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.)
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.)