How to Survive (and Thrive!) in the Age of ADVICE TOO MUCH

Between YouTube, TikTok, and the 11 self-help books from wellness gurus that just came out, lots of people want to tell you what to do. Here's when to listen.

- MILAN POLK

LAST YEAR, I DECIDED

I wanted to learn how to eat healthier. (Surprise! We're not all macro-tracking bodybuilders over here at Men's Health.) So I searched Google, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube. And my research all seemed to lead me to the same kind of advice: one-size-fits-all directives, delivered by confident and attractive social-media stars and online influencers, all hawking video courses, e-books, YouTube channels, podcasts, and specially formulated vitamins. Their collective pitch: They alone hold the secret knowledge that will propel me to achieve my goals for a price, but hey, it works for hundreds of thousands of their followers. And there are so many of these advice givers.

"There's garbage out there because there's a demand," says Katy Milkman, Ph.D., author of How to Change. "This is the thing about human nature: We're always looking for ways to get better." And we'll spend good time and money on that improvement. The U. S. personal-development industry (that's courses, coaching, and workshops centered on self-improvement), already valued at a massive $11.5 billion, is expected to grow an additional 5.5 percent over the next seven years, according to Grand View Research. The category that will see the most growth? Online-based personal development.

So in order to filter out the trusted experts (they do exist!) from the supplement-shilling, anecdote-spouting, cherry-picking, "subscribe-to-my-podcast" influencers, I looked into the research behind giving advice and talked to credentialed authorities on the subject. What I found was that learning how to seek out and take advice about self-improvement is, like everything else in life, a skill-which means you can improve it.