I feel like I’m noticing more and more that people tend to give advice, make pronouncements, have “takes”, etc. that are remarkably generalized. People love to talk about averages, large groups – they love to label others and make all sorts of assumptions based on those labels.

And this misses so much!

“You should work more.”

“You should work less.”

Both are valid statements, and 100% true, for different people.

Sure, that’s a simple example – although one that’s missed over and over every day by lots of people – but you can see what I mean, right? What’s correct and a great prescription for one person is horribly misguided and harmful to another.

There’s one kid on my son’s basketball team who out-hustles everyone else. You can tell he’s always going at 110% when frankly most of the other kids are at 75% at best, most of the time. But, anytime he gets a rebound on defense, he’s instantly trying to sprint down the court to get a basket. I love the intensity! But he’d benefit from slowing down a couple of notches in that particular situation. If the coach told everyone that, however, they’d be way worse off! So the input isn’t “speed up!”, nor is it “slow down!” It’s tailored to a specific player in a specific situation.

I’m sure I could come up with many more examples, but the point I’m trying to make is that you should always examine the context of the situation you’re in, the people you’re interacting with, the problem you’re facing – and only then try to act, or adjust, or solve.

I suppose I’m advocating for context-aware action, context-aware advice, context-aware observation, etc. Context-aware inputs of all kinds. You get a context and you get a context and you get a context! Context for everyone!

Plus, speaking in generalities is, I find, terribly uninteresting and under-stimulating. Except when it’s not! (Sorry, had to.) But really: if you’re thinking of generalizing about someone, pause for a moment: allow yourself to imagine that their experience of life doesn’t perfectly match up to what you are assuming it does; that their internal motivations are shaped by thousands of experiences of all sizes and intensities; that they could be inhabiting a world so vastly different from yours you’d scarcely recognize it, were you to step into their shoes for a moment.

Oh ok, I love that: picture a reality in which you inhabit someone else’s life for a brief time (an hour? a day? whatever). What a strange, alien experience that would have to be! Whatever you currently assume about what their life is like must be wrong; you don’t know their internal world and therefore it would be an absolutely wild experience. You’d be so jarringly shocked! You’d suddenly be feeling all their anxieties, their hopes, their insecurities, their fears, their childhood dreams not realized, their yearnings… all of it! What an absolutely mind-blowing experience that would be. I wish this were possible! What an amazing empathy-driver that would be.