When Too Much Advice Is Holding You Back

Season 3, Episode 1

At some point, more information stops helping and starts holding you back.

In this episode, I’m talking about what happens when you take in too many resources while trying to grow creatively. Courses, books, podcasts, advice… and suddenly, instead of clarity, you feel confused, stuck, and disconnected from your own instincts.

If you’ve ever found yourself second-guessing everything, comparing your progress, or feeling like you need one more course before you can move forward, this episode is for you.

Because at some point, it’s not about more input. It’s about trusting yourself—and getting busy creating.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Welcome back to your next chapter, the podcast for women who read, write, and live creatively. I'm your host, Rebecca Hasselak. And today I want to talk to you about something that is definitely fairly universal, but also personal. This is a topic that has been something I've struggled with throughout my last few years of really investing in my writing and in my creative work. And I hope that it helps you too. It's the idea of when resources become too much. And I'll explain what I mean. When we are trying to either improve in a certain creative field, or if we are trying to turn our creativity into a business, into something that we can sell and ultimately make a living from, it makes sense to want to educate ourselves. It is actually very wise to educate ourselves. I've talked before about the importance of doing market research, understanding the industry you're trying to break into, making sure that you're not just banking on a hope and a wish to become someone who can actually survive in a given industry, but instead actually understanding it. But the problem comes in when we take in so much input from other people that we start to question ourselves. Too many resources can create confusion, comparison, and paralysis. And so more information is not always better. Here's what I mean: you are wanting to take up the cello. And maybe, maybe you never have before, but it's always been your dream to play in an orchestra, and you want to learn, you want to grow, and ultimately you want to be able to join a local community orchestra. You start with curiosity, you start with passion, and you begin to take lessons. And then as you take lessons, you maybe start to layer on some other things, courses, books, podcasts, advice. And some of it conflicts. Instead of clarity, you get a bunch of noise. I'll kind of tell you how that manifests with me. So I have been a professional writer for I want to say 14 years now, if I'm doing the calculation correctly. I have been writing, though, my entire life. I've always loved novels, always dreamed up characters and stories, and written for fun and written as my own form of therapy and written to process things. And writing is just a huge part of my life. And so when I started in 2019 to really take novel writing in earnest and to take it seriously and to begin on the path that would lead me to becoming a published author, I initially just kind of started with the whole, I'm just gonna write this book and get it out there. And I tried that, and as you can imagine, it didn't really go great. And so then I decided, you know what, I need more information. I need to understand this industry because I don't. I understand the PR world and I understand professional writing, but I don't understand publishing. So I did deep dives. I did retreats, virtual retreats. I paid for courses, I listened to podcasts, I read almost every book on craft and the publishing industry that you can probably think of. I took notes, I uh had critique partners, I had beta readers. What else is there? I mean, I I just researched on the computer with good old Google, and a lot of it was really, really helpful. But what I started to find along the way were a couple of things. Number one, it stymied my creativity at a certain point. So I'll give you an example. There are three books in particular that talk about story structure, and this is how much I became obsessed with resources. I'll explain it to you. So one is writing the breakout novel by Donald Moss. The second is Story Genius by Lisa Crumb. And the third is Save the Cat writes a novel by Jessica Brody. These are all great books. These are phenomenal books. These are helpful books, they are interesting, they are insightful, and each one has so many valuable things to offer writers, and I cannot recommend them enough. So what I'm talking about here is not anything against these books. I love these books. And as you know, I will only ever talk about books and authors when I have something positive to say because I don't like to say anything negative. The problem was not the books. Books are great. The problem is that I felt like what these books said were basically the blueprint for how I could write. And what I started to do was I took the different, I believe they call them beats in Save the Cat Writes a novel. There's like different sections that every story kind of goes through. And so I took those and I mapped them out for my third novel. And then I took writing the breakout novel. And there are also some things here in here, which are about like what should go where and how to really make your novel stand out. And I tried to kind of transpose them on one another and find overlap. And then I tried to also take story genius and layer what I learned on there on top of it. And it became this dense kind of calculated mechanical thing that I