Not only is good advice typically “obvious,” but a lot of “counterintuitive” advice is actually bad. Somewhat surprisingly, even if advice is obvious, it’s still useful to hear it!

We judge obviousness not by if the information is strictly new—but if it violates our intuitions. Unfortunately, our intuitions are often fuzzy, which makes many scenarios seem plausible.

I remember asking James Clear, author of the enormously successful Atomic Habits, to tell me what he did. He told me he had been on 200+ podcasts in the first six months of the book’s launch, including around 80 that were released the first week his book was out.

Knowledge typically isn’t about discovering secrets. Instead, it’s about figuring out which boring, yet plausible, account of how things work is actually right.