Help yourself with these three books
Some people say the world’s first self-help book was the Bible. Others point to a much more recent tome: a book titled, simply, “Self-Help” by Samuel Smiles. It was published in Britain in 1859, the same year as Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of the Species.” Unsurprisingly, “Self-Help” was more popular among readers than Darwin’s theory of evolution. Darwin bought a copy of “Self-Help.”
“Self-Help,” the book, previewed self-help the genre. Smiles—has there ever been a better name for a self-help author?—Samuel Smiles told young people to “to apply themselves diligently to right pursuits” and to “rely upon their own efforts in life.”
Not all self-help authors are as committed to hard work. “The Power of Positive Thinking” has ten pieces of advice. One is, “minimize obstacles.” Another is “picture yourself succeeding.” A different author took this one step further and named his entire book simply, “Think and Grow Rich.”
The self-help genre has been phenomenally successful…at helping itself to sales and profits. About three percent of all books sold are of the self-help variety. Many of the books are just vapid, full of fluff. Many tell simple anecdotes, where the lesson is straightforward, uncomplicated by doubt, uncertainty, or nuance. Or data, for that matter: most ignore the latest rigorous research in favor of tidy stories from the author’s own personal experience. Readers love it.
But there are some genuinely useful self-help books, so here are three that defy the stereotypes and might actually help you.
The first is “Four Thousand Weeks ” by Oliver Burkeman. The title is a nod to the average human lifespan. If you live to be eighty years old, you’ll have four thousand weeks to live—a span of time that is “absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short,” according to the book.
This is a philosophical book that helps you look at your time as a scarce resource. He encourages us to try to break the habit of trying to get everything done during the day, and embrace the fact that we’ll miss out on some things—or even a lot of things.
Now that’s not a bad thing. Here’s a great way of thinking about it. The only reason that one thing is valuable is because you give up something else for it. If you accept that, then you can go about prioritizing the things you will do without the fear of missing out, or guilt. Missing out on some things is the price you pay for the things you value.
What should those things be? Burkeman argues that we should worry about doing things that we find intrinsically fulfilling. You might think that’s the same as having leisure time. But his research shows many people fill their leisure time with impossible to-do lists, as well. In other words, people import the worst aspects of their working world into their free time.
The book helps readers identify how they really want to spend their four thousand weeks without drowning in work or performative “leisure” activities that leave us more tired than when we started.
If you want to get the most out of your time at work, you have no shortage of “productivity hack” books. But instead of those, I recommend the book “Deep Work ” by Cal Newport. Cal Newport is a professor of computer science and his main thesis is that the routines of the workday stop us from doing our best. No amount of productivity hacks or tips can overcome the handicap we impose on ourselves, which is the way we organize the time in our workday. For many of us, our work lives are dominated by our email inboxes, we get distracted constantly, and we let other people set our priorities.
If you work in a profession where you need to—or should—concentrate to create great things, then “Deep Work” is a great manual for how to organize your work day so you can do your best. This isn’t about productivity shortcuts; in fact, he argues against paying too much attention to those. Instead , it’s about taking control of your working life so you can be the best at what you do.
I have one more book to recommend, which is “The Power of Habit ” by Charles Duhigg. The first section of the book is about how human habits develop. And he analyzes habits very closely. Of the three books I’m recommending to you today, this is the most anecdotal. But the stories Duhigg chooses are illustrative. And his book is backed by good research, too, about how habits work and how to create new ones.
The remainder of “The Power of Habit” is about institutional habits at companies and societies. If you don’t have time to read the whole thing, though, make sure to at least read the first part on personal habits.
Jeff’s take
I would say—and this is just my opinion—that both Cal Newport and Charles Duhigg both wrote well-researched, sound books, got extremely popular, and then they fell into the trap of so many other self-help writers, where they write several other books that just don’t ever match the quality of the original. I couldn’t get through Cal Newport’s most recent book—it was just full of tidy anecdotes pulled seemingly
at random.
So for these two authors, go to the original. The three books I’m recommending are, again, “Four Thousand Weeks” by Oliver Burkeman; “Deep Work” by Cal Newport; and “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg.
Learn English the way it’s really spoken
