
Some popular self help books - imshashank
https://dailyjag.com/literature/read-these-self-help-books-and-make-most-of-our-this-downtime/
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caymanjim
Site is hugged to death, but as usual I won't let that stop me from
commenting.

I don't think many lives are changed by self-help books. People who are
actively trying to change their lives often read self-help books, and then
misattribute any positive result to the book. Then they recommend the book to
others, and it's either mindless blather, or common-sense tropes wrapped in a
bow, or something that reinforces a decision they've already made. Someone
decides they need to focus on something, and then reads a book about it while
they're focused on it. They already changed their life before they read the
book, by making the decision to change.

No one is changed by a religious text if they are already a religious person
who largely agrees with the philosophy. No one changes their diet if they
haven't already made a decision to eat healthier. No one GETS.RICH.QUICK if
they weren't already entrepreneurial.

Yeah, maybe these books impacted people in some way. But they were already 99%
of the way there. Recommending them to someone who isn't also 99% of the way
there isn't going to change a thing.

The older I get the more obvious it is that there are no new ideas, there's
just new branding.

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caymanjim
Now that I can see the site, these are all books by people who through a
combination of luck, timing, skill, and work managed to get rich. Now they
think they figured out something others didn't. No, they were well-positioned
--largely through the circumstances of their birth--got lucky, and then had
the skill to take advantage of the combination. Now they think they discovered
something. They didn't, and they actually have no awareness of how they ended
up where they are.

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spiderfarmer
And the things they did learn can all be boiled down to a blog article.
Instead they fleshing out simple ideas to 100 pages of examples and
repetition.

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SirensOfTitan
I've only read three self-help books that have dramatically changed my
thinking:

* How To Develop Your Thinking Ability by Ken Keyes Jr. It's out of print now, but easy to find a copy. It condenses down a lot of Alfred Korzybski's General Semantics into an easy to digest format.

* The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey. Also quite an old book, mentions a lot of similar ideas to Psychocybernetics (essentially the queen or king of all self-help books: most other ones just re-iterate the ideas in this one). It discusses how the thinking mind gets in the way of true excellence. I started reading it largely to consider how I was keeping myself from entering into meditative jhana.

* Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson. While certainly filled with some questionable ideas, this absolutely broke my neat model of objective reality into tiny little pieces in high school. It set off a journey of self-exploration.

While some of the books in this list are good, everyone in silicon valley
talks about a lot of those books nonstop. You'll understand the language SV
folks use to talk about ideas, but you won't offer much else in the way of a
unique perspective. A journey of reading needs to be self-lead.

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kranner
> I started reading it largely to consider how I was keeping myself from
> entering into meditative jhana.

Can you elaborate on this please? I've read The Inner Game of Tennis and I'm
familiar with the (samatha) jhanas (and somewhat experienced as well). Do you
mean something like convincing Self 1 to relax enough and trusting Self 2 to
take you into the first jhana, etc?

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SirensOfTitan
> Do you mean something like convincing Self 1 to relax enough and trusting
> Self 2 to take you into the first jhana?

Yeah, pretty much. It primed me to pay a lot more attention to the judging
mind particularly during sits (and really made me aware how much doubt as a
hindrance disrupts my practice). While retrospectively it’s sort of obvious, I
mainly have learned meditation through reading, so if an instruction isn’t
phrased the right way I’ve noticed I miss it.

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kranner
Thanks. I similarly came up with a heuristic after reading Tor Nørretranders’
book The User Illusion. I remind myself that there is some part of my brain
already paying attention constantly to the breath at the tip of the nose (or
whatever the current meditation object is) because if a noxious stimulus
presented there I would certainly become consciously aware of it. So all I
have to do is ‘tune in’ to that part of my awareness. This works pretty well
for me, and not surprisingly many meditation instructions use this metaphor of
tuning a radio, but it didn’t make as much sense before I began to think of it
in this way. I have also learned meditation mainly from reading.

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SirensOfTitan
Ah that’s a wonderful heuristic, I’ll try next time I sit. Thanks for sharing.
:)

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komali2
If y'all gonna hop in this thread with your favorite book it may be more
convincing to write something more than just "it changed my life." Apparently
Buddhism, stoicism, and the Rust programming language are all equally capable
of changing a hackernews poster's life?

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camjohnson26
Every book I ever read technically changed my life

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silveira
There were books that changed my life so little that I read them a second time
because I forgot I read them the first time.

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miguendes
The millionaire fastlane by MJ de Marco dispite its cliché title is by far one
of the best books I've ever read. It shows what it takes to make money by
solving other people's problems in a no BS manner.

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mlthoughts2018
That book is total bs, probably the worst offender on the list. It’s nothing
but just-so anecdotes written by someone who (a) got outrageously lucky and
(b) benefits hugely from white privilege.

“Self-made millionaire” is not a thing. If you start from a premise that
believes this is a possible concept, you’re just self-deluded selling snake
oil.

The Millionaire Fastlane is the same old scam as the rest of them. Its self-
aggrandizing author can believe he knows some psychological focus principles
that unlock chances of wealth, but it’s just ego/narcissism. He just got
lucky, in a cosmic sense (being born white in modern America) and in specific
business opportunities. For every one MJ Demarco there are a million people
with same mindset, same grit, same determination, same talent, same attitude
etc who got nothing. It’s all just plinko.

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UK-Al05
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias)

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asimovfan
I recommend the Satipatthana Sutta by the Buddha. It will change your life if
you do what it says. Sad I hadn't heard of it 20 years before.

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komali2
How did it change your life? What did it say you should do? How would your
last 20 years been different if you had read it earlier?

