Are you tired of all of the online advice? All of these LinkedIn and other social media stories and posts where there are only 10 steps formulas for the ultimate success and happiness. I’m certainly tired. I’m not saying it’s all bad advice out there, it’s just overwhelming, repetitive, often one-sided, half-baked, naive, and unactionable. It’s the most frustrating to see advice that is not original, copied from somewhere, and just posted to grab your attention. Arguably, some people might benefit from specific posts (hopefully you can benefit from this one), but this constant fight for your attention makes it difficult to sift through the influx of information and do anything about it.

I came to the conclusion that at a certain point saturation with this online advice is such that spending more time on it has diminishing returns. At that point it is much better to put YOUR own thinking into it and create your own self-advise. You already know what is missing in your career or life, you already know your shortcomings and desires. You might not be able to spell it out right away, that’s why instead of scrolling through hundreds of stories that may or may not be applicable to you, you would benefit much more if you spend that time on thinking for yourself and trying to understand what is going to work for you, realistically and with all the context of your situation.

For example, for your career, you might want to create a strategy document (yes, an actual document with structure and everything). I rarely see people taking active career planning other than “I want to get promoted”, but there is so much more that goes into it. When I wrote my career strategy document I assessed my current situation and created a vision for the future by asking lots of simple questions and doing pros/cons of  “Do I want to continue to be remote?”, “Do I want to convert to a manager?”, “How about another industry?”, “What are the new skills I want to learn?”, “Am I stimulated and challenged enough in my current environment?”, etc. (LLMs can generate a good starting list of questions).

The end of the year is a good time for self-reflection and strategizing about your own life and career. I think that everyone has to have their own approach based on what has and hasn’t worked for them. Over the years I came up with an approach that mostly works for me. Specifically, I create new year resolutions (since 2010) and then track them (mostly publicly). In order to be accountable and consistent I run weekly challenges and email exchanges with friends who would agree.

Instead of relying on the overwhelming and often repetitive flood of online advice (including this one), take this post as an encouragement to create your own personalized strategy for life and career growth by taking time at the end of this year to self-reflect, think deeply about your current situation, and then come up with approach that truly works for you, not a formula borrowed from someone else online.