Why All This Advice Isn’t Making You Better

So much help!

There has never been more advice available.

Scroll through social media for ten minutes and you can learn how to become more confident, productive, disciplined, resilient, mindful, successful and well-rested.

You can improve your leadership while making breakfast, build mental toughness on the commute and apparently transform your life before lunch.

Yet people are still struggling.

Stress remains high. Attention is increasingly scattered. People feel overwhelmed, stuck and unsure what to do next.

Which seems slightly odd when the answer to almost every human problem is apparently available in a 45-second video from someone pointing at words on a screen.

From a performance coaching perspective, the problem is not a lack of information.

The problem is that knowing what to do and being able to do it when it matters are completely different things.

Advice is not practice

A golfer can watch hundreds of videos about putting.

They can understand alignment, grip, tempo and routine. They can probably explain the mechanics to someone else.

That does not mean they can hole a six-foot putt when the competition is on the line.

A business leader can read about confidence, communication and emotional intelligence.

That does not mean they can stay composed when a difficult conversation starts going sideways.

Understanding something is useful.

It is not the same as being able to apply it.

Social media has made information incredibly easy to access. The downside is that consuming advice can feel remarkably like making progress.

You watch a useful video. You agree with it. You save it. Perhaps you even send it to someone else.

Job done.

Except nothing has changed.

No behaviour has been practised. No habit has been developed. No skill has been tested under pressure.

You have simply added another piece of advice to the collection.

Too much advice can make things worse

The other problem is that much of the advice conflicts.

One person tells you to work harder.

Another tells you to rest.

Someone recommends getting up at 5am. Someone else says sleep is the foundation of performance.

You should trust your instincts.

You should challenge your thinking.

You need discipline.

You need self-compassion.

Eventually, you can spend so much time deciding which advice to follow that doing nothing starts to feel like the safest option.

Generic advice also ignores something that matters enormously in performance: context.

What works for one person may be completely wrong for another.

An approach that works in training may fall apart under pressure.

A strategy that helps someone perform better at work may make no difference at home.

This is why copying successful people is not always the shortcut it appears to be. You may be copying the visible behaviour without understanding the experience, environment or thinking behind it.

Or, more bluntly, wearing the same trainers as Usain Bolt was unlikely to be the missing piece.

The gap between knowing and doing

Most people already know more than enough to make some positive changes.

They know sleep matters.

They know exercise is useful.

They know constantly checking their phone is not helping their concentration.

They know avoiding a difficult conversation rarely makes it disappear.

The issue is not always knowledge.

It is the gap between intention and behaviour.

That gap becomes even more obvious under pressure.

When things are calm, almost anyone can follow good advice.

The real test comes when you are tired, frustrated, distracted, under pressure or dealing with something that has not gone to plan.

That is where performance skills matter.

You do not develop composure by reading about composure.

You develop it through awareness, practice and experience.

Informed accountability

Accountability is another word that gets thrown around a great deal.

Get an accountability partner.

Tell everyone your goals.

Announce your intentions on social media.

Presumably shame will do the rest.

Accountability can be useful. But accountability without understanding can simply become pressure.

Informed accountability is different.

It means understanding what you are trying to achieve, why it matters, what is getting in the way and what you are actually responsible for changing.

This is particularly important in performance.

People often hold themselves accountable for outcomes they cannot completely control.

A salesperson cannot control whether every prospect buys.

An athlete cannot control every bounce, decision or opponent.

A business leader cannot control how everyone responds to a difficult decision.

What they can influence is their preparation, behaviour, attention and response.

That distinction matters.

Much of the advice on social media skips straight to the instruction.

Be more disciplined.

Work harder.

Believe in yourself.

Very useful, assuming you are a motivational fridge magnet.

Informed accountability asks better questions.

What exactly needs to change?

What is within your control?

What behaviour needs practising?

What gets in the way when pressure increases?

How will you know whether you are improving?

These questions turn vague intentions into something more useful.

They also prevent accountability becoming little more than repeatedly beating yourself up for failing to meet an unrealistic expectation.

The role of coaching

A good coach does not simply provide more advice.

There is already plenty of that.

The role of coaching is to help someone understand their own performance.

To identify what is actually getting in the way.

To work out which information is relevant and which can safely be ignored.

Then comes the less glamorous part.

Practice.

Application.

Review.

Adjustment.

Accountability.

Not blind accountability. Informed accountability.

Accountability based on an understanding of what you are trying to improve and what you can genuinely influence.

The aim is not to become dependent on someone constantly telling you what to do.

It is to develop the awareness and skills to make better decisions for yourself.

Social media has given us access to more advice than any previous generation.

That does not mean we need all of it.

Sometimes the next thing you need is not another tip, another podcast or another expert explaining the one habit successful people never skip.

Sometimes you need fewer ideas.

A clearer understanding of what matters.

Better practice.

And enough informed accountability to make sure good intentions survive contact with real life.

Because knowing what to do is only the beginning.

The difficult part is doing it when it actually matters.

If this feels like something I could help you with, then get in touch.

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