Common wisdom says not to try to sleep until you’re tired, but that’s advice I discard. Why? Because I often don’t get tired in a timespan that conducive to working a regular schedule. I’ve been awake 21 hours and I’m not particularly tired yet. If I stayed up until I was tired, I’d be up for several more hours, which works okay on weekends, but not so much when you’re expected to be at work at 8. So instead of waiting to magically be tired, I go to bed and eventually will fall asleep 99% of the time. Eventually.
So how about you? What time-worn advice do you completely dismiss as being unworkable for you?
“Don’t work out at night.”
Yeah if I didn’t work out at night, I’d never work out at all.
“Don’t eat dinner too late.”
If I didn’t eat dinner late I’d never eat dinner, cuz I eat after I work out.
“Do what you love and the money will follow”. Worst piece of advise ever but especially for me. I picked something I could tolerate for long periods as a career but, if I waited for someone to pay me to do the random crap that I truly love, I would starve to death.
Yeah, about half of the diet advice I get is stupid and useless at best. “You should always eat…” “You should never eat…” “I read somewhere/saw on TV that…” are all guarantees that I won’t listen, and for my sanity and the physical safety of the poor schlub passing this information along, it’s for the best.
There is the old saying about feeding a fever and starving a cold. I’ve always interpreted this to mean that you’re supposed to eat a lot when you have a fever and drink a lot when you have a cold. Instinctively, it seems sensible. I have a mental idea of cups of tea washing away the cold, and (wave hands) something about prawn cocktail shitting out fevers. But according to the internet it’s just nonsense. Lies.
“It doesn’t matter how you look, what matters is how you are on the inside?” To which I say: Gary Busey. He has much wisdom to share with the world, judging by his Twitter feed. “Running backwards naked through a cornfield at midnight will show you where you’ve been”. That was one of his. “Romance = Relying On Magnificent And Necessary Compatible Energy”. Another one. Do you have any idea how aggravating it was to embolden those letters? It was very aggravating. I didn’t have to do it, but I did, because I’m better than you. But, yes. Gary Busey. He has a mind. You wouldn’t expect those thoughts to come from that body, that face. You wouldn’t expect it, which has the effect of making his thoughts seem even more profound - perhaps that’s intentional. But if he was struck mute, and you had way to see into his mind, would you go near him? You’d flee. Straight into the arms - of Nick Nolte.
Running backwards naked through a cornfield at midnight will show you where you’ve been is RBNTACAMWSYWYB. What could it mean? It can’t be an anagram, there aren’t enough vowels. Perhaps if I arrange them into a grid:
RBNT
ACAM
WSYW
YB
Damn, doesn’t fit. Five letters, four letters, three letters, doesn’t fit. Circle perhaps? Or some kind of pentagram? Busey’s wisdom confounds polygonal thought.
But, yes, the other classic is that if someone’s being mean to you, you should bop them in the nose, and from that point they’ll be polite and humble and you’ll be a hero. The problem is that real life is more like Robocop (“Guaranteed military sales! Renovation program! Spare parts for 25 years! You just messed with the wrong guy!”) than The Karate Kid. And of course if you go around bopping people on the nose all the time, then you are the demons.
There are three kinds of bad good advice.
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Advice that is given because if you follow it, the advisor will benefit (invest in gold, we should operate on that, your mother and I think you should go to a college here in town).
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Advice that continues to be given because the downside is difficult to ascertain (homeopathy, positive thinking)
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Advice which is just recommending that you do what everyone else is doing, regardless of whether stupid for you, or even stupid for everyone (buying a house to flip).
Slightly tangential but the OP made me think of it: despair.com demotivational posters.
After changing the oil in my Dad’s truck he told me to take the used oil out to the alleyway and pour it on the fire ant nest there. Toxic waste disposal and pest control, two birds one stone as far as he’s concerned.
I know this used to be common thinking years ago but I chose another disposal method.
“If he drags his feet about marrying you it means he’s not that into you.”
I mean… that’s good advice 99% of the time. This guy just happened to be the 1% where he was really into me, but he takes a looooong time to do anything. Took him ten years to buy a house. He’s been looking into buying a new car for five years and counting. So the fact that it took us five years to get engaged was really not that long from his perspective (and indeed he still likes to joke that we rushed into things).
“Put ice on it” for an injury. Uh, no thank you. Ice on my skin feels like you are holding an open flame to me - it burns. It hurts as bad or worse than the original injury.
The only time I have willingly put ice on an injury was when I broke my foot and, then walked on it and drove with it. It was swelling so bad the skin was shiny - I was afraid it was going to burst.
I think it’s understood by everyone else on Earth that you should wrap the ice in something like a towel, not flash-freeze your skin by pressing ice directly against it.
Joe
Major in a STEM field. Ha! I am an amazing academic
writer, but I have trouble with things like subtraction. A STEM degree would have just been a few months of torture until I flunked out with no degree at all.
I didn’t realize that was common wisdom; I thought the common wisdom was to try to retain a regular schedule of sleeping, and get back to it as soon as possible if you have an interruption to it. Huh.
I don’t care for “starve a fever, feed a cold” or whatever it is, either - when you’re sick, you need food and rest. I often don’t feel like eating when I’m sick, but I try to eat whatever I can get down.
“Always follow your dreams.”
If I decided to follow my dreams now, you’d be hearing about little else on the national news for the two or three weeks afterward.
Hi, Ted.
How’s that “Cat Scratch Fever” treatin’ ya?
Well, hell, that’s everybody’s dream. That and having a machine gun mounted on your car.
“If you ignore the bully, they’ll quit bothering you.”
If I had a nickle for every time a teacher told me this throughout my school career I would’ve been a millionaire before I graduated high school. Ignoring the bullies never seemed to work because they would just work harder to try and see how far they could push me before I’d break and lash out at them.
If you can’t sleep, get out of bed and go do something else.
No. If I can’t sleep, the very least I can do is cuddle in the dark under some covers with my eyes closed. If I get up I just end up less tired than I was before. Although I have found that if I go to bed an hour later, I fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer. So I might as well just change my bedtime.
This. I have no problems falling asleep, but often wake up in the middle of the night and have a real problem going back to sleep. At least if I lay in bed, I feel I’m getting some rest. And I often snooze/wake/snooze/wake.
Don’t get married until you’ve got a steady job.