over-indexing on respected people's opinions

what happened

when mentors or people you admire give feedback, it's easy to take it as gospel. someone with 20 years of experience says "you should do X" and you reorganize your whole plan around it.

why it's a gotcha

their context is different from yours. a VC's advice is optimized for VC-scale outcomes. a professor's advice is shaped by academic incentives. a mentor's suggestion is filtered through their own experience, which may not map to your situation. they're not wrong — their advice is just for a different game than the one you're playing. this is the advice version of the fomo-trap — external signals overriding internal clarity.

the fix

weigh advice, don't swallow it whole. when someone you respect gives feedback, ask yourself: what's their context? what game are they playing? does this advice apply to my specific situation, or to a situation that looks like mine from the outside? take what's useful, leave the rest. knowing your own goals is the anchor. extracting advice is still extraction, and borrowed direction leads to the same place as borrowed motivation.