In General

I’m addicted to researching topics on the internet. If I’m going through something (fatherhood, an illness, buying a car), I soak up as much information as possible from people on the web.

Anecdotal stories about how to sleep train, and what nutritional plan works best are helpful because they let me zoom in on actual stories.

General data is perhaps more helpful though, since it’s gathered scientifically (usually). Seeing the big picture can often make individual stories less relevant.

But there’s a problem with using general data to solve specific problems: our problems are unique to our lives and our world views, so general data becomes useless. It could cause extra worry, in fact.

And those anecdotals are also useless, since one person’s story and lessons learned are far different from their neighbor’s stories and lessons.

A better strategy is to learn to listen to our own intuition. It takes practice and stillness. Our own life data and observations are more relevant and useful than anything else on the market.