It convinced me to move the book up several slots in said list, but not to run out and buy it immediately.
That’s because the review isn’t sufficient praise of the actual book. If a person were only going to read one self-help book in their lifetime, with the expectation that it should help them on nearly every topic that might be termed “self-help”, this is the one book they should read.
There are other self-help books that do better on individual topics discussed in this book, and it is not perfect by any means, but there is nothing like it out there for comprehensive coverage of the subjects of health, happiness, and success in life—at least, nothing written from Adams’ strictly reductionist and extremely pragmatic point of view. (i.e. Adams bites the bullet of seeing people as “moist robots” who can be manipulated effectively in simple ways, and advocates using this to manipulate yourself into doing what needs to be done.)
Its main drawback is that it has a bit too much of Adams’ spasmodic dysphonia story woven into it, or really, grafted onto it. Those chapters don’t add much value to the book, in my opinion, except to add a largely unnecessary dramatic arc.
But as Adams himself explains in the book, the book itself was designed to sell, and both the humorous and biographical content that would be unnecessary if the book were aimed at the self-help section of the bookstore were necessary in order to keep the book in the “humor” or “Dilbert author biography” marketing categories, where it would be financially successful.
(One of Adams’ points about success in life is that one is never judged on an absolute basis or on one’s own merits, but by comparison to competitors in a category, a category which you often have limited ability to choose. The book was therefore designed so as to be the best self-help book in the humor section of the bookstore, rather than the best humor book in the self-help section.)
Well, I just bumped it very near the top of my list—a lot of the optimizations covered in the original post I’ve already implemented, but it can’t hurt to see if I’ve missed any relatively low hanging fruit. Thanks!
That’s because the review isn’t sufficient praise of the actual book. If a person were only going to read one self-help book in their lifetime, with the expectation that it should help them on nearly every topic that might be termed “self-help”, this is the one book they should read.
There are other self-help books that do better on individual topics discussed in this book, and it is not perfect by any means, but there is nothing like it out there for comprehensive coverage of the subjects of health, happiness, and success in life—at least, nothing written from Adams’ strictly reductionist and extremely pragmatic point of view. (i.e. Adams bites the bullet of seeing people as “moist robots” who can be manipulated effectively in simple ways, and advocates using this to manipulate yourself into doing what needs to be done.)
Its main drawback is that it has a bit too much of Adams’ spasmodic dysphonia story woven into it, or really, grafted onto it. Those chapters don’t add much value to the book, in my opinion, except to add a largely unnecessary dramatic arc.
But as Adams himself explains in the book, the book itself was designed to sell, and both the humorous and biographical content that would be unnecessary if the book were aimed at the self-help section of the bookstore were necessary in order to keep the book in the “humor” or “Dilbert author biography” marketing categories, where it would be financially successful.
(One of Adams’ points about success in life is that one is never judged on an absolute basis or on one’s own merits, but by comparison to competitors in a category, a category which you often have limited ability to choose. The book was therefore designed so as to be the best self-help book in the humor section of the bookstore, rather than the best humor book in the self-help section.)
Well, I just bumped it very near the top of my list—a lot of the optimizations covered in the original post I’ve already implemented, but it can’t hurt to see if I’ve missed any relatively low hanging fruit. Thanks!