Do you give too much weight to other people's advice?

I have had a lot of advice from a lot of people over the years.  A lot of that advice has been good, most has been okay and some has been truly terrible.  I can look back on many things I have been told with the benefit of hindsight and with the knowledge and experience I have now gained.  So I can confidently dismiss much nonsense I have been told and which I believed at the time.  Getting qualifications is not the most important thing if you want to get on.  Being loyal to a company is not the best way to get promoted.  Real ale does not taste better than the conventional variety.


But interestingly despite finding that other people's advice is about as good as coming to my own conclusion most of the time, I still take other people's opinions way more seriously than I should.  I am not saying listening to what other people say is a bad thing.  Far from it - knowing what other people think can be really useful and if they are willing to share that with you they are doing you a big favour. The problem is when you give what they say more weight than it deserves.

We are well aware of the shortcomings of our own thought processes.  We know just how poorly our own brains work.  But somebody else's opinion comes without showing the thought process by which it was arrived at.  It just seems so much clearer than our own messy thinking.

One of the more humiliating experiences of my life was going to a job interview in an electronic engineering company.  Somebody told me that it was best not to wear a suit.  It seemed a bit droll but I went along with it and turned up in a jumper and cords.  The woman conducting the interview accused me, in so many words, of not taking my application seriously and wasting her time.  As I went home without the remotest prospect of getting hired I wondered what had possessed me to listen to something so obviously nonsensical.

I am not tremendously good at following the advice I about to give, but I think it is important to realise a couple of things.  First off, none of us are really that good at thinking and understanding the way the world works.  Even those people who seem on the surface to be winning are often the beneficiaries of luck rather than judgement.  And even very knowledgeable people's knowledge had to have a source.  That source itself was probably not perfect.  And nobody recalls everything absolutely accurately.

I think the most spectacularly wrong thing I was ever told was by a man working in a music shop.  I had been looking at a concertina that was on sale.  He informed me that concertina players were in great demand.  They were in such short supply that concertina players could command their own price. I talked to a concertina player a few days later and passed on the good news.  He soon put me right.  He said that he didn't believe it was possible to find work that paid any money at all with such an eccentric choice of instrument.

So when someone gives you some advice, be cautious about taking it.  You might well be better off doing it your own way.


photo credit: seanmcgrath via photopin cc