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Comment by the_greyd | Hacker News Reader

Very Interesting read. I'm someone who has been reading some self-help literature for the past year. Topics include Mindfulness, Buddhism, Stoicism, Social skills, Positive psychology, Habit forming, Assertiveness. I'm in my early 20s, and I justify this phase as un-learning the coping mechanisms/bad habits I formed in my childhood/teen years. Well intentioned but highly critical parents damaged my self-esteem; I also suffered from loneliness. And self-help books have helped me. I don't see myself continuing to regularly read as much self-help as I grow older. But I think it's important early on in your life trying to unlearn bad habits and learn good ones.

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I could write this out word for word and it would be true for me as well. Generally, I think interacting with self help stuff is bad and can lead to being overly self critical. But when you take a hard look at your self and truly acknowledge that you aren't being who you feel like you are, what else is there to do?

From an insider's perspective (I work in self help), there are a couple of hidden things that contribute to you feeling self-critical that aren't your fault.

1. The field is very competitive and so everyone in the field hypes up their success stories. It's easy to go in to a self help book thinking it will work 100% of the time. The truth is that it probably only works 10% of the time. 10% is great unless you were expecting 100%. So failing is normal. And the most common cause for failure is simply discovering change is a lot of work and you'd rather put that effort somewhere else.

2. The vast majority of free self-improvement articles are written by content marketers with zero personal experience. They are essentially writing book reports about different famous people. It's actually a little worse than that--many think up the title and framing, and then farm the words out to Upwork (this happens even for articles you find on Inc.). The downside of this is that the advice has never been tested, not even on the author. So the readers hype themselves up and then find out that the actions they've been given just flat out don't work ever.

3. Otherwise well meaning professionals in this space get obsessed with problem solving. And as a result they talk at you like you have a problem. That's not their call though. You need to be in charge of deciding whether you are happy with your weight or not, or wealth or productivity. I walked out of a Mobile Health Conference once because I was so disgusted by the parade of thin speakers who were talking about how awful fat people are. But it comes up in article titles too--many of the proposals I see are framed as a chance to fix you. I politely talk them into a different framing.

So those are three things our industry does to unintentionally make people feel bad about themselves.

> there are a couple of hidden things that contribute to you feeling self-critical that aren't your fault.

This is the start of 100s of self-help books. Mainly, IMHO, because it's such an attractive pitch, not because it carries any truth.

Are you saying self-help books criticize you because they think it's in their business interest?

Authors may try that. But thankfully, you feeling bad isn't actually good for their business.

All of my data on headlines in my publication says the articles always do better if they are framed in the positive rather than in the negative. I'm constantly telling authors not to say they're out to fix you... rather we're here to help you achieve some positive fantasy of who you could become. Almost any topic could be framed either way. "Stop procrastinating vs. The secret of intense focus."

And I've deconstructed a number of top self help books (Tony Robbins, Quit Smoking the Easy Way, Tim Ferriss). They all use a structure of inspiration and social proof to convince you that the change is possible.

Maybe my favorite example book structure is a book about waking up early called The Miracle Morning. The entire first half of the book is a sales pitch for the advice that comes in the second half of the book. At first I thought it was funny that I was half way through the book and I still had no idea what the steps of the Miracle Morning were. But that sales pitch had wormed its way into my subconscious and that made following the steps a lot easier.

All those authors used positive framings and avoided any negativity other than to acknowledge how you might be feeling about yourself when you decided to buy their book.

I enjoyed reading your comment, but I think the GP meant that many self-help books start by saying "if you feel self-critical, it's actually not your fault".

Oh. I still read it the other way. This is the phrase that I honed in on: "not because it carries any truth."

In any case, thanks for the nice note. I'm pretty sure nobody is monitoring this thread anymore.

If the self-help content you consume in order to improve yourself makes you feel worse about yourself you consume the wrong content... It's almost like saying that food in general is harmful because the fast-food you eat makes you fat.

You will notice over time how Stoicism is actually philosophy, it grows on and with you through the years. I know you did not mean it deeply but it is not self-help, no need to leave it behind after you finish your readings; and it's okay if you see it as self-help too though, no dead classical greek dude will come after you to question it :-)

It seems like most people come to this sort of thing to improve their lives. If your life is already fine, learning for the sake of learning is great. Most people whose lives need changing are stuck in habits and, speaking from experience, learning can come to replace the time spent on bad habits.

