Always remember: Consider the source of the advice you receive. Just because it sounds good, doesn’t mean it works. For example, if your supervisor is 35 with 12 years of work experience, and he works long hours in a role that typically only requires five years of experience, you should probably be wary of the advice he prescribes. Listen, but always verify, or at least draw your conclusions.
When I began working at my first job, I made a lot of mistakes. I fell for a lot of tricks, and I stumbled a bit before finding my groove. I attribute this to placing too much trust in the advice & recommendations my superiors gave me. I’ll give you an example.
I worked in an advertising agency, on a team servicing media for a Fortune 100 Cosmetics brand. It was the most challenging professional experience I had, even up until the present day. It paid the least, gave me the least number of hard skills, and, in hindsight, had the most incompetent set of co-workers I’ve encountered. They had no management ability: they were neurotic, inefficient at their jobs, had zero quantitative skills, and were destined to play musical cubicles for the rest of their lives. I can confirm they’ve not gone very far with their careers. They stink.
If I had to identify a single quality that defined their behavior; a common denominator that these ineffectual co-workers all shared; it was an inability to delineate between necessary and unnecessary tasks. While this was a productivity killer in the workplace, I also began to suspect this “management style” may have been the way in which they conduct their personal lives.