How to take advice (properly)

Table of contents 1. Context is king 2. Skin-in-the-game 2.1 The doctors 2.2 Airlines & Entrepreneur 2.3 Bullshit detector 3. Respect 4. What’s next

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Giving advice is hard. Taking advice is damn harder. My life-long mission is to explore the most efficient way for people to learn anything quickly because.. life is short.

Advices are one of the best great source of learning, it helps you learn an insight or concept without wasting so much time experiencing the process. As a matter of fact, so far I’ve seen such many posts on how to giving advice but not so much on how to receiving it.

It’s highly obvious to me that everyone should learn how to take advice properly (and more seriously). In this post, I collect some research and “thoughts experiment” for you all as a reference point to survive in the advice economy.

1. Context is king

👉 To get the most out of an advice, it's important to ask for context. Rather than immediately agreeing or applying the advice, ask how the person learned about the insights or who the advice is most suitable for.

(1) Don’t just say	(2) Do ask for context
“Your advice is exactly like my views!” (bias)	“How did you learn about this insights?” (ask for context)
“It sounds like it could apply the advice right away!” (quick judgement)	“Who is the most suitable for this advice?” (ask for context)
“I think your advice is correct” (trust blindly)	“Why do you think it’s important? Have you experience any downside that made you come to the insights? (ask for context)

Disclaimer: It does not mean that you shouldn’t say things in the left column (1). Sometimes you can mix the right column (2) with the left one (1) to make the conversation sounds more casual… but you get the point. 💩

2. Skin-in-the-game

👉 You should only listen to advice from a risk taker, not a theorist, most of the time.

It’s not hard to find a person who talks and gives advice as if he’s know-it-all, but deep down know nothing or have no stake in the subject matter. “Empty barrels make the most noise” (or “Thùng rỗng kêu to” in Vietnamese) idiom still holds true until today.

2.1 The doctors

Why most eye doctors don’t do eyes surgery but always advise their patient to?

How long does doctor get feedback if they’re wrong or that they prescribe unnecessary treatment?

The better question you should ask the doctor here is “If you were me, doctor, which prescription should you take for yourself?”.

Because medicine can work immediately, but at its very core nature has long harmful side effects on health. But at the time of extremely harmful health event happened, like when you suddenly have a stroke, it’s really hard to blame or give feedbacks to the doctor on the previous prescription.

The specific wisdom here: stay away from doctors as most as you can 😂

A more generic wisdom: don’t take advice from those who is not harmed from the wrong advice he’s given.

2.2 Airlines & Entrepreneur

Airlines are the best examples of skin-in-the-game concept: Every time a plane crashed, every manufacture will make sure that next generation of that plane model does not experience that issue. Pilots also have skin in the game because they share the same fate as their passengers in case of a plane crash.

Entrepreneurs and innovators who take risks and have skin in the game, such as Elon Musk, who invested his own money in SpaceX and Tesla are another good examples. They create value and progress for society, while being exposed to both upside and downside.

2.3 Bullshit detector

Back to the advice taking topic, to detect and eliminate such bad advice, ask yourself:

Does he/she act accordingly to his advice?

Will he/she be harmed from giving such wrong advice?

Is this advice comes from a popup assumption or a lesson that he/she learned from sweat and tear?

How frequently does he/she revalidate the insights he/she learned?

Highly socially praised and intelligent individuals like doctors and engineers are no exception of being a bad advice givers (a.k.a “the empty suit” I’ve mentioned in my previous blog post).

Every one could be completely incompetent in giving advice and solution if themselves not experiencing the risk (related to their advice) frequently.

Disclaimers:

3. Respect

👉 Last but not least, to receive an advice from anyone, you must first respect and trust the guy.

While western economy values or more flat hierarchy where everyone can share and learn from each other equally, old wisdom of a asian culture, a.k.a Confucianism, that one must be “Tôn sư trọng đạo” (in Vietnamese, meaning “Respect the teacher - Respect the knowledge”).

A comment on my facebook’s newsfeed sharing about mentor/mentee relationship (which really bound me in)

On the other hand, if you cannot trust and respect the advice givers, either because of them:

(1) not giving you the right context

(2) or they are simply not the risk takers

…run for your life, quit the conversation immediately, spend time on other activities: like eating Bun Bo Xi Quach, which in this case sounds a like more better allocation of time 😉

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Reflect back: - Have you been receiving advice correctly? - Who in your network have such qualities to be a good advisors?

4. What’s next

To learn more about the concept of advices giving/receiving, or learning in general, or to find yourself in this random world:

(1) “Incerto” (including 4 books) by Taleb:

the Incerto books is non-fiction thesis that revolves around dealing with randomness, risk-taking, learning, skin-in-the-game, even bull-shit detecting, and much more.

(2) “Principles” by Ray Dalio

Got this book from my CEO Jake Vu, though I do not read this book so much, I just pick the insights from the book from time to time, mostly of how to concept how to learn the unknown

(3) Books and advice on stocism

(4) Buddhism teachings (My religion 🙏)

I found buddhism teaching to be very well aligned with the concept of stocism about accepting the risk and volatility with the concept of impermanence

(5) … or simply just take risk! Fastest way to learn 😄