Self-Development books rarely work

The past few years, I have been binge-reading various self-help books, from “The 7 habits of highly effective people” to “Atomic Habits” and just almost most famous books out there, I probably either read it or it is on my very long “to-be read” list. I was obsessed with the idea of perfecting myself, getting all the best habits out there and just be a productive person 24/7, while I am still a flawed human in many aspects and would probably call myself a lazy-ish person. I have some decent habits, such as exercising almost every day, reading lots of books, journaling, and so on.

Regardless of my decent habits, I was determined to change myself. I would read and see other people being a productivity machine and I wanted to be just like them. I think we all searched at some point “Bill Gates daily routine”, no? just me? fine.

Self-help books were the obvious source for me, and I would dive from one self-help book to another and would get inspired, motivated and just had short-term productivity burst, which would last me just 5 days max anddddd back to reading another self-development book, which would make me believe that “THIS one is going to be a life altering one! THIS is the book that is going to change my life FOREVER!”. The reality was none of them stuck with me more than a month, I would fall into my old lifestyle and with the same dream of being a productivity machine.

So “do self-development books work?”. This is one of the grey zone answers, which is depends, but honestly no. Are you disappointed in it? Probably. Hear me out.

Self-development books are great source of inspiration, motivation and information. You probably can find self-help books for everything, even for making your bed and how it is important. Yes, I read a book about it, so what? I was not seeing any purpose of making my bed, until I read “Make your bed: little things that can change your life and maybe the world” by William H. McRaven.

While I was binge-reading self-help books, my habits mostly remained the same. Especially after I read a book how waking up at 4am is so good and was very motivated and would wake up at 5:30am for 2 weeks, with the goal in mind of waking up at 4am later on and breaking news that did not last long. I went back to waking up at 6–7am and I have no intention of waking up at 4am any time soon.

I have friends who also read various self-help books and I silently observed their habits, and was wondering if those books just don’t work on me, but I just saw that nothing would change in my friends lives as well. At some point, I thought “okay, self-help books are scum! They just do not work for long-term”, but the issue is us, the readers.

I would try one habit after another, schedules that are not meant for me, I was trying to copy someone else’s lifestyle without considering what are my needs, what do I lack, I was not asking the right questions and was seeking the wrong answers.

We read self-help books when we are desperate of change and we think “this is the book that will change my life forever!” and read it, motivation lasts for 2 weeks or a month and we see ourselves back to our old habits, and then we find another book that is claimed to have changed millions of lives and you read that as well and it becomes a cycle of some sort of weird addiction for self-help books.

We should not be passive consumers of self-help books, we need to take action and implement the right tool for our problems and it is a journey and, to be honest, I do not think you should read more than 1 self-help book per month or even less, because there is no way we can fully use the information that is given to us and unlike the other genre of books, I believe that the self-help book needs to be consumed slowly, with note-taking process and if you see a habit that aligns with your lifestyle, try it right away for 2 months (21 days is not enough, trust me, that I have learned from various self-help books), while re-reading the parts of that book.

The only time that I was able to change a habit was when I knew exactly what needed to be changed and I knew exactly what information I had to seek, I considered my circumstances and my personality and just used the book not as motivation, but as a tool.

While I have not done an extensive research on this, and can just conclude from my own experience, self-help books rarely, if ever, work. The only motivation you need is within you, if you have run out of petroleum, no matter how much Tony Robbins or Gary Vaynerchuk will scream at your face that “you can do it!”, you won’t, because you need to figure why the energy and drive once you had has run out and then once you have that sorted out, you can use those self-help books to push you a bit.

Still, I am going to read those books, because I like knowing about other people’s habits and routines, and use them as inspiration, but I stopped telling myself that the book is going to change me, because it never did and I do not think they do much.

Let me know what you think about self-help books.

Happy reading!

Lilly