You've considered listening to the advice you hear. You've considered reversing any advice you hear. But have you considered ignoring any advice you hear?
Reasons to ignore any advice you hear
Most people give advice that stems from their personal experiences. If you worked 16 hours a day for three years straight before "making it," you're probably going to tell others that they should do the same (so long as they want to be as successful as you). But there are two problems here:
Taken together, these tendencies mean that the self-identified actions in anecdotally-derived advice probably mattered less to the advice-giver's success than they think, and the same will probably hold for you.
Reasons not to ignore any advice you hear
If you gut the "story" part out of advice, leaving yourself only with the "anecdata," you may find that there's still a surprising amount of value left over, even though this anecdata is still survivorship-filtered. (At the very least there should be less motivated reasoning, which is usually confined to the "story" part.) This is likely why giving advice in the form of anecdotes can be more effective than prescriptions, and why when a smart person gives a bad take, there's probably some kernel of truth hidden inside.
So should you ignore any advice you hear?
Probably, to the extent that "advice" is the takeaways people draw from their anecdotes (and then preach to the world). But you probably shouldn't throw away the anecdotes. Given enough independent anecdotes, you might end up being able to differentiate some actual signal from the noise. (But take my advice with a grain of salt.)
There's advice, and then there's advice. Advice that has a strong causative link is useful, it's like learning more about the world. Advice that has a weak causative link is not useful.
If someone says, right, eat McDonalds and you will become a billionaire, Warren Buffet and Donald Trump both like a burger, that is the weak causative link e.g. it's probably not a thing you can just do and it will just work.
If someone says, right, if you want to make money, study how markets work, spend less than you earn, rely on compound interest, don't do a career that has a low salary cap, don't get in with the wrong crowd, etc. If you want an easy life, don't work in a supermarket in a high cost of living area, you're gonna have a bad time. Etc.
None of these are flick the switch instant win scenarios but the link is much stronger and it does make sense to take on this kind of advice. The challenge is knowing which is which. Personally almost all of the above I either figured out myself or learned from reading rather than being told by an actual person. So, err, maybe advice is useless, back to square one.
You've considered listening to the advice you hear. You've considered reversing any advice you hear. But have you considered ignoring any advice you hear?
Reasons to ignore any advice you hear
Most people give advice that stems from their personal experiences. If you worked 16 hours a day for three years straight before "making it," you're probably going to tell others that they should do the same (so long as they want to be as successful as you). But there are two problems here:
Taken together, these tendencies mean that the self-identified actions in anecdotally-derived advice probably mattered less to the advice-giver's success than they think, and the same will probably hold for you.
Reasons not to ignore any advice you hear
If you gut the "story" part out of advice, leaving yourself only with the "anecdata," you may find that there's still a surprising amount of value left over, even though this anecdata is still survivorship-filtered. (At the very least there should be less motivated reasoning, which is usually confined to the "story" part.) This is likely why giving advice in the form of anecdotes can be more effective than prescriptions, and why when a smart person gives a bad take, there's probably some kernel of truth hidden inside.
So should you ignore any advice you hear?
Probably, to the extent that "advice" is the takeaways people draw from their anecdotes (and then preach to the world). But you probably shouldn't throw away the anecdotes. Given enough independent anecdotes, you might end up being able to differentiate some actual signal from the noise. (But take my advice with a grain of salt.)