Over the last 10 years, I’ve read pretty much every popular self-help book under the sun (From Dale Carnegie to Napoleon Hill to Mark Manson to Jordan Peterson). This particular genre occupies an embarrassingly large amount of space on my bookshelf. I’ve once read somewhere that a man can be fairly accurately defined by the content of his bookshelf. I wonder what this ever-growing collection self-help book says about me. While some self-help books are genuinely helpful, life-changing even, others are formulaic. Over time, I’ve come to realize two important facts about self-help:
There is a quote from the movie “Fight Club” that was thought-provoking. “Self improvement is masturbation” - Tyler Durden. It’s often trivially obvious what we need to do to improve our lives; eat more vegetables, get more sleep, exercise more, the list goes on. The act of reading self-help books might mislead us into thinking some progress is being made when we are in reality standing still.
Almost all books have some “self-help” value to them. What constitutes “self-help” is loosely defined. A book that is completely perspective-changing might be more valuable than a heavy-handed prescriptive list of rules for better time-management, better productivity, a better life.
Anyways, I guess this post is more of a self-reminder. Less reading! More doing!