So what is the point of advice? Why do we give advice, when it only really acts as guidance for those who already have the knowledge of the situation for which we are advising them on? Is it, perhaps, more of a knotted handkerchief to remind us of what we already know?
So there I was surfing the Twitter, when this popped up on my feed.
Reading between the swearing (which I find hard because dyslexic) and finding I agree with almost all of it I started to wonder if it is contradictory. Can one follow such advice while believing in oneself? I looked a bit closer and took the swears out, and reformatted it for a giggle:
Now looking again some surprising things lurk in here. I wondered if this was anonymous, or if it had some pedigree. After a quick search I found where the original was from, Turns out, rockstar designer Jonathan Ive, chief design officer for apple. Inc. had this on his wall as a motivational poster. Jony Ives was originally a designer for a company called Tangerine, but left due to a disagreement about customer expectations.
But did Jony design it? It seems not. I found an enlightening blog about the posters history here. Seems it was from the makers of the GFDA website/promotion's and I recommend you look it up. The whole point if of course that the swearing denotes the passion, so perhaps I have been hasty in removing it - but I still worry about conflicts in the rules.
And conflicts in ought statements is moral philosophy, right!?
Here are the 25 rules:
- Believe in yourself.
- Stay up all night.
- Work outside your habits.
- Know when to speak up.
- Collaborate.
- Don't procrastinate.
- Get over yourself.
- Keep Learning.
- Form follows function.
- A computer is a Lite-Bite for bad ideas.
- Find inspiration everywhere.
- Network.
- Educate your client.
- Trust your gut.
- Ask for help.
- Make it sustainable.
- Question everything.
- Have a concept.
- Learn to take criticism.
- Make me care.
- Use spellcheck.
- Do your research.
- Sketch more ideas.
- The problem contains the solution.
- Think about all the possibilities.
The fist and most obvious problem is the apparent paradox is believing in yourself because someone told you to, but perhaps thats too easy? I mean, it is still what I would call good advice - metaphysically good even if not truly functional. I am more concerned with if any of these rules contradict each-other.
Take "Trust your gut" and "get over yourself "; it seems hard to follow both pieces of advice? Following your gut is the core of self-belief, but getting over yourself is humility. Does self belief somehow work contrary to humility? On the face of it it seems to. If I were programming a computer - an apple even - I might find this step hard.
I suppose I would make the programme lookup the situation in a database and draw its answers from their. The database would be a list of "experiences" or "pass happenings" which the programme could use to tell if now was the time to trust "its gut" (I know I know) or else listen to advice! So the computer needs experience to follow the instructions.
Some are common sense rules, from the bottom: 25, 23, 22, 21, 15, all seem pretty straight forward. But perhaps this is just me as an adult seeing the wisdom in stuff I already know?
This all brings to mind the idea of temperance. Temperance is an idea I have learned through Aristotle which I believe helps here. Because we are all experienced to some degree in acting in the world, we have knowledge of the results of our actions. I know that there is a time and place to get over myself, though I may forget in any given circumstance. I also know there is a time and place to trust my gut. Though I am historically bad at this! But I do realise, as an experienced moral agent that these things are true, I know they are a matter for judgement, for applying my set of experience to, for temperance.
