Ignore most advice

Throughout your life, you will get a lot of confusing advice because everyone wants to project their aspirations into your life.

Your ability to filter through and act on the right advice for You is determined by how much precision you know what you want and value in life.

A good framework to increase this precision is to prioritize regrets you would potentially have in your last days on earth, and then focus on the most painful ones while being okay with the rest.

For example, you might regret not having a happy family, not starting a business, not traveling the world, not being famous, not writing a book, not spending enough time with your kids, not reading The Brothers Karamazov, not starting a political party, and not driving a Ferrari.

For instance, if not traveling the world is a much more painful regret compared to not starting a business, then you should focus first on advice regarding how to travel the world and act on it immediately, instead of any other business advice even from Bezos or Elon (and vice-versa).

Prioritize the most painful regrets and focus on them intensely.

The fewer regrets you focus on, the easier it is to filter advice and ignore most of it, the more precision you have on what you want and value in life, and the higher the probability that you will get it.

Cover image by Giammarco Boscaro.