Take Counsel Cautiously

Chase

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Just Dave has a post on the Socializing Board talking about editing your social circle. It's a good post, but I saw one thing on it that stuck out to me in particular:

Just_Dave said:
When I first started honing my skills a lot of my friends thought it was manipulative and childish. That's why they're still single and bitter and I'm taken and striving.

I don't think this is much of a problem for guys here, but wanted to take a moment and point it out anyway - always be wary of where you're getting your advice.

Everyone's got an opinion on who you should be, what you should do, and how you should do it. A lot of these people are talking out of the side of their faces though - they don't know what they're talking about.

This is like when you go to start a business, or invest in real estate, and a bunch of people who've never started a business or invested in real estate step up to give you their opinions on what you should do. Are these really the people you want to be listening to?

Or, say Dave listened to his friends when they told him pickup is childish. Where would he be now? Probably still sitting at the bar pounding back beers with them, getting older, and talking about how women are such a big mystery, or only like men who are rich or extremely good-looking.

On a related note, much as I'm all for openness and honesty, especially when you've got something new you're working on, guard it carefully and don't go seeking counsel from inexperienced people with strongly-held opinions they've merely inherited from others. To quote Jonathan Ive, the chief designer at Apple who'd often keep projects under wraps until they were fairly far along before sharing them with the mercurial Steve Jobs so as not to see them crushed prematurely,

Jonathan Ive said:
Ideas are so fragile. It is so easy to miss an idea because they can be so quiet. Or to snuff an idea out.

Be cautious in whom you choose to take counsel from. Other people can have a big impact on your confidence, actions, and opinions, even when you think they don't - the subconscious mind is a lot more pliable and open to suggestion than most folks realize.

Chase
 

trashKENNUT

Cro-Magnon Man
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Hi Chase,

Chase said:
This is like when you go to start a business, or invest in real estate, and a bunch of people who've never started a business or invested in real estate step up to give you their opinions on what you should do. Are these really the people you want to be listening to?

There will be examples of this across the board, in sales, real estate as written.

the idea is how do you handle or manage such advices, if it gets heavy.

One way is avoid them altogether, Another is to tell it head on that it's disturbing, For online, you don't reply or accept malicious comments. or the general social rule. *throw the ball back at them*

what's your thoughts on this?

Zac
 

trashKENNUT

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Just like crazy fans and superstars need security. Yea mental capacity to handle is also another.

Zac
 

Thinkingenigma

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ZacAdam said:
Hi Chase,

Chase said:
This is like when you go to start a business, or invest in real estate, and a bunch of people who've never started a business or invested in real estate step up to give you their opinions on what you should do. Are these really the people you want to be listening to?

There will be examples of this across the board, in sales, real estate as written.

the idea is how do you handle or manage such advices, if it gets heavy.

One way is avoid them altogether, Another is to tell it head on that it's disturbing, For online, you don't reply or accept malicious comments. or the general social rule. *throw the ball back at them*

what's your thoughts on this?

Zac

This is one area where I slightly differ from Chase. I love to get opinions from people. Usually, most advice is crap, but I use it to give myself a bit of perspective, even if I don't take their advice. Obviously, I would probably take the same approach as Ive did with Jobs in his situation, but that's a matter of someone with power being able to crush an ill-formed idea, not the type of situation that you will find yourself in on a day to day basis (work being the one exception). My best work is nearly always done after running my ideas past tons of people, most of whom contributed nothing to it but instead served as mirrors to allow me to refine my ideas. Of course, I will nearly always run into at least one person who will unexpectedly throw a gem out there. It's not a matter of not listening to others advice, it's a matter of listening to a lot of advice and being able to sort the good from the bad.
 

Chase

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@ Zac,

ZacAdam said:
the idea is how do you handle or manage such advices, if it gets heavy.

One way is avoid them altogether, Another is to tell it head on that it's disturbing, For online, you don't reply or accept malicious comments. or the general social rule. *throw the ball back at them*

what's your thoughts on this?

Zac

In my opinion, yeah, if it gets heavy, with people forcefully trying to heft their opinions onto you, in those cases it's often better to either tell them you appreciate their advice, but you think you've simply got different objectives and a different outlook, or to cut them off / not tell them things they're going to weigh in on if they won't let up.

@ TE,

Thinkingenigma said:
This is one area where I slightly differ from Chase. I love to get opinions from people. Usually, most advice is crap, but I use it to give myself a bit of perspective, even if I don't take their advice. Obviously, I would probably take the same approach as Ive did with Jobs in his situation, but that's a matter of someone with power being able to crush an ill-formed idea, not the type of situation that you will find yourself in on a day to day basis (work being the one exception). My best work is nearly always done after running my ideas past tons of people, most of whom contributed nothing to it but instead served as mirrors to allow me to refine my ideas. Of course, I will nearly always run into at least one person who will unexpectedly throw a gem out there. It's not a matter of not listening to others advice, it's a matter of listening to a lot of advice and being able to sort the good from the bad.

This might be a difference in idea formation.

I've had some friends who were "idea aggregators." They'd get an inkling of an idea, then go around to all their friends and say, "What do you think of this? How can I make it better? Do you think this is a good idea or a bad idea?" and they'd take all the feedback they received, sift through it, and the end product was an amalgam of the input that most appealed and most made sense to them. I'd wager this is your style.

