The truth is, most content about work that circulates online is wrong. The more you consume it, the more damage it does. Yet this kind of counter-consumerist message will always lose out — bad money drives out good.
Let me give you an example.
If someone is constantly being manipulated by their boss and pushed around by senior colleagues, what should they do?
The correct answer is: get out of that environment as soon as possible.
But many people are starting from a weak position — maybe their education isn’t strong, or their skills aren’t there yet — so they can’t easily land a better job, and they’re too afraid to even try.
So instead, they dive into “office politics survival guides” — all kinds of strange tactics, like how to clap back at coworkers or push back against their boss. How to fight the battles they’re stuck in. They genuinely believe this stuff works.
But from the outside looking in — does any of it actually help?
Tell them they should be building real skills: logic, communication, negotiation, decision-making, business analysis. Will they do it?
Tell them it means years of grinding, that it’ll be hard, but it can genuinely change their life in the long run. Will they believe you?
If someone is miserable at work every single day, and you tell them they still need to work hard — to pour themselves into even the smallest tasks and do them exceptionally well — will they do it?
Obviously not.
That’s why the content that sells is always the emperor’s golden hoe (the fantasy of effortless, flashy solutions that have no basis in reality). That’s exactly what most people want.
The high-achievers, the sharp ones, the truly capable — they already understand what actually matters. You don’t need to teach them.
And the ones who haven’t even figured out how their own job works? Trying to teach them is mostly a lost cause.
Take logic — one of the most critical measures of a person’s ability. How do you even teach that to an adult? Who has the time or inclination to just sit down and work on that for no particular reason?
High-level people generally thrive inside organizations. They don’t need to survive by endlessly pandering to everyone around them.
Low-level people writing for a living naturally write to please the market.
So what you see trending out there? That’s exactly why it’s so bad.
So bad that reading less of it is genuinely healthier for you. You’d be better off just going out and enjoying your life.