(Excerpt from Beware of Advice by Derek Sivers)
When successful people give advice, I usually hear it like this: “Here are the lottery numbers I played: 14 29 71 33 8. They worked for me!” Success is based on so many factors. Some are luck. Some are not. It’s hard to know which are which. So which do you learn from?
… The problem is taking any one person’s advice too seriously. Ideally, asking advice should be like echolocation. Bounce ideas off of all of your surroundings, and listen to all the echoes to get the whole picture. Ultimately, only you know what to do, based on all the feedback you’ve received and all your personal nuances that no one else knows.