Ask Lemmy

"If you ain't doin' shots get the fuck out the club"

Always give 110%, and one day your boss will notice and give you the promotion you deserve.

Anything about god taking you to and through things, or prayer. How's that working for Ukraine or Gaza or a ton of other places with war, famine, violence, trafficking, etc.? Also, anything that refers to "fighting" cancer or other diseases - too bad your person is gone because they didn't fight harder.

"be yourself" doesn't work if your natural self is bad.

"Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life."

or

"Do what you're passionate about."

Just no. Most things I like don't pay well and I started to resent the others while doing them professionally. Turning your hobby into your job is like setting your favorite song as your alarm. That's my experience at least.

"Look before you leap" vs "He who hesitates is lost"

Neither of these is dead wrong but were rules of thumb that oversimplify changing and complex issues in the US:

"stay away from credit cards" - often prevents people from actually learning about how underlying mechanisms of loans, interest, credit ratings, and budgeting work. There are definitely people incapable of having access to credit and not spending it, so the saying may be true for a subset but if you always pay your bill in full on time and just use autopay so you don't forget, you're leaving 1-5% annual rebate for almost all your spend on the table. If you play credit card churning games, much more.

"The only things worth going into debt for are a home and education." - while accurate in the US for decades, the applicability or even accuracy of this statement is now dubious depending on many factors: career field and interests for education; interest rates, geography and housing prices for homes.

"All kids think they are smarter than their parents." - my father, constantly growing up

What I learned: Never tell anyone else how to think or feel about anything. Anyone that tries to shape your thinking directly is a fool.

Intelligence is like beauty, we don't have a very good frame of reference to perceive ourselves. Physical beauty is largely measured by the reactions of others. Like beauty, intelligence has many facets. However my favorite measuring stick is curiosity. This is how I overcame my father's admonition; while curiosity does not guarantee intelligence, an intelligent person is always curious.

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

No it doesn't. In most cases, you're now weaker.

I'd say most of single-sentence advice falls under "dubious" advice, as it really lacks any kind of nuance. It can be a guideline and perhaps words to live by, but it will rarely help in concrete situations where more specific context should be considered.

If you don't succeed, try and try again.

It leaves out the steps where you figure out why you think you failed the first time so trying again with a different approach has a chance of success instead of just failing over and over again.

“Bring your authentic self to work”

Was pretty prevalent in tech for a while. Fuck no I’m not doing that.

Just be yourself.

There is a reason people hide who they really are until you get to know them.