Almost everything is bullshit if you take it at face value. The point of the advice was to promote a certain mindset:
Endeavor to do things that you enjoy doing, and do them with feeling and quality. Chasing success, money, competition, or customer whims will not lead to happiness. Instead do things that you enjoy and do them in your own way that no one else can compete with. This will sidestep competition and lead to customers, money, and success. Think Apple.
Don't just absorb knowledge (reading, advice), but understand it from the author's point of view. His last point was to not blindly take advice, but to understand it and apply it to your own situation. To ignore and marginalize his advice as you have done is to ignore one of his most important points.
Really? Your response is "everything is bullshit"?
What if chasing success makes me happy?
I'm not sure who this advice is targeted at. It's certainly not for ambitious people who want to build things people use.
"Do not market" and "do not try hard" is a surefire way to never being successful at anything.
This is universally bad advice, and I wonder about anyone who takes it seriously. Do you think Apple is successful because they don't worry about competition or marketing?
Nice job taking that statement out of context. I was saying that most advice taken 100% literally can be shown to be absurd. The submission itself reiterates that. Your (and mattmaroon's) comment reinforces it even more.
> What if chasing success makes me happy?
The point I took from the advice is to pursue your passion, as opposed to pursuing success for the sake of success. If your passion is pursuing success (if that's even meaningful or realistic), then chasing success would not be contrary to the advice.
> I'm not sure who this advice is targeted at. It's certainly not for ambitious people who want to build things people use.
The submission says exactly who the advice is targeted at: the advisor's daughter. The man wants his daughter to be happy; it is intended to help someone on the path to a happy life. Ambition is not happiness, so of course it's not advice on how to be ambitious. Then again, the advice implicitly defines work as activity that is not "reenergizing and reinvigorating." If making other people happy does that for you, then you can make the advice apply to your situation.
> Do you think Apple is successful because they don't worry about competition or marketing?
Yes, absolutely. The context of "do not market"* was "do not cater to other people's desires." Would you agree that the iPod was one of the biggest factors in elevating Apple to its current level? The iPod was designed to be a great MP3 player, with no concern for the competition or for what potential customers thought they wanted. Apple wasn't trying to compete with SanDisk (or whoever) by adding a few extra features or offering a lower-priced offering. They completely changed the game. They are a perfect example of:
Quality has no competition. Only mediocrity has
competition. If you do what you do at the highest quality
you have no competition. Quality creates a moat around
yourself.
Create your own demand. People are always on the lookout
for the good. People seek out winners. Therefore be a
winner all the time.
"Do not try hard" is a follow-up to "do not ever work," and its effective thrust is to be yourself. Make your work your own. Do things your way instead of trying hard to fit the mold that others have created. Do things in a way that you enjoy so that you do not have to "try hard."
Do not take advice
Advice is what others did not take but wish to give. Your
mind is your best guide. Certainly keep your eyes and ears
open. Absorb everything but add your own pinch of salt.
Filter out what does not suit you.
If you take the time to actually read the advice and determine if any of it helps you, then it is pretty easy to take most of it seriously. If you just skim the headlines and make snap judgments, of course it will seem bad. If you're just looking for the advice to confirm that you're doing the right thing, and you'd rather attack it than learn from it, then it will be worthless to you.
* A lot of people seem to conflate marketing with advertising. Marketing means to make a product to satisfy a market. Only recently (i.e. the last century or so) has its definition shifted to convincing the market to use your product. I suspect that, being from Bangladesh, the advisor is referring to the more traditional definition of marketing.
Good point. I had realized that as I was typing it, but I was trying to wrap it up and get back to work. I have now edited it to be more accurate and reflect my interpretation of the advice.
What it used to say was:
> What if chasing success makes me happy?
Then you'll never be happy. Your definition of success will keep changing, and you'll never get there. There's nothing inherently negative about success, but there's nothing inherently positive either. "Success" is a meaningless metric without a strict definition of what it means to be successful.
In my life I find all kinds of people giving advice. Advice isn't worth anything unless you reach those conclusions through your own accord. If you're a rationally minded person, a little bit knowledge of economics can go a long way.
I agree with your general thrust, "Advice isn't worth anything unless you reach those conclusions through your own accord." BUT, one way to reach those conclusions is by listening to advice, considering it critically (e.g. why/how would this advice help?), and applying it appropriately to your experiences and future plans. It seemed to me that was the whole point of the final bit of advice in the submission.
Endeavor to do things that you enjoy doing, and do them with feeling and quality. Chasing success, money, competition, or customer whims will not lead to happiness. Instead do things that you enjoy and do them in your own way that no one else can compete with. This will sidestep competition and lead to customers, money, and success. Think Apple.
Don't just absorb knowledge (reading, advice), but understand it from the author's point of view. His last point was to not blindly take advice, but to understand it and apply it to your own situation. To ignore and marginalize his advice as you have done is to ignore one of his most important points.