The Only Advice That Didn’t Wear Off

Hey there,

Advice is everywhere…

It’s in your feed. In your podcasts. In your inbox.

Even in that one friend who just discovered cold plunges and now won’t stop talking about it.

And it’s always urgent:

“This will change your life.”

“Do this every morning.”

“Fix your mindset in 7 days.”

“Unlock your potential.”

“Become unstoppable.”

Which is a lot of pressure.

But what’s weird is that most of it actually sounds good.

A lot of advice is genuinely helpful.

It’s not that the self-improvement world is all scams and snake oil, it’s just that most advice has a shelf life.

It hits you hard for a week, maybe two.

You get the dopamine. You feel like a new person.

And then, it fades.

And then you do what everyone does… you go looking for the next thing.

Over the last 7.5 years, I’ve read hundreds of books.

I’ve listened to hundreds of podcasts, interviewed dozens of experts, and I didn’t just try things for a day.

I tried them for months, sometimes years.

Ice baths…

Cold showers…

Affirmations…

Habit trackers…

Time-blocking…

Deep work systems…

Supplements…

Morning routines…

Evening routines…

Routines for recovering from the routines…

I was doing the most to feel normal.

And the embarrassing part is that some of it worked, it just didn’t last.

After a while, you start noticing the pattern.

New advice feels like progress because it’s new, but novelty isn’t the same thing as change.

This isn’t a list of the top ten habits that changed my life because the best advice I’ve ever gotten is also the most boring.

It’s so boring, it feels offensive.

And it’s the only advice I’ve found that doesn’t wear off:

Most of what helps isn’t new information, it’s repetition, subtraction, and time.

That’s it.

And I know how deeply unsatisfying that is, because it doesn’t sell.

There’s no “one weird trick.”

It’s just doing the obvious things long enough for them to actually work.

The hardest thing today isn’t finding advice, it’s choosing what to ignore.

Every day there’s a new framework.

A new protocol, a new tool, a new app.

And in the middle of all of that, you start building a life that’s just patchwork.

A little bit of this, a little bit of that.

A new routine layered on top of an old routine layered on top of a sense of low-grade guilt that you’re still not doing enough.

The irony is the more advice you try to squeeze into your life, the less space you have for the few things that actually work.

Most “life-changing advice” comes with a high.

You hear it and think, “This is it.”

You wake up early. You journal. You meditate. You take the supplements.

And you feel great.

Not because you’ve transformed your life, but because you’ve made a plan.

Eventually, life happens.

You miss a day. Then two.

And suddenly, the routine that was supposed to save you becomes another thing you “failed.”

So you abandon it and go looking for a new answer.

That cycle can go on forever because the internet is an infinite vending machine of hope.

At some point, I realized the advice I kept chasing wasn’t changing my life.

It was changing my mood and giving me temporary relief.

Relief is valuable, but relief isn’t the same thing as growth.

Growth is what happens when you keep showing up after the feeling is gone.

Most advice doesn’t wear off because it’s wrong, it wears off because it’s treated like a short-term event instead of a long-term practice.

What actually helped wasn’t a new system. It was subtraction.

More steps means more rules, which means more noise and more things to maintain.

So I started asking a different question.

“What can I remove that makes my life harder without making it better?”

I removed the pressure to keep up with every piece of advice.

I removed the idea that I need to be constantly improving.

I removed the noise.

What was left was simple:

Sleep.

Movement.

Real food.

Time outside.

Fewer commitments.

Better boundaries.

Doing less, but actually doing it.

For the first time, my life started improving in a way that didn’t feel like a hype-cycle.

It felt like stability.

The only advice that didn’t wear off wasn’t about which habits, it was about the approach.

Pick a few basics. Repeat them. Give them time.

Stop chasing novelty.

It’s boring, which is why it works.

When I stopped chasing new advice, I started trusting myself more.

Not because I became wiser overnight, but because I stopped telling my brain, “You’re missing something.”

A lot of the time, you don’t need more answers, you need more follow-through and more time.

Life doesn’t improve with a breakthrough.

It improves with a slow drip…

Quiet changes. Fewer inputs. More consistency.

Advice wears off when you treat it like a spark, but sparks don’t keep you warm.

You need a fire.

And fires are built slowly.

Fuel. Oxygen. Time.

That’s what real improvement looks like.

Less like inspiration, more like maintenance.

Repetition is loyal.

Subtraction is loyal.

Time is loyal.

And those are the only three things I’ve found that don’t wear off.

– Scott

P.S. Get more stuff from me (so my wife doesn’t make me go back to a “real” job):

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