Be careful who you take advice from. You might be a white belt, and you get advice from a three stripe white belt. Their advice is bad, but you don’t know any better. They know a little more than you, so you might just take it.

Now, you might ask a blue belt for advice. Their advice is actually worse than the white belt. Why? Because they’re the intermediate, and the intermediate is arrogant, the intermediate knows something, but they don’t know what they don’t know.

Now you go to purple. You can ask a purple belt, a brown belt, or even a black belt for advice, and the advice is hit or miss. It could be good, it could be bad. The reason it could be bad is survivorship bias. They made it to black. So whatever they did worked for them. And if it worked for them, they’re going to think it’ll work for everyone. But what about everyone else who did the same thing and failed?

So what can you do? Don’t listen to everyone. You can ask, but you still have to do the work yourself. Think it through, write it down, ask questions, ask why five times. Don’t just take advice from someone that you look up to, and you shouldn’t be looking up to anyone because they’re higher ranked than you. Rank just means they trained longer than you.

Be careful who you take your advice from, including, and especially, from someone like me.

Moreover, even if you have a good mentor or advisor, don’t forget that sometimes advice expires.