The BS Advice Era is Dying: Why It's Time for Something Real. Again.
Ever feel like the things meant to make life better are actually making it worse? Tired of being "optimized" and "hacked"? Maybe it's time to "just" be human again.
I’ve been in a weird mood recently.
I am not overly productive these days, at least not in a performative sense.
There’s a lot of thinking, sensing, mapping happening in my head right now, which hardly qualifies as work in the output-obsessed world.
But it IS work; maybe more important than meeting some self-imposed quota.
It's a deep dive into a sea of signals, punctuated by moments of "hmm" and bursts of "aha!"
None of it seems to make any sense until one day it does.
I feel like I’ve entered some Liminal Space. And I like it here.
And, in a world full of exclamation marks and Full Stops, I have more questions than ever, where each question opens a new pathway.
Let’s all ask more Beautiful Questions!
So below are some of my recent thoughts.
We live in the Age of Paradox, where progress seems to breed its own undoing.
We crave improvement, but our solutions often end up creating new problems.
Take food.
We want it convenient and long-lasting, but we strip away the natural goodness, then try to put it back with artificial replacements. We try to improve on nature, then crave what we've lost.
The same goes for our minds.
We have endless advice for mental clarity and happiness, yet we're facing an unprecedented mental health crisis. We have the tools, but they don't seem to be working.
Friendship gets downgraded too.
We collect followers instead of real connections, mistaking digital noise for genuine community. We sacrifice real bonds for the quick hits of online validation.
We worship speed and productivity, mistaking frantic activity for a meaningful life. We forget to ask ourselves, "What are we even rushing towards?" In the race to get more done, we lose sight of why we're doing it at all.
Technology promised freedom, but now we're slaves to constant comparison and the endless hunger for more.
We're more connected digitally, but lonelier in real life.
Like a dog chasing its own tail, we cling to the very things making us miserable. We're the Midas of our time – our relentless pursuit of better somehow destroys the things we value.
We've tried to remove all friction from our lives, but that means less feeling too.
Life has become a blur of screens and easy solutions.
We miss the struggles that make success meaningful – physical work, genuine connection, overcoming challenges.
The biggest paradox? Life *is* the struggle.
It's how we grow. By trying to outsmart the natural order, we've hurt ourselves. This Age of Paradox has brought us disillusionment. It proves that all our supposed solutions... just don't work.
But something is changing.
More and more of us are getting tired and disillusioned.
We're tired of the easy recipes, the life hacks, the empty promises. There's a growing sense that we need a different approach, a deeper quality. A hunger is stirring for something more authentic, more grounded in the way things truly are.
We're starting to question the values we've taken for granted.
The flood of BS advice, the noise that masquerades as solutions... it might just reach a tipping point, imploding under its own weight.
Maybe true progress lies in turning back to some of the older, simpler truths.
Perhaps it means embracing struggle, prioritizing connection, and finding meaning beyond the rush of constant productivity.
The seeds of this new way are being sown.
As Lex Fridman says:
Fuck cynicism. Humans are awesome. There is no problem we can't solve. We will find a way.
I’m mildly optimistic again.