When you search for self-development books on Amazon, you’ll get over 60,000 results. The same search on goodreads yields 20,000 books. It might feel like self-development books (or self-improvement or self-help – you choose) are one of the major (book) trends of the 21st century: get more done in less time, love better, eat better, work better, sleep better, exercise better and invest better. But these books aren’t new. They’ve been around for a long time. In 1859 Samuel Smiles released one of the first official self-development books Self-Help – 59,999 followed since then.
Why Self-Development Books are Important
Smiles’ vision was to help create a better society by motivating the individuals that constitute it to improve themselves. Their development could happen in many areas of life: job, relationship, family, sports, personal finances, health, emotions. The list is endless. Learning new things keeps us moving forward – it is of extreme importance. For the individual and for society.
Life is nothing else than continuous self-development. We learn new things in kinder garden, in school, maybe at a university, at our job, at home and away. We learn things about ourselves and about others. It’s a never-ending process.
Reading self-development books can boost your learning process and introduce you to new perspectives. By spending a couple minutes every day reading, you can learn from years of experience of others, from industry professionals and from people who have (hopefully) already improved themselves.
The big catch is: Only reading about self-development won’t be enough to actually develop yourself.
At Some Point, You’ve Had Enough: It’s Time to Self-Develop!
Reading even all 60,00 self-development books won’t be enough to move you forward significantly. Even without considering how much time it would take (and waste). Reading is the first step, but you must apply the knowledge and insights that you acquired. You must do something with it.
What good does reading about how awesome meditation is do, if you don’t do it. What good does reading about saving and investing more money do, if you don’t go ahead and buy your first ETF. What good does reading about how to be emotionally intelligent do, if you still behave like a dick to everyone around you. Practice makes perfect – simply reading doesn’t.
Your Return on Investment (I study business so sometimes I must use these words to sound like I know what I’m doing) is higher when you apply the books to your life. Actively engage with the content before you move on to the next productivity guru’s promises. And if you think you have given the books content a serious chance, and it still doesn’t work – then move on. Read the next one. But at least there is no shame in it now. You’ve tried. It didn’t work. Not everything suits everyone. But how are you going to find out what works for you if you don’t even try? What is the point of reading all these books then?
How Do You Learn?
Exam time is quite busy and stressful in Maastricht (remember the Return on Investment thing). It feels like the entire town lives at the library. Sometimes we study together. And if we do, we usually do past exams. Some students have an odd approach to these past exams.
They’ll look at the answer to a question they got wrong and immediately think they get why they were wrong. No further thinking or reading – just looking if A, B, C or D was correct. I have the feeling they don’t want to deal with the fundamental reason of their incorrectness. They don’t want to re-watch a lecture or look up a definition again. But that’s how you learn to do it right the next time. You think about it. Learning by heart that C was wrong won’t work in the long-term. It’s about more than just looking at the right answer.
In school we learned how to write comments, analysis’, interpretations, and evaluations. I once wrote my opinion in the introduction of an interpretation. Based on the furious look of my German teacher when she handed me back the exam, this was not allowed. Theory did not allow for such things. I got 3 out of 15 points.
In the next exam, I didn’t put my opinion in the introduction. I got a full score and had learned my lesson. That is how you develop. You use the stuff that you are being taught.
Taking Action is So Damn Difficult
Why are self-help books still being published so regularly? Why do so many of us keep reading the next “life-changing” book?
The second question might be the answer to the first one – but the problem remains.
Brain Tracy wrote the brilliant book Eat that Frog. Each of the 21 chapters is a couple pages long and ends with a quick task for the reader to complete before they read on. The first task asks you to write down the ten things that – when achieved within a year – have the largest positive impact on your life.
That’s some deep shit.
It’s a bloody difficult question. An uncomfortable question. We are being forced to go deep into our fundamental motivations.
What drives us? What makes us happy? Who do we want to spent time with?
It’s not easy to answer and it takes time and effort. It might suck at first. But it’s the first step to eating that frog. It is the first step to procrastinating a little bit less (which is the point of Eat that Frog).
These exercises are great because they immediately require you to act. But you must make the time while reading and not move on right away.
Time is a huge reason why many don’t properly use the self-development books they read. When you are done reading, you immediately want to move on to the next book. And not deal with some stupid exercise or think about your goals in life. But that’s what it takes (unfortunately).
When you read about meditation, you should try to meditate. When you read about saving and investing, you shouldn’t read ten more investing books before you buy that first ETF. And when you read about how to become emotionally intelligent, you should try to do just that. That’s how it works. This holds true regardless of the area you trying to improve upon.
What all Self-Development Books share
Micki McGee (Associate Professor of Sociology at Fordham University and author of Self-Help, Inc: Makeover Culture in American Life) once said the following about the self-help book market:
A market that is saturated turns to differentiation, to niche marketing, to open up new audiences, and self-help literature is no exception.
Self-development books are trying to become more unique and specific. Tailored to your individual situation – trying to find their niche. But they often return to the same principle: your mindset.
That is the key of course. And you need this new book of author XYZ to uncover your great mindset! (The best return on investment obviously yields the authors seminar that you should buy afterwards – but hurry!).
But what if you could improve your mindset by just reading one book. Maybe that’s already enough?
Under the first five books, that showed up after my “Self-Development” search on goodreads, were: “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, “Atomic Habits” and “The Power of Habit”. Notice a common theme?
Maybe authors keep writing about the same stuff because we keep asking them for it. And why do we ask for more? Because we are not properly using the books that are already out there.
How Do We Use Self-Development Books Properly Then?
This isn’t a post against self-development books. The opposite’s true. I’m a big advocate and will keep reading them myself (although I’ve hit the pause button). But we aren’t using them right. We’re at a state of overconsumption. Maybe it would do us and society some good if we’d dial it back a little and had a healthier, deeper relationship with self-development books.
Do you really need ten books on mindset? Use the stuff that you read and try to implement it. Meditate, go on a walk in the morning, make a list of goals, plan your day, use the Pomodoro technique, open your email only twice a day – and all this other stuff. But just do it and do it with 100%-dedication. You’ll find out what works for you and what doesn’t.
My self-development advice: read less self-development books.
Who knows, at the end something strange might happen, which you were hoping all along would become true: you have developed yourself!
Dear Joe,
again, another great reading. And in deed, your argumentation completely reflects my current experience with getting in touch with meditation. I read enough of books, audio guides and podcasts – but I need to start and get used to a daily routine.
Having said this, I believe sometimes books can give inspiration, direction – but for praciticing and getting to real life one might need family, friends, partners to encourage you, to motivate you even in dark winter days.
Thank you, dad! Glad you enjoyed the post.
Totally agree that books can serve as great inspiration. They can be a solid foundation and starting point for developing a routine.
Would love to be the one who can motivate you to meditate more – but I am of no added value in that area 😉