Which seems great, but it never gets applied, and your life continues to have the problems you set out to solve. It's easy to get stuck in a loop: If I just click through to this one article, maybe it'll have the answers...

Personally, I had a breakthrough in the last few weeks when I did the following:

* Instructed Firefox to not save history. Not being able to immediately jump to my go-to distractions with two keystrokes helped break the cycle, and not having sites in history adds just enough friction to keep me away. I also make heavy use of reader mode. This means I'm better able to focus on what I do end up reading.

* Switched to Microsoft Launcher, removed the Bing box, and installed DuckDuckGo. Stories disabled (they're getting rid of it soon anyway), JavaScript disabled. The abundance of sites that completely fail without JavaScript is a great habit breaker.

* Stopped saving articles to Pocket. Now I decide in the first paragraph if it's worth reading now, which is different from deciding whether it's worth reading. Farnam Street (https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/) has been tremendously helpful here because it's almost all good. Still, it's easy to get stuck in a loop reading it. Too much of a great thing is just as bad as too much of a good thing. If I were advising myself four weeks ago, I would suggest reading only the 10,000 or so words of their page on mental models: https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/mental-models/

* Started using Thunderbird's feed reader. It's more tedious to manage feeds, which keeps me from piling every new site I find on to it.

* Mindfulness meditation. I'm not very practiced at it, but saying (in my head) "break the cycle" while focusing on my head helps a bit.

* I make extensive use of Evernote's Windows 10 app. It's fast, and having a place to put ideas I have and read saved stuff keeps me away from the browser. This is one thing I want to have as fast as possible. The longer it takes to access the system and structure my ideas go into, the less likely I'll do it, and the less likely the thought will survive long enough to record.

Basically, I choose my frictions. I put orange cones around the stuff I want to avoid and try my best to clear the way to things that keep me moving forward.

There's a lot of very bad pop-sci books on this topic. Do you mind sharing the ones you read and recommend?

It's not "self help", but anything by Alan Watts will help you think of "self" in a very different way.

And again, not self-help, but I love recommending Shop Class as Soulcraft, by Matthew B Crawford, for reconsidering your relationship with work and finding joy in your career. The full book is worth reading, but this essay link gets the gist of it.

https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shop-class-as-so...

I'll offer a dissenting opinion on the book. I read it, enjoyed it, but thought "this should just be an essay". Then I found the essay and feel it communicates the essential point.

I mostly stopped reading non-fiction books because of this. You have to wrestle through seven chapters of introductory bullshit because the author gets to the point, just because a blog post doesn't sell for $20.

I wish there was a culture where good essays would actually sell for $20. Something with a "perceived value per word" review score maybe.

I find the same thing even with critically acclaimed "Thinking Fast and Slow" or "Power of habit". On the other hand sometimes blogposts may not be exhaustive enough. IMO roughly 60-100 pages is the perfect format – you don't need to overly simplify the topic (like in blogpost, newspaper article) but you don't need to repeat yourself 10 times over (like in 300-400 page book).

"How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie - It's a classic in that genre. https://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/0...

Charisma on Command channel for social skills. https://www.youtube.com/user/charismaoncommand

Personally I also really like a lot of the talks from Tony Robbins when it comes to emotional intelligence and personal psychology. I listen to them on youtube while I'm cleaning fairly often. He can be a bit over the top and rambly for some people though and I do disagree with some things. But it's a good starting point on what to think about.

"Full catastrophe living" by John Kabat Zinn is pretty good.

Without doubt I would start with:

'No more Mr. nice guy' -- Robert Glover

Thanks man! I just bought this audiobook based on your recommendation and started listening to it tonight. It sounds good so far.

I've heard this book recommended a few times but your comment made me pull the trigger and buy it.

Recommending this book is somehow my way to thank the author.

While most self help books try to motivate you, this one explains with clarity why a large amount of people are stuck in life despite being smart and hard working individuals.

