You need to make a decision about something outside your expertise. So you start reading—articles, blog posts, expert opinions. But after ten sources, you’re somehow less confident than when you started. Every new piece of advice contradicts the last one. You’re working harder at navigating conflicting advice but just getting more confused.

This happens whether you’re looking into school options, medical treatments, investment strategies, or—like my wife and I right now—trying to work out sensible screen time limits for our children. They’re 10 and 12, and the pressure for phones, social media, and unrestricted access is getting more intense. We want to enable them to explore this new world, but within safe boundaries. The challenge is working out what “safe boundaries” actually means when every source we read seems to contradict the last.

The problem we found isn’t the lack of information; there’s plenty of it. For us it was the order we were consuming it in.

Most people jump straight to “what should I do?” But when you’re looking into something outside your expertise, that’s the last question to answer, not the first.

A strategy for navigating conflicting advice

I’ve found the following three-stage strategy to be effective when working to understand lifestyle choices outside my professional experience: foundations, then frameworks, then applications. Each stage answers a different question and skipping stages is what causes the feeling of overwhelm.

Stage 1: Foundations

Start with “What is X?” Learn basic definitions, core concepts, and essential vocabulary. You’re not looking for answers yet—you’re building the language to understand more complex material later.

When we started looking into screen time, our first session wasn’t to ask “how much is too much?” Instead, we asked “what do we mean by screen time?” We quickly realised it’s not one thing—there’s passive consumption (watching videos), interactive games, creative production (making content), and social connection (messaging friends). These distinctions matter when you’re trying to make sense of conflicting advice. Is our 12-year-old messaging her friends the same concern as our 10-year-old watching YouTube? We stopped reading when we could explain the main categories to each other in our own words.

Stage 2: Frameworks

Move to “How do experts think about X?” Understand the principles, mental models, and major debates in this domain. This stage builds your ability to evaluate, and make sense of, conflicting advice instead of just collecting it.

For screen time, this meant learning what frameworks child development researchers actually use. How do they account for age differences (10 and 12 are very different developmental stages)? What principles separate quality concerns from duration concerns? When one expert warns about developmental harm and another recommends educational apps, we needed to understand they’re often applying different frameworks to different types of screen use. This is when contradictory advice started making sense—they’re not disagreeing, they’re talking about different things.

Stage 3: Applications

Only now does it make sense to tackle the question “How does X apply to my situation?” You understand the concepts, and you know how experts think about the issue, so you can apply general principles to your specific context and constraints.

Now we could start making decisions about our children’s specific ages, temperaments, our family values, and our particular concerns. Our 12-year-old wanting to message friends sits in a different category than our 10-year-old wanting unlimited gaming. The information cohered because we’d built the foundation to make sense of it. We still don’t have final answers—this is ongoing—but we have a framework for making decisions we can explain to our children and adjust as they grow.

Common mistakes

Starting with applications is the trap most people fall into. You search for specific recommendations before you understand the underlying concepts, then get overwhelmed because different advice assumes different frameworks you don’t yet grasp.

The opposite mistake is staying too long at the foundations stage. If you’re still reading basic definitions after your second session, you’re procrastinating the harder work of understanding frameworks. Consider moving forward even if your foundations feel incomplete. Remember that you’re not trying to become an expert in this domain; you just want to know enough to think clearly.

The signals you’re ready to move between stages: you’re getting bored (move forward) or you’re completely lost (step back one level).

Using this strategy

Pick any complex topic you’re looking into. Your first session focuses on foundations: what are the basic concepts and vocabulary? Your second session explores frameworks (or mental models): how do experts in this field think about the problem? Your third session tackles applications: how do those principles apply to your specific situation?

Three focused sessions building on each other work better than ten hours of confused reading. You still won’t have simple answers to complex questions—screen time isn’t simple, in the same ways that school choices and healthcare decisions aren’t simple. But this strategy means you’ll develop a systematic approach to navigating conflicting advice that lets you make informed decisions and adjust them as circumstances change.

My wife and I are still figuring out screen time with our children. But now we’re figuring it out systematically rather than lurching between anxiety and permissiveness based on whatever article we read last. That’s the difference this approach makes.