Hello folks,

Someone in a forum once told me the best way to deal with chronic back pain was to take cold showers every morning and eat less gluten. They had 1701 upvotes. I tried it for 3 weeks and my back still hurt.

Online advice has a fundamental structural problem that nobody talks about. It's optimized for engagement, not accuracy. The advice that sounds most satisfying, most counterintuitive, most shareable, gets the most traction. Whether it actually works for anyone is secondary.

I have noticed this especially in the productivity and health spaces, which I used to read obsessively. The same few ideas get recycled endlessly with slightly different framing. Wake up early. Do hard things first. Cut carbs. Move more. These things might all be broadly true but they're useless as actual guidance because they tell you nothing about your specific situation.

Generic advice is almost always either obvious or wrong. Usually both.

The advice that's actually changed how I live has almost always come from people who know me specifically. A doctor who understood my actual history. A colleague who'd been through a similar work problem. A friend who sat with me while I figured something out and just asked good questions.

I am not saying stop reading. Reading is great. But maybe read it the way you'd read fiction, for ideas and possibilities and entertainment, rather than as instructions for your own life. Your situation is probably more specific and more strange than any general framework can account for.