The title is a bit weird but I've found the links and googleable keywords in the article useful in exploring different self-improvement ideas that are at least somewhat backed by behavioral...
Every few years a new productivity technique emerges as the one true method to rule them all. But a better model is one that sees them all as pieces of a greater puzzle. As elements with unique characteristics and applications, they’re like building blocks that can be stacked and strung together.
The title is a bit weird but I've found the links and googleable keywords in the article useful in exploring different self-improvement ideas that are at least somewhat backed by behavioral science and other such fields.
I happened across the article by way of this reddit thread, which I also thought was interesting. In one comment the author mentions:
Most [self-help] books are quite one note. Tiny Habits, Grit, Mindset, Mindfulness, etc.
This is something I've long felt and commented on elsewhere before. Most self-help books have about a blog post's worth of content expanded to fill a book's worth of pages by endlessly reiterating its talking points, and by going over example after example. After reading many such books I've found that looking around for a review that explains a book's main concepts is a good way to avoid wasting my time, money, and shelf space on such books.
Of all the books I've read to try to better myself, there are only three where I felt the author made every word count: Time Management for Systems Administrators, The Phoenix Project, and Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. But those aren't exactly self-help books, and they're not aimed at a general audience -- I found them useful because of the particulars of my own life journey.
Anyway, I'm curious what other people's experiences are with trying to better oneself through reading.
I'd agree, but also throw in The Body Keeps the Score with the note that if whatever you're feeling looks like trauma, feels like trauma, and symptomatically matches trauma, it's probably trauma,...
I'd agree, but also throw in The Body Keeps the Score with the note that if whatever you're feeling looks like trauma, feels like trauma, and symptomatically matches trauma, it's probably trauma, even if you don't have an abuse/neglect history. And also that this book made me ugly cry on an airplane.
Mostly, I'm fine with all the self-help stuff, but there's a whole other aspect surrounding personal histories, aches, and learned behaviors that can consistently interfere with whatever bed-making tiny-habit-ness you're trying. I don't knock all the behavioral change stuff, and B.J. Fogg's papers are pretty cool (and don't fall into the same density trap as some books), but none of this talks about deconstructing who you are from how you were taught to be. That's been orders of magnitude more important than whether or not I make my bed. It's also my dissertation work 😅
In that, there's all sorts of models of therapeutic change; Carl Rogers' necessary and sufficient conditions, as well as a bunch of socio-learning that points to the importance of 1) a crisis, and 2) dialogue to distinguish between social-cultural components and personal components of that crisis. But, all to say that deeply understanding who you are will probably help with basically everything that you're trying to do.
And, if you ever don't want to read an entire book, and academic papers are mostly accessible (both in terms of getting the PDF and reading it), you could always just reading the paper and save yourself a bit of time. I know folks that have had the examples in Dweck's Mindset, for instance, be super helpful, but that wasn't really the case for me.
The title is a bit weird but I've found the links and googleable keywords in the article useful in exploring different self-improvement ideas that are at least somewhat backed by behavioral science and other such fields.
I happened across the article by way of this reddit thread, which I also thought was interesting. In one comment the author mentions:
This is something I've long felt and commented on elsewhere before. Most self-help books have about a blog post's worth of content expanded to fill a book's worth of pages by endlessly reiterating its talking points, and by going over example after example. After reading many such books I've found that looking around for a review that explains a book's main concepts is a good way to avoid wasting my time, money, and shelf space on such books.
Of all the books I've read to try to better myself, there are only three where I felt the author made every word count: Time Management for Systems Administrators, The Phoenix Project, and Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. But those aren't exactly self-help books, and they're not aimed at a general audience -- I found them useful because of the particulars of my own life journey.
Anyway, I'm curious what other people's experiences are with trying to better oneself through reading.
I'd agree, but also throw in The Body Keeps the Score with the note that if whatever you're feeling looks like trauma, feels like trauma, and symptomatically matches trauma, it's probably trauma, even if you don't have an abuse/neglect history. And also that this book made me ugly cry on an airplane.
Mostly, I'm fine with all the self-help stuff, but there's a whole other aspect surrounding personal histories, aches, and learned behaviors that can consistently interfere with whatever bed-making tiny-habit-ness you're trying. I don't knock all the behavioral change stuff, and B.J. Fogg's papers are pretty cool (and don't fall into the same density trap as some books), but none of this talks about deconstructing who you are from how you were taught to be. That's been orders of magnitude more important than whether or not I make my bed. It's also my dissertation work 😅
In that, there's all sorts of models of therapeutic change; Carl Rogers' necessary and sufficient conditions, as well as a bunch of socio-learning that points to the importance of 1) a crisis, and 2) dialogue to distinguish between social-cultural components and personal components of that crisis. But, all to say that deeply understanding who you are will probably help with basically everything that you're trying to do.
And, if you ever don't want to read an entire book, and academic papers are mostly accessible (both in terms of getting the PDF and reading it), you could always just reading the paper and save yourself a bit of time. I know folks that have had the examples in Dweck's Mindset, for instance, be super helpful, but that wasn't really the case for me.