Top Advice of 2024
Time for the old end-o’-the-year-round-up! We wrote a lot of advice this year, all with the intention of helping you to not be an asshole, whatever that looks like for your badass life. Here are the dollops of hard-won wisdom that Vulgar Advice readers loved the most.
16 Small Ways to Get Your Shit Together
We tend to think of life as the big, stand-out moments, the thrilling milestones, and the devastating losses. Those moments are part of life, sure, and they can change us forever, but life is made up of the shit we do every single day. It's thousands of seemingly unremarkable moments, one after the other, piling on top of each other that form who we are. When you think about it, it's pretty fucking awesome because every day, you have an opportunity to get your shit together and build a badass life through small, doable actions. Here are 16 small ways to do just that.
Fuck Your New Year’s Resolutions. Do This Instead.
New Year's resolutions suck balls. At Vulgar Advice, we've changed many a bad habit and reached a lot of our goals; not a single damn one of those has been a New Year's resolution.
Today, as the world nurses its hangover and you stand gazing boldly into the next calendar year thinking about how you're going to make it your bitch — and we say this with respect — fuck your New Year's resolution.
This year, instead of putting your amazing brainpower and emotional energy into setting resolutions that you — statistically — will abandon, get to know yourself.
Why You Should Read a Goddamn Book, According to Science
As a child, I fucking loved reading. I preferred it over interacting with other humans. At sleepovers, I stuffed my backpack with the books I was reading so I wouldn’t have to spend too much time engaging with my peers. While my love of books probably made me an antisocial little cunt, it’s something I still carry with me today.
Books are vessels of freedom. When that fella Guttenberg invented the printing press in the 1400s, the church could no longer hoard information, and the resulting literacy and free thought changed the world.
These days, we spend a lot of fucking time reading on our phones. Fuck that. Here are a few reasons why you should read a goddamn book.
How to Finally Increase Your Damn Productivity
Ah, the never-ending pursuit of increasing productivity.
When we don’t tackle everything we want to do in a day, it leaves us feeling like shit. Like we didn’t try hard enough. Like we’re good enough. Like we don’t deserve our goals because we didn’t optimize every goddamn second of the day.
The productivity market–which includes apps, courses, books, etc. — was valued at $5.63 billion in 2022, more than double since 2017. It is expected to reach $8.5 billion by 2027. That is fucking bananas.
At Vulgar Advice, we suffer from being chronically multipassionate. We’ve tried apps, courses, and methodologies to increase and maintain productivity. We don’t knock those tools by any means– we’re die-on-the-hill Pomodoro fans and Zapier is the shit — but when it comes to finally achieving productivity, we focus on three things. But first …
Why Learning How To Fail is the Best Fucking Thing You Can Do
No one has ever succeeded without failing first. Failure is a sign of effort, passion, and life. It is a crucial step toward success (which you get to define, by the way).
Have you heard of Akio Morita? Probably not, but you’ve definitely heard of the company he founded, Sony. Sony’s first product was a shitty rice cooker that sold less than 100 units.
You know Oscar-winner and daddy of the silver screen, Sidney Poitier? He bombed his first audition so fucking hard that he was told he would have better luck as a dishwasher.
Charles Schultz? Rejected by Disney.
Oprah? Fired from her first on-air job.
Anthony Bourdain? Sold his record collection to buy heroin.
According to the almighty god that is Google, failure is the lack of success or inability to meet set expectations. So illuminating, Google, fucking thanks.