Maybe reading self-help primes you to think about how you can do whatever you're doing in a better way, and having the habit of frequently and enthusiastically asking yourself "how can I do this better" and taking action on your answers is very general and valuable.
This is a good point. Funnily enough, I recently was thinking about re-reading a diet book I'd read some time ago solely for the motivational boost.
I reread Fr. Gallagher's book on praying the Examen periodically as a booster shot, and it usually gets me back into the routine I want again at least for a month or two. And I'm sorely in need of a reread once I unpack my books.
I used to do the same thing with my embroidery, inkle weaving books, etc, as much to motivate me to take on new projects as to review techniques.
I think anything can be a gift/valuable if you choose to see it that way. By the same token, if you choose to read that book or attend that lame seminar with a dismissive attitude, you'll tend to enjoy it less and derive less value.
For example, once I was at a workshop on Distraction and Getting Things Done -- until I realized it was actually a workshop on being distracted by video games and addiction. The facilitator wasn't very competent, and it turned out to be powerpoints on where video game addiction came from and a sketchy home-made video of her son talking about how video game addiction ruined his life.
This was the point at which I normally would have taken out my phone and found something I might've found of more value, but then I realized some of the themes of meditation and staying present, and tried to just really soak in what she was talking about and not oscillate looking for the highest value task at the time (a mindset I'm trying to let go of).
The shift in mindset caused more exciting ideas to jog in my head- eg. when she was talking about how video games are addicting because you're always striving to reach the next level- how might I apply that to something I find more fulfilling, like getting through that long list of books I've been wanting to read?
Long tangent- but in short, an experience can be a gift if you choose to see it as such. More narrowly, even the most trivial platitudes of texts can be effective primers for good ideas.
not oscillate looking for the highest value task at the time (a mindset I'm trying to let go of).
Interesting, I used to have that mindset and I wish I had it back. :/
More narrowly, even the most trivial platitudes of texts can be effective primers for good ideas.
Yeah, I'd expect so... to the extent that this is the optimal method, picking words at random out of an dictionary could be useful.
Interesting, I used to have that mindset and I wish I had it back. :/
What made you lose the mindset? For what reasons do you wish you had it back?
Yeah, I'd expect so... to the extent that this is the optimal method, picking words at random out of an dictionary could be useful.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic here.
Yeah, I'd expect so... to the extent that this is the optimal method, picking words at random out of an dictionary could be useful.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic here.
Neither can I, but it is a technique (one of many) suggested by Edward de Bono for coming up with ideas.
Picking words out of the dictionary works IME, but not very well... I find I need prompts with more internal structure than that. But picking clusters of words (like, 5 words at random) can work OK. Opening books to random sentences works better, and some books work better than others. That said, I find that generating "random" sentences works better for me.
What made you lose the mindset? For what reasons do you wish you had it back?
Went through a difficult period in my life. I wish it had it back 'cause I ran my life better then.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic here.
Nope.
Here is my very obsolete "self help guru ratings" page, and an (old) incomplete list of self-help books I've read or skim-read.
I didn't see a list of "good" gurus, so I checked all the individual reviews looking for them. I saw only three:
I learned a lot more about scientific self-help, and about specific topics like personal finance.
Most of them are rated "bad": the only "good" ratings I recall are Cudney, Dunman, and Gilbaugh. There's a somewhat higher number of "meh" ratings, but still a minority.
I'm perfectly willing to believe this given my own exposure to the self-help field, though. It really is mostly terrible.
Interesting; LW seems to break Wayback machine links. Anyway, I've now replaced them with is.gd links.
LW markup seems to screw up the link (you have to copy the whole thing, not the latest autolinked part):
https://web.archive.org/web/20110820085531/http://lukeprog.com/selfhelp/guru_ratings.html
Maybe I'm exceptionally good at picking self-help material to read, but I've received a lot of benefit from the following books:
"How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. This helped me think more about how my communication was being received, with dual effects of tailoring my communication to better get the results I want, and better be understood by others.
"Difficult Conversations" by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen. This is a good book on nonviolent communication which made a big difference in my interpersonal skills.
The Greyskull LP book by Johnny Pain is cringe-inducing in it's bro-ness, but the information about weight training within is excellent.
"Becoming a Supple Leopard" by Kelly Starrett is an excellent resource on physical flexibility, mobility, and movement efficiency. This helped me a lot in gaining the mobility to perform a deep squat snatch.
These are the most recent examples I can remember. I've frequently used How To books in the past to get started with certain skills (playing piano and guitar, learning C), though I've found that books don't do too well to take me past the beginner stages.
When I decide I want to learn a new skill, like Powershell, my first instinct is to pick up a book on the subject and work through it. It works pretty well for me, but that may just be my individual learning style.
Hobbes: Whatcha doin?
Calvin: Getting rich.
Hobbes: Really?
Calvin: Yep. I'm writing a self-help book! There's a huge market for this stuff. First, you convince people there's something wrong with them. That's easy, because advertising has already conditioned people to feel insecure about their weight, looks, social status, sex appeal, and so on. Next, you convince them that the problem is not their fault and that they're victims of larger forces. That's easy, because it's what people believe anyway. Nobody wants to be responsible for his own situation. Finally, you convince them that with your advice and encouragement, they can conquer their problem and be happy!
