People love tips. A list of tips is the easiest way to make the front page of Digg, attract dozens of back links, and acquire hordes of RSS subscribers. The tips don’t even need to be new or insightful, they just need to make sense and cover an interesting topic. Who doesn’t enjoy useful information in an easily digestible format?
The problem with tips is that they’re too delicious. People become obsessed with prepackaged information nuggets and stop thinking for themselves. When an article focuses on theory, no matter how brilliant it is, people complain that the information isn’t “useful”. The definition of “useful” has become so narrow that it only includes information that applies directly to a concrete problem. This reluctance to master and apply conceptual knowledge is a symptom of intellectual laziness.
The internet, despite it’s advantages, promotes intellectual laziness. Information is everywhere, making it highly disposable. Tips are appealing because they can be quickly absorbed and applied without any independent thought. The downside is that conceptual information is neglected. When understanding a concept requires effort, we usually abandon it in favor of practical tips.
A good comparison is eating fast food vs. cooking at home. Tips are like fast food. You look at the menu, order, and eat; all within a matter of minutes. The benefits are ease and convenience, but the food lacks substance and nutrition. Conceptual knowledge is like a home cooked meal. It takes time and effort to learn how to cook, gather ingredients, and wash dishes, but the food is high quality and the preparation skills you acquire can be used repeatedly. Although tips are more convenient, they lack the longterm value of conceptual thinking.
Tips aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. On a list of 50 tips, how many are good? 5-10 maybe? And how many of those do you remember long enough to actually use? We read tips for entertainment more than anything else. Who do you think writes them? People who aren’t any smarter than you. The only difference is they made the effort to think for themselves and condense their understanding into a list.
If you really want to learn, start thinking for yourself. Consider it a life long investment. It’s hard to learn a concept, but once you understand it, that knowledge can be applied repeatedly. Resist intellectual laziness, actively pursue answers instead of passively accepting them, and you’ll be the one giving the tips.
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Totally agree. I think a big factor in improving yourself is being able to chart your own path and work through your problems on your own.
If you respect the ideas of any thinkers/self-help gurus/whatever, it’s because they came up with their own solutions and concepts to their problems instead of just following whatever was the standard at the time.
I think a big part of being able to do this is having confidence in your abilities to figure things out independently; You need to believe that your ideas can potentially be just as good as someone with a bestselling book or a popular website. You also need to see yourself as being roughly equal to the ‘gurus’, not that you’re a nobody and they’re some semi-divine genius. They’re human too, just a little further along than you in a particular area you care about. If you don’t do that, you’ll unconsciously dismiss a lot of your own thoughts for being ‘unworthy’.
Chris,
You’re absolutely right about the “need to see yourself as being roughly equal to the ‘gurus’, not that you’re a nobody and they’re some semi-divine genius.”
Humanity has a habit of turning brilliant people into gods. The average person has a more in common with the greatest geniuses than we’re lead to believe by the stories we get from the history books and through the media.
Interesting. A blog filled with tips about not taking tips. According to your logic, I can’t take the tip to think for myself. I’ll just have to keep feeding off of your knowledge.
What if I take a practical tip and apply it to a specific problem in my life at the time? I routinely read tips to try and refocus and remind myself bad habits I have let myself fall into.
It’s like golf, sometimes you just need someone to remind you not to take your eye off the ball and swing smoothly.
In an age of data overload it will be people that turn that into information through thinking that will design new perspectives and concepts for both personal and business use. The rest will simply follow along the new trend. Good post
Wilson,
I never intended to say that tips aren’t useful. I like reading them myself and benefit from them all the time. I just don’t think that they are an adequate substitute for independent thinking. Blindly following a tip will never be as good as understanding the conceptual reasons that tip works.
i agree, much of the “easily digestible” information on the web is fast food. but i tend to believe it’s more the result of the medium, rather than a willingness of the general reader to stop thinking for themselves. for instance, many people don’t like reading long articles/essays/books online. they prefer print books & magazines for learning in-depth, complex knowledge. the web, on the other hand, tends to be more useful as a task-oriented database “i need to do X so what’s the quickest, easiest way to get figure out how to get it done” - or as entertainment/distraction.
That’s an excellent point about the nature of the online medium. I think our culture is going in that direction as a whole.
