So... now we have an article that helps you read the books that help you...
It's just guides all the way down...
How to Read Self-Help
21–30 of 45 posts
Re: How to Read Self-Help
#22My main objection to these types of books is how overly verbose they tend to be. With a few exceptions, this category of book is built around a nucleus of few possibly valuable pearls of wisdom , and then 300 pages of filler is added. Usually lots of anecdotes ("Let me tell you about my friend Alice..."), checklists, and needless exposition. If this really is wisdom , it does not follow that it takes 300 pages to com…
There are I think two important factors at play here:
1) A lot of the 'filler' isn't filler at all, but the process of communicating ideas in ways that work for many different people (since we don't all process information the same way).
2) More validly, the publishing industry doesn't really have a workable model for a 100 page book. The effort to put this out is not 1/3 of a 300 page book.
Would you buy the 87 page version for, say a 20% discount?
Re: How to Read Self-Help
#23I recognized only one book from his initial list: Quiet by Susan Cain. It's a good book. It is not, nor does it claim to be, a self-help book.
The same can be said of Gladwell's books.
There's a bit of strawman stuff going on in the article.
Re: How to Read Self-Help
#24My main objection to these types of books is how overly verbose they tend to be. With a few exceptions, this category of book is built around a nucleus of few possibly valuable pearls of wisdom , and then 300 pages of filler is added. Usually lots of anecdotes ("Let me tell you about my friend Alice..."), checklists, and needless exposition. If this really is wisdom , it does not follow that it takes 300 pages to com…
This is true of almost all business books as well. Typically they are a brief paper or even a single drawing ("crossing the chasm" is a single insightful drawing). Unfortunately a four-page (or one-page!) book wouldn't sell particularly well. So like washing powder they are expanded with inert fillers.
> "crossing the chasm" is a single insightful drawing
Funny, I recently read that book and have about four A4 pages of notes.
Re: How to Read Self-Help
#25My main objection to these types of books is how overly verbose they tend to be. With a few exceptions, this category of book is built around a nucleus of few possibly valuable pearls of wisdom , and then 300 pages of filler is added. Usually lots of anecdotes ("Let me tell you about my friend Alice..."), checklists, and needless exposition. If this really is wisdom , it does not follow that it takes 300 pages to com…
Could it be that longer books are almost a natural spaced repetition system for ingesting content?
While I agree many 300-page books can be compressed into 10-20 pages of high density summary, I can't help but wonder if the length of a book almost ensures we spend a minimum length of time playing with/thinking about/considering the idea being presented. And that for certain books, the typical time it would take to read through 10-20 pages wouldn't be enough to really let the ideas sink in.
In other words, when I take a 300-page book (or a 10-hour audiobook) and spread it out over 7 or so days, I'm going to spend a lot more time thinking about it (each reading/listening session + some length of time after each session) compared with if I read a highly-condensed blog post and was done with it. Unless I took the initiative and made flash cards or something to review it later on - which I am not in a habit of doing.
Re: How to Read Self-Help
#26My main objection to these types of books is how overly verbose they tend to be. With a few exceptions, this category of book is built around a nucleus of few possibly valuable pearls of wisdom , and then 300 pages of filler is added. Usually lots of anecdotes ("Let me tell you about my friend Alice..."), checklists, and needless exposition. If this really is wisdom , it does not follow that it takes 300 pages to com…
Could it be that longer books are almost a natural spaced repetition system for ingesting content? While I agree many 300-page books can be compressed into 10-20 pages of high density summary, I can't help but wonder if the length of a book almost ensures we spend a minimum length of time playing with/thinking about/considering the idea being presented. And that for certain books, the typical time it would take to re…
>Could it be that longer books are almost a natural spaced repetition system for ingesting content?
I might buy the 'fiber' argument as it were, if it weren't for literature's existing power to convey in compact form already.
Aesop seems miles ahead of the modern self-help crowd here; if anything, there's something about couching information in metaphor that makes it particularly satisfying to digest, which is why we can teach children about boys who cry wolf with more efficacy than simply preaching honesty - which children put to more credible use in examining their teachers' hypocrisy.
Re: How to Read Self-Help
#27My main objection to these types of books is how overly verbose they tend to be. With a few exceptions, this category of book is built around a nucleus of few possibly valuable pearls of wisdom , and then 300 pages of filler is added. Usually lots of anecdotes ("Let me tell you about my friend Alice..."), checklists, and needless exposition. If this really is wisdom , it does not follow that it takes 300 pages to com…
An interesting exercise is to have a sample of readers summarizing a self-help book in 4 pages or less, and see how these pearls of wisdom overlap.
My hypothesis is that people would highlight different things, based on their own present level of wisdom so to speak.
Put it in a different way, the challenge with books as the medium for self-help is that it doesn't adapt to the varying levels of wisdom if its audience.
Re: How to Read Self-Help
#28My main objection to these types of books is how overly verbose they tend to be. With a few exceptions, this category of book is built around a nucleus of few possibly valuable pearls of wisdom , and then 300 pages of filler is added. Usually lots of anecdotes ("Let me tell you about my friend Alice..."), checklists, and needless exposition. If this really is wisdom , it does not follow that it takes 300 pages to com…
I have a couple of books that are something between self-help and neuroscience/psychology that I can recommend. They are a more scientific and evidence-based lens on many of the same themes as self-help books (resilience, confidence, acceptance, etc), and they contain concrete exercises and summaries. They might appeal to people who are allergic to woo: - Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love,…
Mindsight by Dan Siegel is one I would recommend too
Re: How to Read Self-Help
#29My main objection to these types of books is how overly verbose they tend to be. With a few exceptions, this category of book is built around a nucleus of few possibly valuable pearls of wisdom , and then 300 pages of filler is added. Usually lots of anecdotes ("Let me tell you about my friend Alice..."), checklists, and needless exposition. If this really is wisdom , it does not follow that it takes 300 pages to com…
There are I think two important factors at play here: 1) A lot of the 'filler' isn't filler at all, but the process of communicating ideas in ways that work for many different people (since we don't all process information the same way). 2) More validly, the publishing industry doesn't really have a workable model for a 100 page book. The effort to put this out is not 1/3 of a 300 page book. Would you buy the 87 page…
I'd pay full price if the information was valuable. This is what's missing here, having to scour 300 pages for what amounts to a handful of insights.
You could make the argument that a 'top 10' bulleted list misses the scaffolding or structure to adequately argue/justify those points, but at least the ideation of self-help is the 'secret' which is non-intuitive, that we are paying for being distilled to truths and actionables.
Re: How to Read Self-Help
#30My main objection to these types of books is how overly verbose they tend to be. With a few exceptions, this category of book is built around a nucleus of few possibly valuable pearls of wisdom , and then 300 pages of filler is added. Usually lots of anecdotes ("Let me tell you about my friend Alice..."), checklists, and needless exposition. If this really is wisdom , it does not follow that it takes 300 pages to com…
> If this really is wisdom, it does not follow that it takes 300 pages to communicate. There's not a big market for 10 page books. A lot of business books suffer from the same issue. There's some genuinely interesting or innovative idea, but you could explain it to a bright audience in about 10 pages. So you fluff up everything in order to have a book you can sell.
There was just something on HN about how you have to be a seasoned experienced expert before you're allowed to talk in simple terms to people, otherwise you're socially expected to couch in jargon and terminology ideas.
Dressing up ideas in purple might be a social signal necessity but it's unfortunate.