Other folks (including myself and probably Zac) are "idea formers," who get an idea in our heads that we're going to do, and then set out to do it. When you do things this way, you usually flesh out this entire process of an idea in your head (hopefully formed off of actual experience and a lot of informed sources), but when it's communicated to others they frequently only get a small sampling of the total idea, assume that's the full idea, and dismiss it or attack it or tell you to do something else. e.g., you decide you're going to build an oil company, so first you're going to lease access to some area with known oil reserves and start drilling, then once you've struck oil, you'll sell the rights to the property to an oil giant. Maybe this is a good idea, but when friends ask what you're doing all you say is, "I'm getting an oil rig so I can start drilling for oil," and they say, "Are you nuts? You're just going to start drilling and hope you hit oil? Stop dreaming and go get a real job!" In this case, the only people with the patience to sit there and figure out what the actual plan is and give accurate feedback on it are people who know the business already, e.g., an oilman who asks, "Where are you going to start drilling? Do you have permits, and is it a known oil reserve?" and then helps you flesh out the idea more soundly.

That'd be my read on the difference in approaches and why you like polling lots of people more, while, someone who's an idea former finds that a lot of people just give bad advice and he's got to choose whom he listens to carefully. Think that's accurate?

Chase
 

Franco

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That'd be my read on the difference in approaches and why you like polling lots of people more, while, someone who's an idea former finds that a lot of people just give bad advice and he's got to choose whom he listens to carefully. Think that's accurate?

I'm going to have to fly with Chase on this exact point right here. Women is the ONE AREA you absolutely need to be getting advice from only people who know exactly what they are doing. That means choosing the correct mentor and only modeling your observations and patterns after his methods.

It is extremely easy to give bad advice when it comes to women. The more people you poll, the more likely you are to accumulate advice that just doesn't stick in the real world. While there is plenty of good advice to be heard in other areas of life (careers, real estate, stock market, etc.), women are infamously known for being "impossible to understand." And 99% of the advice you will find on the internet or given by your colleagues will reflect that.

This is why when you DO find that 1% that is accurate, you need to use it as your only source of information and then figure out the rest on your own from there (hence an "idea former").

- Franco
 

Thinkingenigma

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Chase said:
I've had some friends who were "idea aggregators." They'd get an inkling of an idea, then go around to all their friends and say, "What do you think of this? How can I make it better? Do you think this is a good idea or a bad idea?" and they'd take all the feedback they received, sift through it, and the end product was an amalgam of the input that most appealed and most made sense to them. I'd wager this is your style.

That'd be my read on the difference in approaches and why you like polling lots of people more, while, someone who's an idea former finds that a lot of people just give bad advice and he's got to choose whom he listens to carefully. Think that's accurate?

That sounds about right.

Franco said:
I'm going to have to fly with Chase on this exact point right here. Women is the ONE AREA you absolutely need to be getting advice from only people who know exactly what they are doing. That means choosing the correct mentor and only modeling your observations and patterns after his methods.

It is extremely easy to give bad advice when it comes to women. The more people you poll, the more likely you are to accumulate advice that just doesn't stick in the real world. While there is plenty of good advice to be heard in other areas of life (careers, real estate, stock market, etc.), women are infamously known for being "impossible to understand." And 99% of the advice you will find on the internet or given by your colleagues will reflect that.

This is why when you DO find that 1% that is accurate, you need to use it as your only source of information and then figure out the rest on your own from there (hence an "idea former").

While I think that finding a good mentor is essential, I also think that to close yourself off completely to other ideas is not beneficial. For example, even though Chase is highly experienced and I place great value on his ideas, no matter how great his advice is, he is still human. He's still fallible and there are always things that he's not going to know. Because of this, while I may hold Chase's techniques in high regard, I still keep an eye out for new ideas from other people who also know what they are talking about (and I'm sure Chase does too). This may mean asking people who absolutely no earthly clue what they are talking about for their opinions (not that you actually use them), but I have met several people who have helped me out a great deal in this area because I made the effort to look for those good ideas mixed in with the junk.

I found my current mentor that way. He's not particularly interested in being with lots of girls himself (he's more of a fly under the radar guy, and he's happy with his current GF), but he has a grasp of social mechanics that rivals that of Chase. I found out about him because I asked him a question about a girl one day and he broke the entire interaction down into incredible detail (most of which I hadn't provided for him) and figured out what the problem was and how I might go about resolving the situation in a positive way within about 5 min. He's one of those guys that is scary not because of his behavior or vibe, but just because you realize how much of a powerful man he is and how well he hides it. He's a 4.0 creative writing major who will be flying commercial aircraft when he graduates in the spring and does engineering, woodworking, art, and takwondo on the side when he's not smuggling various goods with his father (and I'm not embellishing in case you are wondering. I've actually checked this stuff out to see if he was serious about it. It's not bullshit.). He's a freaking Renaissance man, but you would never know it when you first meet him because he doesn't want the attention. I never would have gotten to know this guy had I not been trolling around for potential ideas about girls.

I think Chase is right when he says that these are just two different styles of idea formation. I think that there should be a recognition that there is lots of terrible advice out there, but there is also some great stuff as well if you can filter it properly. The difference is how wide we cast our nets.
 

trashKENNUT

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Thinkingenigma,

i think you might consider my nugget here.

No matter what you an 'idea aggregators' or one like me, (Chase, possibly Franco too are 'Idea formers'), Always have your main objective in mind. I think that's what most matters, i mean, doesn't it? To get the job done, and possibly in the most fun way or your way. :) If it is better, it creates lesser effort, and you are more of an analyst, then i am sure you will do well. The results always speak for itself.

Zac
 

Thinkingenigma

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ZacAdam said:
Thinkingenigma,

i think you might consider my nugget here.

No matter what you an 'idea aggregators' or one like me, (Chase, possibly Franco too are 'Idea formers'), Always have your main objective in mind. I think that's what most matters, i mean, doesn't it? To get the job done, and possibly in the most fun way or your way. :) If it is better, it creates lesser effort, and you are more of an analyst, then i am sure you will do well. The results always speak for itself.

Zac

Absolutely
 
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