People expect faster gratification and books and other print publications are going the way of the dinosaur. I read something the other day saying that 42% of college graduates never read another book the rest of their lives.
http://newpairodimes.blogspot.com/2007/06/u.html
Okay, once again, brilliant and right on! So many are looking, so desperately, for the one-stop cure-all magic-pill solution. We hop from one scheme/plan/method/secret/teacher to the next hoping to “get it” and be done.
The funny thing is there is an answer - effort, examination, experimentation and time.
That will cure all woes. But, who is willing to do that?
Ah, to heck with it, you’ve moved me to blog. I’ll continue the rest n my site.
Thanks again!
Glad you’ve noticed the same phenomenon, Travis. I look forward to seeing your more detailed response.
This post is right on. When you stand in line at the local supermarket, look at the headlines on the tabloids, cosmo, people, or even good housekeeping, it is the same stuff permeating social media . Fast Food is a perfect analogy.
It’s becoming ubiquitous.
I disagree that it is a medium based issue. It is cultural. We like the same stuff relentlessly repeated again and again (how’s that for superfluous). People think they want surprises, but most are frightened by the unexpected. That’s why Starbucks and McDonalds do so well. No surprises. Little possibility of disappointment - but I don’t think people realize they have also reliquished the joy of being nicely surprised.
John,
The statistic about reading books is true. I find it sad, because I love books, even when I was a juvenile deliquent my favorite things to steal were books. Now my wife is in the book business, so the concept of book thievery doesn’t thrill her, but what is more disconcerting is the declining literacy of America. Every year it seems the book market becomes smaller. American culture values action, utility, and showmanship, and little value is placed upon art, quality, and thought.
But young men like you are proving there is a market on the internet for artistic, quality, thinkers, as opposed to fast food tycoons.
[…] John Wesley, over at Pick the Brain, nails one out of the park with his post - Here’s a Tip: Start Thinking for Yourself […]
Huge props, John. Digg is like powerpoint for recess. I hope this post takes off.
Haha, thanks Sara, me too. I’m not holding my breath though.
John;
Thank you for this “thought provoking” post. For years I was a self-proclaimed Nightingale Conant junkie, trying to get to the secret that I seemed to be missing in my life. Whether it was to improve my selling technique, earn more money, save more money, or become a millionaire, I have the CD set. When I really started using the web, it became even worse.
One day I figured out I all ready knew what these people were telling me. I just had to “do” it. It made all the difference in the world…
John, this has to be my post of the week. It’s well written and extremely relevant. Kudos!
So true. It’s always different to know things through experience compared to knowing them through tips. Things that we have learned through experience are hard to forget, unlike tips which we might forget anytime.
John,
Eversince I read your article ‘9 to 5 Office’ via digg , I started to like your writing style as well as your articles.
I have your blog feed in my reader so that I dont miss your topic.
The articles about ‘tips’ was good.
Keep writing
Feed the Mind with more information.
seeing the world thru my eyes is really the only thing i can do for sure… if i cannot express my own mind and my own thoughts on any given subject,,, you can be sure i will delve into it, and form an opinion… i love thinking things out thoroughly,,, i am always amazed at the process… thank you
“Here’s a Tip: Start Thinking for Yourself” - Thank you for telling me to do this….what else should I do?
Work on your sarcasm.
I am.
[…] Jun 7th, 2007 by viasenzanome Quando si viene a parlare di lifehacking, i post che hanno più successo sono quelli che contengono “tips”, ovvero liste concise di suggerimenti pratici da mettere subito in pratica. Da una parte è comprensibile scegliere la semplicità e la rapidità di applicazione dei suggerimenti, ma d’altra parte “la riluttanza ad acquisire e applicare la conoscenza concettuale è un sintomo di pigrizia intellettuale“, secondo John Wesley. […]
Hi John,
By writing this article are you following your own blogging tip on being controversial and stirring things up a bit?
Great post. It’s a good realization for us that we must avoid too much of the easy way and continue with growing our own experience. We can’t blame anyone for this attitude if every a problem occurs which needs our experience.
Really great stuff John.
I write a lot of concept pieces. And I try to throw a few tips into them here and there. I’ve been experimenting with writing a larger “tip sheet” a little.
When you combine both, people get both the vision and the action items. It’s hard to do, but those are the kinds of posts I also enjoy reading the most.
ZHereford,
Haha, maybe I am trying to stir up a bit of controversy. It certainly never hurts. I also get a big kick out of refuting popular opinion.
