Advice like that is genuinely useful: it allows you to flip a mental switch to throw all future advice from such a person straight to the trash.
The one time I’ve had such advice turn out to be useful was when keeping a diary for track forgetfulness. The instructions were that if you forgot to log your memory for a week, then write that in once you remembered to journal again. That being given as an explicit instruction gave a signal that there was thought put behind the advice rather than spreading generic self-help advice.
Tracking my distraction was a big gamechanger for me. On my desk there is a little block with lines marking everytime i got distracted. After a while all those marks annoyed me very much because for every hour of task there were 20 or so lignes. Its visualizing my inatentiony. After a while it was like a game and those ligns negative points…. Now i have only 5 lignes per hour or so.
The one time I’ve had such advice turn out to be useful was when keeping a diary for track forgetfulness. The instructions were that if you forgot to log your memory for a week, then write that in once you remembered to journal again. That being given as an explicit instruction gave a signal that there was thought put behind the advice rather than spreading generic self-help advice.