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Curtis McHale in Productivity as a Fetish edition of their newsletter 3 Threads:

Many of the people touting their system actually have a team behind them getting most of the work done. Their only job is to show you the productivity system, not sit in the morass of expectations that most of us have around us from work and family and our own desires for life.

This arrived in my inbox at the same time I am watching Thailand: The Dark Side of Paradise. An interesting series of documentaries about issues in the country, most of which caused by mass tourism and modern internet culture. Zara McDermott does an impressive job of displaying the underbelly of Thailand, and talks at length with various versions of digital nomads living in the country.

In the very first episode she discusses drop-shipping, the first wave of online booms that allowed countless people to become roaming MacBook workers (seriously, it’s always a MacBook). She quite rightly goes on to touch on the very issue that Curtis talks about above. The people giving the advice are very unlikely to be doing so from a similar position to the people consuming their opinions.

The truth is, scarcely any people actually make money from drop-shipping, they might have in the past, but now they live on the income from selling a course to teach others. Peddling the false dream of making big bucks, when their lifestyle is funded by the course you just bought, not the tat they sell online.

Of course, there are exceptions in everything, but the people making the videos and content giving out productivity advice are unlikely to be the ones using it. They write books, give talks and make YouTube videos about you getting more out of your day — whilst having a team to do everything for them. I have read so many ‘self-help’ books written from positions of power. CEOs, entrepreneurs, and millionaires giving out advice the average person can’t use, nor relate to.

Advice given from the right level is much more worthwhile paying attention to.