Hobbes: Ingenious. What problem will you help people solve?
Calvin: Their addiction to self-help books! My book is called, "Shut Up and Stop Whining: How to Do Something with Your Life besides Think About Yourself."
Hobbes: You should probably wait for the advance before you buy anything.
Calvin: The trouble is, if my program works, I won't be able to write a sequel.
Next, you convince them that the problem is not their fault and that they're victims of larger forces. That's easy, because it's what people believe anyway.
I am stealing this for my upcoming post on Gary Taubes.
The question "what books do I have to read in order to become you?" is one I have been considering lately. I'm not entirely sure why, but it feels like quite a rude question to ask.
Well, it presumes the statement "the difference between being me and being you can be expressed as the reading of a set of books." Which can be a status challenge in some cases, and it's common for status challenges to feel rude.
You'd have to read "DanArmak: The Autobiography", which takes up to 1 hour to read per waking hour described.
If luke is naturally good at putting stuff he's read into practical use, and particularly if he knows it (at least subconsciously), then he would be likely to want to read a lot of self-help books. So the causality in your argument makes more sense to me the other way around. Not sure if I'm helping at all here though.
Out of my ~14 shelves of books, somewhere between one and two are primarily self-help. I'm counting here both pure self-help books like 59 Seconds and specific skill books like Getting to Yes and The Handbook of Style.
I suspect this is part of virtuous spiral involving the growth mindset, and I'm not sure going on a self-help kick is useful compared to a habit of buying and reading any potentially interesting self-help books you come across. In particular, I don't have all that much respect for self-help books as raw motivation; if I can't tell from looking at a book at least one skill it purports to teach, I don't buy it without a recommendation, and looking back those books tend to have been less useful for me.
I have found biographies useful as raw motivation, though- the one I read most recently, and which I think I got the most motivation out of, was Lives of the Engineers by Samuel Smiles. (I've linked to the free ebook, or you can get a paperback for $30, but my version is the Folio Society hardcover.)
''Enabling patients to read self-help CBT guides has been shown to be effective by some studies.[72][73][74] However one study found a negative effect in patients who tended to ruminate,[75] and another meta-analysis found that the benefit was only significant when the self-help was guided (e.g. by a medical professional).[76]'' -Wikipedia
When I was younger I read a lot of self-help books and did not accomplish much. I attribute this to the following:
It's easier to get the feeling of having learned something useful than it is to get the feeling of having accomplished something. So there is a tendency to read through the book but not actually accomplish anything.
The above is exacerbated by the fact that self-help authors are aware of it. So self-help books tend to be like potato chips -- stimulating but not very nutritious.
My brain seems to have an inner fuck-up who ends up making a lot of the day to day decisions in life. My inner fuck-up is too much of a fuck-up to benefit from self-help books. So what would end up happening is that I would read the self-help book, learn something which seemed to make sense, think to myself "yes, now I've got it," and feel really motivated and confident. Until my inner fuck-up takes over and whatever I've learned fades away, kinda like things faded for the main character in [i]Memento[/i].
I always thought that there are bits of useful insight scattered among all the nonsense of self-help books and that reading lots of them and then letting your mind sort through it could lead to those bits being assembled into a useful whole. But I was never able to get myself to actually do it (is there a self-help book on reading self-help books?)
The problem is that I can't really tolerate the idea that I'm doing something mostly useless in the hope that some benefits will nevertheless accrue, invisibly, in my subconscious. I feel the need to judge whatever I'm reading and either seriously engage with it or discard it. And self-help books are not only full of crap, but are also designed to push all your enthusiasm buttons. For me, it's hard to read through bazillions of 'simple insights that will change my life' without slipping into excessive enthusiasm or outright contempt.
So, I think, do it, if you can tolerate the tedium.
Tangentially related: do you do any physical-skills training? IME, doing something first-order-useless in the expectation that benefits will accrue without explicit conscious intervention is pretty much what physical-skills training is all about. And, yes, my conscious mind always complains about this, as it wants to be in the middle of everything.
Just because someone read a lot of self-help books and managed to improve themselves in some way doesn't mean the self-help books should be recommended to everyone.
It's not just that he read a lot of self-help books and managed to improve himself - it's that he seems to have come out of the experience with a knack for reading up on other "how to"s and applying that information. E.g. he once mentioned reading up on nonprofit management when he took over running MIRI, and seems to be doing well there, in spite of having come in from a completely different field.
he once mentioned reading up on nonprofit management when he took over running MIRI, and seems to be doing well there
compared to what?
Most scientific self help books in my experience piece together a bunch of studies of dubious quality and hang a narrative on it. When you investigate the studies a lot of them don't hold up well methodologically. And that's before you even get into the quality of the narrative.
So basically I'm agreeing with your point. Engaging with lots of self help material is doing some non-explicit stuff to the way you model the world that winds up helping. You remain stronger even if much of the underlying material winds up falsified. I've definitely noticed an improvement in my day to day epistemology as I've done more personal research and learned to quickly identify patterns that indicate something is likely bogus. I think this might just be that humans have consistent ways of dissembling when they know their point isn't solid.
