Get Advice

Have you ever asked for advice and then completely disregarded it? If you have, don't feel bad about it. Although it is frustrating for the advice-giver to not be heeded, the fact of the matter is that advice doesn't work the way we think it should.

We think of asking for advice as the person not knowing what to do and needing somebody wiser and more-confident to defer to. But none of that is right. We don't ask for advice because we don't know what to do; we ask because we need more thoughts. It's not so much that we don't know what to do as it is we aren't sure what the best thing to do is. The people we ask advice of aren't necessarily smarter than us, but trusted people. They can understand where we come from and can give the thoughts that we don't think of.

Advice is also tricky because of error in communication. There are so many things that go into any situation, that it is impossible to describe them all, let alone all of the thoughts and feelings that go along with them. That means that the person giving advice is giving advice on partial information. However, that does not make it worthless.

Again, advice is about getting ideas and bouncing your ideas off of somebody else. Even if advice is given on partial information, the ideas that you get may still be worthwhile. They may be good ideas, or they may spark your mind to come up with a new idea you wouldn't have normally thought of.

In one of the first writing workshop classes I had, my teacher described a writing workshop like this: "Everybody reads your writing, they tell you how you should change it, then you ignore them and do whatever you want." It's funny, but it also perfectly explains how advice works.

So when you're writing, go ahead and get advice. It will always be good for you, even if you don't take it.