Shane,
I agree. There is definitely a need for practical information . A blend as you suggested might be the best of both worlds. Like I said, tips are popular for a reason, but they won’t get you far if you don’t understand the reasons behind them,
how about this tip - “start doing it yourself”. I learned that practicing things is incredible way of learning – practice everything, just do it, fail, learn, do it, fail, learn…… and succeed. I like these endless lists of tips – I pick them make fast eval for sanity and go for doing. I started couple of days ago some experiment of practicing each day some tip and post about my results. One tip for making things done and another from romance list. What I quickly and unexpectedly discovered is that my work/life balance started to improve – I hope it is a trend :).
practica,
You’re right, “start doing it yourself” is the is best tip I can imagine. No matter how much reading and thinking I do, I never learn much until I try something myself..
Your experiment of trying different tips and posting the results is a great idea.
Before we start relying on tip, I think we should first take 100% responsibility in our life.
If we don’t take responsibility , it is likely we end up blaming that the tips do not work.
I wrote an article on why taking responsibility can change your life:-
http://ezinearticles.com/?Law-Of-Attraction—Discover-How-You-Can-Use-It–To-Take-111%-Responsibility-In-Your-Life!&id=581555
Self Improvement and Law of Attraction Link Love, Volume 18…
This is Volume 18 of the Self Improvement and Law of Attraction Link Love series.
This series will be published weekly and will be comprised of links to quality blog posts that have proven to be extraordinary in their ability to assist, inform, or empo…
I like the way you think. One of my favorite blogs. I just wanted to add that until you exert effort, you never really “know” and appreciation comes from knowledge born of experience. You can read Shakespeare and you may wonder how he could think and come up with the stuff he wrote but you try to write a play, that’s when you really appreciate how great Shakespeare was. I think it goes for everything: building wealth, being a CPA, creating music masterpieces or CHESS gems.
The Personal Development Carnival-June 10, 2007…
WELCOME
to the Personal Development Carnival- June 10, 2007 edition!
I want to send out a Thank You to my friend Lyman Reed for again allowing me to host. It really is fun! If you would like to enjoy this great opportunity at your blog, you can go …
[…] Wesley presents Here’s a Tip: Start Thinking for Yourself posted at Pick the Brain. People love tips. A list of tips is the easiest way to make the front […]
[…] even sometimes like reading tips that are designed to help you improve your life in some way. Well this interesting article (in a blog dedicated to tips) has a very interesting point to make about how limiting tips are in […]
Do you have a list of tips on how to do this?
[…] Wesley presents Here’s a Tip: Start Thinking for Yourself posted at Pick the Brain. People love tips. A list of tips is the easiest way to make the front […]
[…] Here’s a Tip: Start Thinking for Yourself - I agree, sometimes I fear thinking in “tips” might become the default way our society sees things, and analytical thinking will disappear hidden somewhere in Wikipedia’s pages. […]
[…] about it. What a good habit! One of my favorite writers, PICK THE BRAIN, wrote a nice piece about THINKING FOR YOURSELF . Try it, it […]
[…] It’s so easy to just blindly follow the standard instead of stopping and being original. […]
[…] Wesley presents Here’s a Tip: Start Thinking for Yourself posted at Pick the […]
[…] Wesley presents Here’s a Tip: Start Thinking for Yourself posted at Pick the Brain: People love tips. A list of tips is the easiest way to make the front […]
[…] have the advantage of speed and efficiency, but if you aren’t careful, getting caught up in the quick fix mentality can seriously hinder your progress. Here are some suggestions for developing a sustainable growth […]
In the day fo Quick Fix, tips in bullets points is useful so long as the person who read it use it. Sometime, a lengthy article may just confuse the readers if the writer is unable to explain clearly or put forward the message. Then again, some tips may be misinterpret wrongly by the reader. It all depend on individual ability to comprehence and apply.
[…] Problems on nasal passage are a bit less complicated to resolve. There are various stop snoring aids that aim to maximize the size of the nostrils through the use of clips and straps to facilitate better breathing. […]
love your website, can you show me where to find information on manifesting money? thank you.
[…] 7) Pick the Brain - In a post that all but made me stand up and cheer when I first read it, John gives us some advice that you need to hear. In our information overloaded society, listen as John says Here’s a Tip: Start Thinking for Yourself. […]
Sounds similar to the Self authority stuff at http://Poweressence.com. Good for spreading the word.