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As I've been saying to others regarding startup advice and lessons, it's much more helpful and interesting to read stories. You may think you are extracting out
by revorad 15y ago
As I've been saying to others regarding startup advice and lessons, it's much more helpful and interesting to read stories. You may think you are extracting out wisdom from your experiences, but really, more often than not, these "life lessons" don't mean much without context. I certainly can't take them for a rule and apply them to my life. It may turn out to be the wrong advice for me and even if it doesn't, I'll always have the nagging doubt that I took the wrong decision based on someone else's experiences.
It would be nearly impossible to read these "N lessons" posts if they were not in the form of lists, which points to the fact that they don't flow very well. They are written in bite-sized chunks for information-hungry internet nerds like us.
Writers, please tell stories. We don't need more advice.
- irishpolyglot 15y agoThis is the only list post I've ever written on my blog, since I was in a reflective mood about a long list of specific things and felt this got my point across clearest. You'll find a lot of stories that expand on and discuss particular parts in greater detail if you follow the links ;) It's been an amazing experience seeing this go viral (see the counts on the left of the post), but I'll be sticking to my non-list posts for the majority of what I write :) Also, this isn't advice but what I've learned. I didn't want it to come across as preachy, but actually something I would like to have told myself at age 21 and am thinking aloud. I hope you enjoy other stories shared on the blog! Here's people's favourite one I've written this year: http://www.fluentin3months.com/speed-dating http://www.fluentin3months.com/speed-dating
- lhnz 15y agoA life lesson with context wouldn't be a life lesson. The context is life, if the context is more specific and not fully applicable to life then it is no longer a life lesson.
- kd0amg 15y agoA "life lesson" may still have a non-universal set of (common) situations to which it applies.
- lhnz 15y agoYou don't agree that the more specific a situation is, the less applicable to 'life' it is?
- kd0amg 15y agoI disagree with the conflation of "applies to life in general" with "applies to every situation you could be in." I would say it is, for example, a mistake to interpret lesson #2 as "never choose delayed gratification," but it is very important not to overvalue it.