In most countries, including the USA, it is prohibitively difficult to completely avoid committing crimes. For example, you commit a crime whenever you:
Most of the laws that define such actions as crimes are rarely enforced here in the USA -- until you happen to draw an attention of some moderately powerful person or entity, at which point the enforcement kicks in. However, it would be difficult (though not, I suppose, impossible) to lead a normal life without committing any such minor crimes.
Technical note: some of these are Torts, not Crimes. (Singing Happy Birthday, Watching a Movie, or making an Off-Color Joke are not crimes, barring special circumstances, but they may well be Torts.)
This is an extension of a comment I made that I can't find and also a request for examples. It seems plausible that, when giving advice, many people optimize for deepness or punchiness of the advice rather than for actual practical value. There may be good reasons to do this - e.g. advice that sounds deep or punchy might be more likely to be listened to - but as a corollary, there could be valuable advice that people generally don't give because it doesn't sound deep or punchy. Let's call this boring advice.
An example that's been discussed on LW several times is "make checklists." Checklists are great. We should totally make checklists. But "make checklists" is not a deep or punchy thing to say. Other examples include "google things" and "exercise."
I would like people to use this thread to post other examples of boring advice. If you can, provide evidence and/or a plausible argument that your boring advice actually is useful, but I would prefer that you err on the side of boring but not necessarily useful in the name of more thoroughly searching a plausibly under-searched part of advicespace.
Upvotes on advice posted in this thread should be based on your estimate of the usefulness of the advice; in particular, please do not vote up advice just because it sounds deep or punchy.