> Self-help is dangerous precisely because it easily becomes self-fixation.
In my self-help journey I came across meditation which ultimately led me to altruistic-based practices. So can't relate.
> A focus on improving the self usually first requires finding problems with the self
Oh I got in there the other way around. I wanted a few things out of life socially speaking but society was blocking me somehow. So I went out to investigate why that is and then studied it all and then solved my own problem. In order to do that, I had to improve myself as I wasn't connecting well with the world. I'm much happier with how I do that nowadays.
I think it's worth it to be ok with everyone being a little bit in the same boat of wanting to self-help, then becoming enamored with buddhist ideas, then grappling with everyday being just another human. In whatever order.
I'm sure you mean well but just kinda irked me that you immediately put in the effort to "nope can't relate"
> The older I get, the more I think that self-help can be a trap. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. I say this after ~20 years of writing self-help and a lifetime of consuming it.
so, the self help didn't help and he passed the problem on his readers. Great!
Ferriss misplaces the cause. Self-help doesn't train you to find ways you're broken — it selects for people who already carry a felt deficiency. Who sleeps well doesn't Google sleep optimisation.
The more interesting question is what that deficiency actually is. I think attachment theory gives a more precise answer: the underlying sense of insufficiency is mostly relational in origin. So his pivot to relationships has real intuition behind it — but it still mistakes the symptom for the cure.
The actual trap isn't self-help as a genre. It's using any action — including optimising your relationships — to externalise rather than confront what's underneath. The distinguishing feature is direction: are you doing this to avoid discomfort or to change your relationship to it? Rumination and productivity hacks fail by the same measure for the same reason.
His buried insight — "you cannot improve suffering away" — is the most important line in the piece, treated as a footnote. That's where the real work starts: developing the capacity to sit with what you've been avoiding rather than finding a better-feeling target for the same restlessness.
It is a bit ironic: the article is monetised self-help advice warning you about self-help, while introducing fresh deficiencies along the way — everything you learned was wrong — and staying carefully at the level of framework. That's precisely the move he's critiquing: redecorating the avoidance rather than confronting it. The most useful version of this piece would be considerably less optimised and considerably more vulnerable.
Yeah, the LLM is right. Sitting down with your discomfort and letting yourself feel it, acknowledge it, even maybe dial the volume up on it a little bit, without trying to process or think through it, is the only way that works.
I enjoy self improvement, but there is something deeply therapeutic about self non - improvement.
I don't say 'self acceptance' because that's often described as a necessary precursor to changing whatever we find difficult to accept about ourselves.
Modern self-help is as much a sham as are management gurus, which is no surprise because they overlap. Who cannot recall "Start with why?" or the "7 habits of highly effective people"? They play on your insecurities and promise silver bullets. If they don't work it is because you are, of course, deficient. You need another self-help book or follow this guy on Insta. Indulging all this self-help stuff is just another form of procrastination, instead of doing it you talk and read about doing it. It's just like learning Org-mode (no offense) to be better organized instead of, you know, organizing.
My waking call was, ironically, another management book "The Management Myth" by Matthew Steward (I think), which just showed me the ridiculousness of it all.
There's definitely a procrastination trap that someone has to be aware of, but I wouldn't say all the self-help/management is a sham. Much like people who get stuck researching, there comes a point where you simply have to act. There's also value in learning how to quickly pull items out of texts that you can use right now and discarding the rest.
I liken it to jiujitsu in a way. When I first started and knew nothing, I needed a lot of instruction and of course then practice. After years of that, I can now take a simple tweak to something I've been doing for years and suddenly it's much more effective. Finding those tweaks is the challenge, while also avoiding chasing silver bullets or bouncing to new thing after new thing and never getting good at something.
Of all the self help books I have actually read, The 7 Habits is probably the one that had consistently been useful in actually navigating issues day to day.
I enjoy Tim's content and in the last couple of years he's definitely gone beyond his established "shtick". He's definitely done his own "dog-fooding", testing advice on himself and he's found some awesome people along the way.
I'm happy that he has gone beyond the "book / author of the week" format and this blog post is most welcomed.
