Every action, every thought — just about everything — depends on the time, the person, the place, the situation, the weather, and a long list of other factors. Change one of them, and the action, thought, or element loses all of its intended meaning.

Things are highly specific in nature. Specific things need specific conditions to produce specific results.

Taking them out of context and expecting the same results is insanity.

Generalised solutions usually produce generalised results.

Example One — Investment Advice

Why can't you give or receive investment advice?

Because the person giving the advice has different risk parameters, different metrics, different safety nets, a different timeline for that particular investment, and information based on that timeline, those metrics, and that risk tolerance.

The person being advised has a completely different set of all of those same parameters.

A long-term investor advising a short-term investor is a disaster waiting to happen — at the latter's end.

Someone investing in a startup by following their favourite VC's playbook will likely end in disaster too. VC returns depend on one out of every ten or twenty investments paying out big enough to cover the rest — a completely different game with a completely different time horizon.

Example Two — Physical Training

Person A trains for a marathon because all their colleagues are running the same one. Person B trains for Olympic or ultra-distance running.

Swapping their training regimes without considering context is a recipe for disaster. At the most basic level, one is training with a results mindset, the other with a process mindset.

The Antidote: Think for Yourself

It depends.

That's the rational answer to almost any question. If you want specific results, you need to tweak the process to your specific needs, according to the particular environmental factors that apply to you — in your context, at that time.

It takes time and effort to think from the bottom up. Which is why people resort to the sentence every engineer dreads hearing:

"That's how it's usually done — that's how everybody does it."

...instead of having a solid, rational reason that makes something the efficient and optimal choice in their own context.