was trying to do. It became this outline that had been so ridiculously engineered that I was very penned in. Like I wasn't really writing from my creativity. I was writing to try to appease the different philosophies and check the different boxes that multiple people across multiple resources had told me. And you can imagine how restrictive that is. That is not the best formula for creating. I will tell you that much. So after I wrote my next book that way, my third book, I realized I don't want to write like this again. So instead, what I did is I remembered what I'd learned. I remembered the key pieces, and then I wrote. And I just wrote. I did outline a bit, I did have some idea of characters, I have my own process, which I'll go into on a different podcast if anyone's interested. But I decided I wasn't going to be so penned in to the exact, you know, prescriptive advice that experts were giving. I was going to use some of their advice and I was going to use a lot of it actually, but I wasn't going to take it so literally that it completely stymied my creativity. So that's what I mean when I'm talking about resources overloading you. It's when you get so entrenched in other people's voices that you lose sight of your own. I know that sounds funny. Lose hearing of your own. You don't see your voice, but you get what I'm saying. You're just so caught up in everybody else's voices that you're not in tune with your own. How about we put it that way? The other problem with becoming so weighed down with resources is that you are going to find conflicting advice. And that just really is a doozy. It does a number on you. I will tell you that I follow a bunch of literary agents. I've spoken with some literary agents. I've asked for feedback. I've paid for feedback. I have done so many different things. And most of them will say similar things. But even when it comes to the query letter, there are some agents who insist you need your metadata first. There are other agents who will say, absolutely not, you need your hook first. And there are still other agents who will say, you know what, metadata entirely shouldn't even be in the top couple of paragraphs. It needs to be moved down to the end of the query letter. And that is completely conflicting with what other agents say. So if you are querying 20, 30, 50 agents, what are you supposed to do? Who are you supposed to listen to? Right. And there is so much put on having the perfect query letter, having it check all the boxes. But what if the boxes are different for different people and you don't always know who wants what? You can see how this gets completely overwhelming. Obviously, this is, again, through the lens of publishing, because that's the that's the area that I know best. But I'm sure there are a million other examples of this in all the other industries, all the other creative industries. And so when you start getting all this conflicting advice, you start second-guessing everything. You're like, do I follow this person or do I follow that person? I have no idea. And then what also happens is you start to have a comparison spiral because if you are consuming information from a lot of sources, these sources are probably somehow getting paid for the work that they're doing, even if it's not directly by you. A lot of people will share advice in order to get followers, and then they will make an offer that is a sales offer. And when that happens, they're going to give you testimonials and people who have said, Oh, I got seven full requests on my manuscript after I worked with this person, or I was invited to audition for Juilliard after I worked with this music teacher. You know, you start to see these things and then you start to compare your story to theirs. And am I there? Am I not there? Will I ever get there? It just becomes a spiral and adds to the noise. Additionally, there's cost pressure. You feel like you need to keep buying to keep up. This one I fall into a lot. And I am, I try to be a very good steward with my money, but I can always justify spending money on education. Like that's something that I very easily will be like, oh, but I need this because X, Y, Z. And at this point, I have spent so much money and so much time trying to learn from experts and trying to really know my industry on a cellular level that I truly don't need to buy any more courses. I don't need to buy more feedback. I don't need to buy more, more, more. I need to just work on what I have and trust what I already know. So that is another trap that we can fall into. The main problem with over-resourcing yourself, for lack of a better way to say it, is that you lose your own instincts. You are so busy trying to recall what you learned from all these different sources. And did they say that or did they say this? That you're losing sight of what you actually know to be true. As a creator, your creations are yours. It is good to get feedback, it is good to learn from experts, but ultimately the decisions you make need to be 100% yours. So that's the real heart of this. Resources are tools, they're not authority. And the truth of the matter is that you don't need more input, you need more application. So what can you do instead? Because I'm definitely not suggesting that you don't learn, you don't educate yourself. If you're hearing me say that, then you're not hearing what I'm actually saying. What I am saying is you need to stay in tune with who you are, your intuition, and your vision for your creations and who you are as an artist. Above all, absolutely take in tips and