraged trying to do something unnatural for them just to "please" the director.

The deluge of advice everywhere on motivation and passion. The idea that motivation is a prerequisite to accomplish any task/goal and that one must constantly be chasing this mental state of 'Aha! I'm finally motivated, let's get some work done.'

I don't find that to be a very useful axiom to base such popular advice. I find that sentiment to be damaging actually when it comes to mental health and productivity in general.

Surely motivation in the general sense of the word exists: it's just not a reliable thing to depend in terms of being efficient or productive. I'm more motivated when I get things and that boosts my confidence as well. Many a time action leads to motivation. Not vice-versa necessarily.

'Follow your passion'

I kinda hate this. It's a double standard, and is only really helpful towards those who are already going to do what they're 'passionate' about whilst being harmful towards people who didn't exactly end up where they wanted to in an idealistic life. This advice assumes everything is perfect. Giving an example, if someone has hit a low point in their life, this advice could be seen as punishing them for reminding them that they could be better instead of being happy of where they are.

I know I've explained this horribly, CGP grey talks about this an explains it a lot better than I do (though I can't seem to find the source, I believe it was in a Q&A video)

To summarize; >Those kinds of [successful] people who are 'passionate' about their work find this advice meaningless. They're going to do what they're 'passionate' about anyway. So this advice is useless to its exemplars while being *anti useful* to everyone else, making most people feel bad about their lives and their work by setting an *impossibly* high bar.

This expresses my point (where i fail to) perfectly.