Most Advice Is Useless
Why I’ve stopped reading most content about entrepreneurship
Bloggers are obsessed with giving advice. “10 things you should…”, “What I learned by…” Some advice is anecdotal; some is data-driven. The trend is generally well-intentioned, or at least mutually beneficial. Authors try to offer value with their content marketing in hopes to gain attention in exchange for educational information.
The problem is:
90% of the advice I read is not actionable to me now.
I am a solo entrepreneur seeking a co-founder and exploring startup ideas while bootstrapping with consulting work. I used to swim in the sea of useless advice looking for motivation, inspiration, and practical knowledge. A new fatigue set in, as if my tolerance for unnecessary information had eroded beyond some indeterminate breaking point. While I will doubtless be reeled in by the occasional link bait, I am aware that the purpose of consuming such content will be entertainment.
Useless Topics To Me Right Now
Fundraising
To quote Paul Graham in his glorious succinctness: “don’t raise money unless you want it and it wants you.” I have a mountain of things to learn about fundraising, but the information and advice will be there when I need it. It’s more important to focus on doing things that will make money want me.
Culture
There is no culture of one. I don’t lack ideas on how to inspire and shape culture, I just can’t make use of them right now. I find profiles on remarkable cultures (Github, Valve, 37signals…) intriguing more as human behavioral case studies than as actionable input.
Scaling
Scaling a company, tech infrastructure (servers, databases…), advertising, user growth, or experiences offered by a product are not relevant to me right now. “Do things that don’t scale,” is another Paul Graham refrain that encourages founders to find out if anyone cares about what you’re making before proceeding any further. If no one wants what you’re offering, no elegant code or beautiful design will keep your startup alive.
Hiring & Recruiting
People are obsessed with concepts around growing a team — interview questions, recruiting tactics, negotiation strategy... I need to learn how to recruit just one collaborator. I need to achieve traction on an idea. These are hard problems; I don’t have the time or desire to dwell on problems I don’t have.
There’s still an ocean of advice that is useful to me now. The entrepreneurship topics I find most useful at the moment are focused on uncovering problems to solve, testing prototypes, and stories about the early days of successful startups.
How much time do you spend consuming content you can’t make use of?