tools, philosophies, advice, and education, but you need to do it strategically. So here's what I recommend: choose a lane. Pick one or two trusted sources for a period of time. Maybe it's six months. Maybe you're only going to follow this one industry expert and this one podcast for six months, and that's it. And those are the two, and you're going to get your information there. And when you feel like you've kind of learned all you can there, you can pick another two and go on. And that'll keep you from having way too many voices saying way too many different things and often conflicting things. Also, set a cap. Only do one course at a time, one book at a time. And don't do what I did and try to layer the advice from three different books into the same thing because they're not meant to all work together. They are different points of view for a reason. They were created by different people for a reason. And if you try to mush them all together because you think that's somehow gonna be better and help you check everybody's boxes, it's not gonna work. Trust me, I tried it, it doesn't work. The other thing is apply before adding. Don't consume new information until you've used what you already have. And I'm gonna add this. Sometimes you don't need to apply it. Sometimes you will learn something and it won't feel right for you. And even if it's is said by someone very smart with a lot of experience, you are allowed to not follow that advice. Again, I also encourage you to protect your taste, pause on the external input and ask what you actually think. You know, it's I think the internet has done us a major disservice in this way because education and answers are at our fingertips. And I am so guilty of this. Instead of thinking, does this sound right to me? Sometimes I will plug a question into Chat GPT and be like, you know, I don't know, I can't think of one at the moment, but and I'll just try to get its answer. And then I'm like, what am I doing? Like, I can figure out this answer. Why am I going to a machine when I can just ask myself this question? And we are, I think a lot of a lot of the time, and not just because of AI, but also because of Google and also just the internet and wealth of information we have at our fingertips, we are looking for answers elsewhere because it's easier, doesn't require as much mental processing. And it kind of gives us a little degree of security because we're like, well, they must know. So I can trust them. But what about trusting yourself? The more you try to get answers from other people, the less you are trusting what you know to be true. So make sure that you keep asking what you think. Do you like your art? Do you like the direction you're taking? Do you like that email that you're sending to that potential talent agent? Also, I really, really like this as a rule of thumb. If you take nothing else away from this, I would say take this. Create more than you consume. Simple rule of thumb. You would think that would be kind of an obvious one, but it gets very easy when you are pursuing something creatively to get stuck in the learning mode. And this sort of ties into my episode on readiness from a few weeks ago. It sort of is a delay tactic. And we don't always think of it that way, we don't always mean for it to be, but you can get so caught up in educating yourself that you just fail to actually create. And what's the point of it all then? So if you are going to listen to something for 30 minutes, like a podcast, a course, whatever your choice is, then you need to create for at least 30 minutes. And I'm going to challenge you to do that. Make sure you are creating more than you are consuming. And then finally, audit what you actually use. There is so much out there that is literally just noise. And there's there are so many people on Instagram and TikTok, even though I'm not on TikTok. So that world is foreign to me. But there are people on social media, the internet, even podcasts. Everybody has an opinion, everyone has something to say. So what actually helps you? Who are the voices that you actually trust? Who is being honest with you? Who is sharing their expertise in a way that actually adds scaffolding to what you're doing? What's just noise? What makes you feel worse about yourself? Actually audit all of the sources of information that you've been consuming. So I'm about to close, but I want you to ask yourself these four questions. What resources are you currently using? Which ones actually help you take action? Which ones make you feel behind or confused? And what can you pause for the next two weeks? From there, pick one source, filter out what doesn't work for you, apply what does, and constantly ask yourself, what do I think before you proceed? Okay, and I will leave you with a quick quote by Don Ostroff, who is an American businesswoman and was the former chief content creator for content officer, excuse me, of Spotify. And she says, listen to your inner voice, trust your intuition. It's important to have the courage to trust yourself. So as we go through seasons where we are trying to learn, we're trying to be smart about how we approach these industries that we care about, we're trying to be strategic. Remember too that your intuition should not take a back seat to your education. Stay in tune with yourself, trust yourself, and know that ultimately you are the creator and you need to follow your vision. And I encourage you to do so. I hope this is encouraging and I hope it resonates for you. And until next time, I hope you'll keep creating and keep turning the page.