Relationships are crucial, especially ones that help elevate yourself or, at least, keep you on a stable level instead of dragging you down.
okay this was very interesting "To continually improve yourself, you must continually locate the ways you are broken" haven't thought of it this way. Maybe I need to look into why i keep finding new books.
The "optimization" framing is where self-help tends to go wrong. Tyler Cowen has made a similar point that reading self-help books is often a form of procrastination disguised as productivity, because you're consuming meta-strategies rather than doing the actual work in whatever domain you care about.
This is something I keep thinking about: the spectrum between sainthood (selflessly hang out with the poor/uninteresting/selfish/etc) vs selfish optimization (becoming more interesting/pretty/rich/generous in order to have access to nicer people)
From my own experience, and yours might differ, I typically don't find that pretty or rich (or any other such attributes) make for more interesting and nicer. Why is it either selfless saint or egocentrism? You can do both!
I believe it’s a lifelong journey towards healthy relationships with anyone. We don’t start there, and we might never get to the finish line. That includes non-violent boundary setting; not friends with everyone, but relationship. Soft boundaries, where you neither cling on to something that was but no longer is without the need to blame self or other, nor you avoid contact with something new and unknown. To let go of the fight against personal limits and circumstances one cannot change. Not at once, and not without testing, but layer by layer.
Everybody is adventurous; each in their own way. You can invite people to your personal adventure, and be part of theirs, for as long or short as it serves the both of you.
This is actually a common statement people make with whom I feel bored. I call it the "evasive defense".
Me: "Let's fly to Paris tomorrow!"
People: "Nah, I'm fine just doing what I did the last 3650 days. I wonder how I deal with this issue I have with my boss at work. That is enough adventure for me."
Me: "Trash the job! Let's start a startup!"
People: "Nah, that is not for me. The benefit-to-work ratio at my current job is just too good."
Have you actually shown genuine interest in their adventures, or is it you who defines what is adventurous and what is not, and not see that they defend against your interests, and by that protect their own? Why do you feel the need to make decisions for them? Is it you that is unhappy about their choices, or is it them? (How did your parents react to your wishes and desires? Was your autonomy celebrated, or dismissed? Do you find yourself subordinating your own interests below those of others, and say yes to things you would rather say no to?)
“NO is always a YES to something else.” - Marshall Rosenberg
I've been to Paris often enough, no thank you. And I prefer to go with people that respect and celebrate my autonomy. I wish you a good trip though!
I'm not making decisions for anybody. You can stay at home and watch your garden grow. Fine with me. I described what type of people I like. And that those are rather the pyramid climbers.
Is it a style like his that LLMs have been copying lately?
"It was cold out, but none of us were cold."
"In that moment, there was nothing to do. Nothing to improve. Nothing to fix. It was perfect."
"We’ve all seen it. Clear as day, you can see the goal post at the top: self-actualization. LFG! It’s time to journal and 80/20 myself! Pass me a shaman and some modafinil. That’s the mission. That’s the point. Right? But hold on."
"Because at the end of the day—and at the end of a Montana night—the point was never yourself. It was never the pyramid. It was never the optimization. It was the people around the fire."
Doubtful that any one dude could influence the model to that extent, unless deliberately weighted. Then again i don't know what the hell i'm talking about.
From what i gather, openAi particular flavor of response is from reinforcement learning, these PMs are intentionally gamifying it. just today literally every reply was followed with "… want me to show you the one trick you can implement to avoid…"
When my head-voice read "But hold on", I literally heard in my head the "record scratch" associated with comedy movie trailers from the 1990s and 2000s.
This post strikes me as immature. Ask an older person like your grandfather what they think about “self help”. And ask like you believe they are wiser than you, not some doddering fool from “another time”. Look, we’re all slaves to our childhood learnings. But you can change and learn to think in a new way—in a way that’s you. Just be you.
The author is one of the biggest self-help book writers. Perhaps his self-help book sales started declining and he decided to pivot to some kind of anti-self-help genre.
In my self-help journey I came across meditation which ultimately led me to altruistic-based practices. So can't relate.
> A focus on improving the self usually first requires finding problems with the self
Oh I got in there the other way around. I wanted a few things out of life socially speaking but society was blocking me somehow. So I went out to investigate why that is and then studied it all and then solved my own problem. In order to do that, I had to improve myself as I wasn't connecting well with the world. I'm much happier with how I do that nowadays.
