Advice that only works one way

Someone tells you to put music on. It transformed their working life. You try it for a fortnight and get less done than before. You conclude that you are the problem.

You are probably not the problem. Music was built for a particular difficulty, and you may not have that difficulty. The advice was fine. The aim was off.

The word that hides the problem

"I cannot concentrate" sounds like one complaint. It is at least five.

Attention can fade when nothing changes — the room is quiet, the task is the same, and you drift. Attention can also go a long way into one thing and refuse to come back out, which looks completely different and feels completely different. Too much can be arriving at once, so that you are tracking the corridor, the light and the notifications as well as the work. A reward can sit so far away that nothing in the next hour connects to it. Or worry can be taking up the room, so there is less of you left for anything else.

Those five produce the same sentence. They need different things.

Why this matters more than it sounds

If advice were merely useless when misaimed, this would be a small point. It is worse than that. Several of these pairs are opposites.

Reducing what arrives helps someone taking in more than they can sort. It is the wrong direction for someone whose attention fades when nothing changes — for them, a bare room and total quiet is less to hold onto, not more.

Novelty, movement and short blocks help attention that fades. They are actively costly for attention that takes a long stretch to get properly into something, because the interruption lands at the exact moment you arrive.

So when a strategy misfires, it is worth asking whether it was pointed at a different mechanism, rather than assuming you did it badly. Many people find they have been handed the reverse of what would help, sometimes for years.

What to do with a piece of advice before you try it

Ask what it is for. Not whether it works — most of these work for someone.

• What does it change? More input or less? Shorter blocks or longer? Nearer reward or lower pressure?
• Have I got that problem? If the tip protects long stretches and your difficulty is drifting off within ten minutes, it is not aimed at you.
• What is the sign it is wrong for me? Decide in advance. If the timer makes you dread starting, that is the sign, and you can stop without it meaning anything about you.

Where it costs and where it pays

Being specific about mechanism costs something real. It is slower than trying whatever is popular, and it asks you to notice things about your week that are hard to see from the inside. Some weeks you will not have that noticing spare, and picking something at random is reasonable.

It pays where you have already tried a lot of things and none of them held. Then the aim has probably been wrong rather than the effort, and re-aiming is cheap. One question asked about a tip before you start it can save you weeks of proving something about yourself that was never true.

What can change

Not all of this is yours to aim. When a tool is chosen for a whole team, it was aimed at somebody. It may not have been you, and nobody checked.

So ask. Who was this chosen for, and what was it meant to solve? The answer names the difficulty it was built around. If that is not yours, say so, and ask for a different one. A tool required of everyone is a decision, and decisions can be revisited.

Small things to try today

1. Take one piece of advice you gave up on. Write down which of the five it was built for. See whether that is the one you have.
2. Ask the person who recommended it what it changed for them. Their answer tells you the aim, which is the part that never gets passed on with the tip.
3. Write your own stopping rule before you start the next thing: if this happens, this is not mine.

If nothing has shifted after a few weeks, you have still learned something. It usually means the aim is still off, and the next thing to check is which of the five you actually have.