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.
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.