I think the point of reading is finding interesting ideas. For that purpose it’s great. But trying to improve your life by reading usually leads to frustration and guilt. It feels liberating to let go of that notion and just read for the sake of reading. Better to spend your “improvement fuel” on other things, like joining targeted activities with other people.
A lot of what I consider “self-improvement literature” is not of the “do hard changes on yourself” kind.
Much value can be derived by learning recipes for doing things (e.g. negotiation, weight loss, marksmanship)
Also much value is derived from gaining alternative lenses on things that while being more than skin-deep do not involve the kind of hard personality changes you’re objecting to (Frankl’s book on meaning had some of that effect on me)
I guess what I was saying that insofar as you require knowledge what you tend to need is usually a recommendation to read an existing resource or an adaption of ideas in an existing resource as opposed to new ideas. The balance of knowledge vs. practise is somewhat outside the scope of this article.
In particular, I wrote: “I’m not saying that this will immediately solve your problem—you will still need to put in the hard yards of experiment and practise—just that lack of knowledge will no longer be the limiting factor.”
I think the point of reading is finding interesting ideas. For that purpose it’s great. But trying to improve your life by reading usually leads to frustration and guilt. It feels liberating to let go of that notion and just read for the sake of reading. Better to spend your “improvement fuel” on other things, like joining targeted activities with other people.
A lot of what I consider “self-improvement literature” is not of the “do hard changes on yourself” kind.
Much value can be derived by learning recipes for doing things (e.g. negotiation, weight loss, marksmanship)
Also much value is derived from gaining alternative lenses on things that while being more than skin-deep do not involve the kind of hard personality changes you’re objecting to (Frankl’s book on meaning had some of that effect on me)
I guess what I was saying that insofar as you require knowledge what you tend to need is usually a recommendation to read an existing resource or an adaption of ideas in an existing resource as opposed to new ideas. The balance of knowledge vs. practise is somewhat outside the scope of this article.
In particular, I wrote: “I’m not saying that this will immediately solve your problem—you will still need to put in the hard yards of experiment and practise—just that lack of knowledge will no longer be the limiting factor.”