Dear Internet, I’m Tired of Your Life Advice

Please, can we share our story without telling others what to do?

The Internet, once a playground of discovery, has become an echo chamber of “shoulds.”

Scroll through any corner, and you’ll be bombarded with unsolicited advice: “5 Habits to Be More Productivity,” “The Secret to Finding Your Passion in Life,” “How to Quit Your Job and Travel the World”.

Everybody’s life mission now is to tell others what to do. There’s so much you do this, you do that, you are this, you are that… you you you. Most of the time, with little to zero evidence of what the speaker did to give them the permission to tell us what to do.

And guess what? I. Am. Tired.

• Tired from feeling like I’m constantly behind on my to-do-list to catch up in some race to success I never signed up for.
• Tired from the pressure to constantly optimize, monetize, and “level up” my life.
• Tired from the nagging suspicion that I’m somehow failing at this invisible game called “adulthood.”

But how deep is the ocean of advice, really? How many life gurus are out there shouting over each other, confusing our own inner compasses? Here are some data:

Blogs: A 2023 report by Statista estimates there are over 600 million blogs worldwide. While not all offer advice, a significant portion of them do. Covering everything from career tips to relationship advice to productivity hacks.

Social Media: Platforms like Instagram, X, and LinkedIn are flooded with “inspirational” quotes, motivational posts, and self-proclaimed life coaches. A 2022 Hootsuite study reveals over 5 billion social media posts are published daily. Assuming even a small percentage offer unsolicited advice, the sheer volume is staggering.

YouTube: This video-sharing giant boasts over 2.5 billion monthly active users. Countless channels are dedicated to life coaching, self-improvement, and “how-to” guides, further contributing to the advice overload.

Look, I’m not saying giving advice is bad. A well-timed tip or a shared experience can genuinely be helpful. But somewhere along the way, the Internet transformed from a space of sharing to a platform for preaching.

Here’s the thing: your life journey is not a universal roadmap. Other people’s road to happiness will look wildly different from yours, and that’s okay. Before you bombard me with another 10-step guide to “crushing it” or “finding my passion,” let me ask you this:

Have you fully lived your own life first?

Have you stumbled, detoured, and learned from the messy, unscripted moments before preaching about the “right” path? Because from where I’m sitting, it feels like you’re skipping straight to the victory dance, leaving the rest of us to figure out the starting steps.

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” ― Henry David Thoreau

And if you are the 0.1% who actually did, maybe consider this:

• I’m not you. I have different dreams, different fears, different life. What was useful for you might be a recipe for disaster for me.
• Times change fast. What worked 5 years ago when you started having success, I can almost guarantee it doesn’t work today.
• Life is messy. It’s not a linear path to some defined endpoint. I’m allowed to stumble, explore dead ends, and change my mind a million times.
• Sometimes, I just want to be. To sit in the sunshine and do nothing. To read a book and not feel the urge to turn it into a blog post. Simply exist without the constant pressure to perform.

So, before you hand me another self-improvement manual, Internet, how about you share your messy map instead?

Instead of telling me the “ultimate hack” to achieving financial freedom, show me the detours you took, the dead ends you hit, the moments you thought you were completely lost.

Let me see the sweat stains on your productivity planner, the crumpled notes from a thrown-away business idea, the evidence that even the “gurus” stumble and fumble their way through life. Show me the unfiltered, authentic you, navigating the messy, unpredictable life.

Because, honestly, the Internet’s obsession with telling others what to do is suffocating. We see the same steps shared and repurposed a million times, by everybody and their grandmother. But what we rarely see is their own muddy trenches.

Studies say that unsolicited advice can be detrimental to well-being. A 2022 study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that people who received unsolicited advice felt less competent and autonomous.

Another 2020 study in the journal Social Media + Society revealed that focusing on others’ successes through social media can lead to feelings of inadequacy and social comparison.

And I know very well how easy it is to tell others online what to do. When I first started creating on the Internet, that’s what I did as well. Because it was the only thing I saw everybody doing. But it felt extremely fake.

Therefore, I stopped and reflected by asking myself what type of content I respect. What is the genre of books I really enjoy? Biographies. What articles I like reading? Personal stories. And what are my favorite videos to watch? Lived experiences.

I looked at my Subscriptions feed on YouTube and I saw that the people I really enjoyed watching made videos titled: “I did _____”. It was in first person, about an experience they lived and wanted to share with the world. The only problem was, these type of creators were very few.

So, how about we stop promoting perfect listicles and start sharing with vulnerability. Let’s exchange the “how-to” guides for honest narratives. Let’s establish a space where shared struggle serves as a foundation for connection, where imperfection is not a flaw, but a characteristic of the human experience.

Maybe then, instead of feeling overwhelmed about which of the advice I should apply first, I can find the courage to explore my own map, with its twisting paths, unexpected routes, and unique goals.

How about we share our struggles, our doubts, our victories, not in the polished language of success stories, but in the raw, vulnerable language of truth. Let’s trade instructions for connection, and perhaps we can all find our way, on our own terms.

Because honestly, the only person who truly knows what to do with my life is me. And I’m starting to think that’s enough.

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