Engaging with lots of self help material is doing some non-explicit stuff to the way you model the world that winds up helping
Or, being the sort of person who engages with lots of self-help material does something. ;-) It might be that if you're not that sort of person, reading a lot of it won't help.
I've read gobs and gobs of self-help books, have literally hundreds in dead-trees form alone. I am not the sort of person that self-help books can help, though, because I'm generally more interested in learning and figuring things out than I am a faithful and uncritical implementer of the advice presented. If I were such a person, I would undoubtedly have benefited much more (in utilons vs. hedons) from the reading that I've done.
I find that there is a category of person who executes at least one thing from something they read, attend, or otherwise consume. Those people get more results than everybody else put together, almost regardless of what material they consume.
I guess what I'm saying is, the material actually doesn't matter. What somebody does with it, does. It's ridiculously easy to read and analyze and critique tons of self-help books and vet them for scientific merit, compared to uncritically applying the contents of even a few. At least, if you're the type who would rather do the former than the latter. ;-)
You remain stronger even if much of the underlying material winds up falsified. I've definitely noticed an improvement in my day to day epistemology as I've done more personal research and learned to quickly identify patterns that indicate something is likely bogus.
I think this kind of misses the point entirely. Ignasz Semmelweiss' radical idea of handwashing for doctors is an example of the sort of thing that doesn't pass the bogon filter: his theory for why it worked was actually bogus. He thought it was some sort of poison (germs not having been discovered yet), and scientists quite rightly pointed out that there was no known poison that could work in such small quantities as were required.
A lot of self-help and "spiritual" advice is like this: 100% bogus theories nonetheless describing actions that produce results similar to the ones promised. The whole "law of attraction" genre of books contain endless amounts of rubbish about quantum whackadoodle and solipsist fantasies... and they also contain concrete cognitive and emotional processes that bear a considerable resemblance to the ones researched by Richard Wiseman under the heading of "luck theory", showing that "lucky" people notice and take advantages of opportunities that "unlucky" people do not, and that certain attitudes and behaviors will lead to one becoming more "lucky" in this sense.
In other words, law of attraction stuff actually contains beliefs that pay rent, mixed in with a huge helping of meaningless theory. Similar phenomena can be found in religious practices, PUA training, and other semi-pseudo-scientific fields of endeavor. If you ignore the theories given, and focus on "what concrete actions are being proposed, and what anticipated experiences are these actions supposed to pay off in?", then you very often find that, just like Semmelweis, self-help gurus are quite often making accurate predictions about what will happen, despite having a 100% bogus theory about why those things will happen.
Skimming or skipping theory will also let you read a lot faster, and you can also tell a lot more easily when two superficially dissimilar authors or books are actually telling you to do the same things and anticipate the same results, despite violent disagreements about the theory of how or why those actions will produce those results.
OTOH, if you waste time even reading the theories, let alone trying to prove them true or false, you'll have a far less pleasant and useful time. Theory in self-help materials is motivational window-dressing: its function is to supply a mnemonic intuition pump to the reader, so that they will be motivated to perform the actions, and remember which actions to perform when, for what purposes. If you read anything more into the theories, it's a waste of time -- and that applies even if the theory is one that has some sort of genuine science behind it.
Some time ago, I noticed that lukeprog seems to have an exceptional knack for reading up on a subject and actually putting what he's learned to practical use. At first I thought he might be some weird genetic freak, literally - some people are good at math, others are good at languages, maybe Luke is just good at putting stuff he's read to practical use. That, or I hoped he had some secret to it that he could put into words and share with the rest of us.
But then then it occurred to me that Luke, by his own account, has spent a ridiculous amount of time reading self-help books. In a LessWrong post, he says, "I've spent several years studying scientific self-help"; IIRC his personal site used to have a ridiculous number of reviews of self-help books, including ones with a less scientific approach. This makes me suspect that probably, spending all that time reading self-help books made him better at learning how to do things. Even reading crappy self-help books (which again IIRC Luke's old website said he did a lot of, at first) may have helped, insofar as it taught him to tell good advice from bad.
He may be able to verbalize some of what he learned, like "look for books that take a scientific approach," but I suspect he's developed considerable non-verbalizable yet learnable skill in this area. I see a parallel here for my own skill at doing library research factual questions: some of it I can verbalize (Google it, read the Wikipedia article, look rigorous academic work, look for hard data on the opinions of experts), but a lot of it is stuff I can't verbalize, which another person could only gain through spending as much time doing research as I have.
I've previously had an aversion to reading much in the way of self help and how to books because of an expectation that mostly they'll suck, but now I think that maybe, when I get some spare time, I should buckle down, pick a topic (maybe writing), and read a bunch of how to books anyway, with a hope of actually getting better at the thing but mostly as an exercise in learning to learn how to do things. But I'm curious to know if other people think this is a good idea - if they see a flaw in my logic, or if anyone who's read a lot of self help and how to books can comment on whether they think it helped them tell good advice from bad.