Very Buddhist in nature, but I've really enjoyed everything I've read from Jack Kornfield. "A Path with Heart" is a good place to start.

> trying to unlearn bad habits and learn good ones

"The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half."

- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I agree there is certain period in one's life retrospective actions and corrective measures should happen. There does cause harm to not getting out of it and put them in practice. I had such a period as well learned everything you just said above. I even thought I'm somewhat enlightened, but when I put myself in test, I have failed. Then again, failure is still part of corrective actions. One never stops learning and self improving.

There is no such thing as self help. It's what you do, outside information can only be a guide. And the only way to truly change is to put yourself in a new situation with responsibilities, and allowing yourself to fail till you get it right.

Also the only difference between an extrovert and introvert is when they empathize with themselves. And the problem with the "introverted approach," is you are thinking about who you think you are versus through the eyes of those around you. None of you will ever have all the infromation as to who you are. Instead shift your focus on how to help move the conversation between people subjects and shared experiences, instead of question response, etc... Hard to do that when your concerned about your internals mind, when that is only a vapid simulation of who you think you are.

> There is no such thing as self help.

I think you're being overly pedantic and semantic here.

> It's what you do, outside information can only be a guide. And the only way to truly change is to put yourself in a new situation with responsibilities, and allowing yourself to fail till you get it right.

I don't think they're saying that the outside information is anything more than a guide. Many self-help books encourage just that - to put yourself in new situations, however newly equipped with tools to better work through the new situation. And of course those tools only become your own once you fully live through them, but I think it's a poor criticism to say that self-help books aren't useful or helpful. In that regard no book that aims to share knowledge is helpful. E.g. you should learn to program entirely on your own then, with no books or guides.

You can save time by learning from the mistakes of others. I see no point in failing myself if I can do it right the first time by relying on expert guidance. For some things I do a single major mistake could leave me crippled or dead.

>You can save time by learning from the mistakes of others.

Only barely. For important life decisions/paths, people only learn from their own mistakes (and often not even from those).

Heck, Computer Science as a field itself forgets its own collected wisdom every new generation hits the market, and re-invents BS that other eras have tried and buried with another fad name.

What's even worse, those "self-help" books are full of contradictory, snake-oily, and plain wrong information, and can even put people on BS priorities and give them a false sense of what it means to be happy/successful etc. Which is one reason people reading those books keep reading those books and going to those seminars -- they're not meant to get you somewhere, but to keep those believing them hooked forever.

There are exceptions, sure. But not 100.000 exceptions, and there are more than 100.000 such crap works.

>>You can save time by learning from the mistakes of others.

>Only barely. For important life decisions/paths, people only learn from their own mistakes (and often not even from those).

>Heck, Computer Science as a field itself forgets its own collected wisdom every new generation hits the market, and re-invents BS that other eras have tried and buried with another fad name.

Your last statement sounds like it's in favor of "learning from the mistakes of others" in that we could avoid re-inventing failed "BS" if we learned from others' mistakes. Are you saying that the idea that folks in CS re-invent work which has previously failed is evidence that it is not possible to learn from the mistakes of others?

>Are you saying that the idea that folks in CS re-invent work which has previously failed is evidence that it is not possible to learn from the mistakes of others?

No, I'm not dealing in absolutes ("not possible").

I'm merely saying that the reality that "folks in CS re-invent work which has previously failed" is supportive argument in how people in general don't learn from other's mistakes.

Of course it IS possible. It's just that it's rare.

Speak for yourself. I have certainly learned enough from the mistakes of others to avoid many major mistakes in both life decisions and computer science.

> Heck, Computer Science as a field itself forgets its own collected wisdom every new generation hits the market, and re-invents BS that other eras have tried and buried with another fad name.

But how many of those people who are re-inventing what other eras tried already were aware of what those inventions were? That is, my point is that most often what is re-created is because the re-creators weren't aware of the past.

A therapist can really help in this area as well.

Couldn't agree more. The biggest difference between therapy and your regular doctor is that you get an hour with your therapist - so if you have specific problems or goals, you can get a lot of time with them to chew on those issues. Whether you find a solution or not, you leave therapy feeling like you've made progress, which is vital for emotional health.

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