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qntty
It's the oldest text on mindfulness meditation in the buddhist tradition. In
all likelihood, they didn't just read it and follow the instructions, as
interpreting it's meaning from scratch is the life's work of a buddhist
scholar. It doesn't include any of the buddhist moral teaching ("have goodwill
towards others") so most likely OP meant that meditation had a positive effect
on their life.

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pivic
These are not self-help books; they're mainly books on trying to get rich.

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taneq
Doesn't getting rich help you?

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spiderfarmer
Not everyone, not all of the time. And getting rich always costs something you
might not be willing to give up.

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taneq
You're holding money to a far higher standard (everyone? all the time?) than
any of these self-help techniques are held to. I suspect that's because you
know it works better.

If someone is reading 'books on how to get rich' then they're not looking to
get mega-yacht wealthy. They're looking for financial security.

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bryogenic
A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

by William Braxton Irvine

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marcrosoft
This book is on my night stand I try to read it a couple times a year. I feel
like you can’t just read it once. You have to be reminded of its principals
constantly.

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orasis
I’m glad to see Millionaire Fastlane at the top of the list. I make money
effortlessly in large part due to the mindset of value creation that this book
talks about.

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brightball
I’m curious if it’s relatable to Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

That changed the way I thought about money very early on by focusing on
defining assets purely as things that generate money for you and not “things
you own.”

Ex. Your house is not an asset, a house that you rent to a tenant is, etc.

The goal of the book was to reiterate the idea that creating income generating
assets will allow you to exit the workforce. No other type of asset defined by
other terms would do so.

It had a big focus on real estate or investing in small stable, we’ll
establish business models like gas stations, etc but in our field it could
easily apply to stable side projects too.

Very cash flow oriented.

~~~
orasis
It’s really nothing like that. It’s a short enough book so just read it.

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sradman
Cloudflare is reporting a 502 Bad Gateway (for me). The article is available
at The Internet Archive [1].

[1]
[http://web.archive.org/web/20200712144005/https://dailyjag.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20200712144005/https://dailyjag.com/literature/read-
these-self-help-books-and-make-most-of-our-this-downtime/)

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komali2
On "When":

> This book explores scientific facts that imply that the impact of the
> decision taken is dependent on their timing.

I'm skeptical whenever a self help book talks about "scientific facts" as it
relates to psychological research. Especially lately as a lot of psychology
experiments are undergoing a crisis of reproducibility. I recall some oft-
repeated idea that we have a limited willpower gas tank that is depleted by
every decision we make in a day, which was based on a cookie experiment that I
read was recently reproduced to show an opposite result.

In any case the use of the word "fact" seems strong but perhaps the book
addresses this.

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starpilot
I would watch [https://youtu.be/dmLTLkCBSN8](https://youtu.be/dmLTLkCBSN8) for
a contrary view. These books are brain crack and rarely lead to any
significant life changes.

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outoftheabyss
This is a well put together video but I wouldn't take as drastic a view. I
believe we have something to learn from everyone, it's just knowing what will
work for you and what won't while being careful of not entering that cultish
mindset. Everything in moderation.

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Balgair
_Range_ is not a self-help book.

Sure, it's thesis is practicable and generalizable, but it's more of a pop-
psych book.

That said, I'd recommend _Range_ as a great book to read on a flight or at the
beach (whenever those return). The thesis is pretty easy to grok. The chapters
that give examples towards the thesis are entertaining and memorable. The
section on the orphan musical geniuses is very good.

It's a great book, just not self-help.

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ChrisMarshallNY
Dan Pink is fairly good. I enjoyed _A Whole New Mind._

In it, he set out a fairly useful exercise for me, called "The mini-saga" (I
don't think he originated the idea).

The goal is to write a story in _exactly_ fifty words (not characters).

It was an enjoyable exercise.

I always like the story that was attributed to Hemingway, that the shortest
story ever told was _" For sale, baby shoes, never worn."_

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imshashank
So everyone, that is my personal list. I have read every single one of these
books and have only shared them since I find them really helpful.

P.S. I chose a really bad day to move plugins, update site etc and that's why
some of you were seeing the 502 errors. Sorry about that.

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del_operator
I don’t know how much self help it might be considered, but reading about
reinforcement learning was quite a valuable perspective. Now I reflect a bit
more on my own value functions and how I can possibly communicate them
effectively.

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fortran77
I like "The Rust Programming Language" by Steve Kablink. It really changed my
life. And it's free. (We should put this book in hotel rooms.)

[https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/](https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/)

Also

> Continual upskilling is critical for accelerating your career progression.
> However, the time constraint that corporate employment entail tends to spare
> limited time for you to improve your skillset.

Who writes like this? "Upskilling?" C'mon

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gmargaritis
In what way did it change your life ?

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fortran77
Realizing that the programming language and compiler can take care of many of
the bugs and problems that plague programmers.

~~~
komali2
I don't really feel like this falls under the "self help" category of books,
which imo are more generalist.

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cjfd
I like 'getting things done'.

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orasis
I liked it when I first read it 20 years ago, but it also invisibility
promotes a fear based perfectionism.

The path of getting things done leads to nowhere.

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cjfd
This may be the case for you but these kind of things are very much dependent
on the person.

One thing is to accept that not all items on various lists will be finished.
The book explicitly says this is the case and recommends to remove items if
they have not been done after a few weeks. If one can do this without much or
any negative emotion I do not see this downside.

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hlava
so how successful are you if you read all theese books? 3 commas successful?

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braythwayt
I’m happy, healthy, loved, and have a full belly.

Would you like a list of the self-help books that got me to my three commas?

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throwawaybab323
The cancer of the internet the "self help" guides and gurus

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throwayws
The first step: become somebody else. That's the only step though. If you
can't do that then don't get your hopes up to adapt the mindset.

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