I think it's worth it to be ok with everyone being a little bit in the same boat of wanting to self-help, then becoming enamored with buddhist ideas, then grappling with everyday being just another human. In whatever order.
I'm sure you mean well but just kinda irked me that you immediately put in the effort to "nope can't relate"
During time of war and uncertainty, self help takes on the form of Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.
We are conditioned beings, we respond to the macro environment and dynamics.
so, the self help didn't help and he passed the problem on his readers. Great!
The more interesting question is what that deficiency actually is. I think attachment theory gives a more precise answer: the underlying sense of insufficiency is mostly relational in origin. So his pivot to relationships has real intuition behind it — but it still mistakes the symptom for the cure.
The actual trap isn't self-help as a genre. It's using any action — including optimising your relationships — to externalise rather than confront what's underneath. The distinguishing feature is direction: are you doing this to avoid discomfort or to change your relationship to it? Rumination and productivity hacks fail by the same measure for the same reason.
His buried insight — "you cannot improve suffering away" — is the most important line in the piece, treated as a footnote. That's where the real work starts: developing the capacity to sit with what you've been avoiding rather than finding a better-feeling target for the same restlessness.
It is a bit ironic: the article is monetised self-help advice warning you about self-help, while introducing fresh deficiencies along the way — everything you learned was wrong — and staying carefully at the level of framework. That's precisely the move he's critiquing: redecorating the avoidance rather than confronting it. The most useful version of this piece would be considerably less optimised and considerably more vulnerable.
I don't say 'self acceptance' because that's often described as a necessary precursor to changing whatever we find difficult to accept about ourselves.
Good point! I wish I wrote that, haha.
love it.
existing
My waking call was, ironically, another management book "The Management Myth" by Matthew Steward (I think), which just showed me the ridiculousness of it all.
I liken it to jiujitsu in a way. When I first started and knew nothing, I needed a lot of instruction and of course then practice. After years of that, I can now take a simple tweak to something I've been doing for years and suddenly it's much more effective. Finding those tweaks is the challenge, while also avoiding chasing silver bullets or bouncing to new thing after new thing and never getting good at something.
And I read it probably closer to two decades ago.
I'm happy that he has gone beyond the "book / author of the week" format and this blog post is most welcomed.
Relationships are crucial, especially ones that help elevate yourself or, at least, keep you on a stable level instead of dragging you down.
Self-help has never helped anyone. If it did, there wouldn’t be a massive industry waiting to prey on the people who are desperate for help.
> It was never the pyramid.
> It was never the optimization.
> It was the people around the fire.
Maybe I have to climb Maslow’s pyramid to be compatible with those?
Everybody is adventurous; each in their own way. You can invite people to your personal adventure, and be part of theirs, for as long or short as it serves the both of you.
Me: "Let's fly to Paris tomorrow!"
People: "Nah, I'm fine just doing what I did the last 3650 days. I wonder how I deal with this issue I have with my boss at work. That is enough adventure for me."
Me: "Trash the job! Let's start a startup!"
People: "Nah, that is not for me. The benefit-to-work ratio at my current job is just too good."
"It was cold out, but none of us were cold."
"In that moment, there was nothing to do. Nothing to improve. Nothing to fix. It was perfect."
"We’ve all seen it. Clear as day, you can see the goal post at the top: self-actualization. LFG! It’s time to journal and 80/20 myself! Pass me a shaman and some modafinil. That’s the mission. That’s the point. Right? But hold on."
"Because at the end of the day—and at the end of a Montana night—the point was never yourself. It was never the pyramid. It was never the optimization. It was the people around the fire."
very different from actually good writing, as in literature. art.
Nothing against Mr. Ferris, just very clearly happen to come across these "i'm trying really hard at good writing" styles in influencer type blogs.
I am not suggesting that this isn't his writing.
What I was wondering was whether these are the elements of style that LLMs have picked up.
From what i gather, openAi particular flavor of response is from reinforcement learning, these PMs are intentionally gamifying it. just today literally every reply was followed with "… want me to show you the one trick you can implement to avoid…"
was gross.