Confessions of a former self-help book addict

I became mildly addicted to self-help books in my early forties.  I was in a comfortable, interesting, occasionally exciting job, but I didn’t want to spend the rest of my working life doing it.

As I made the transition from being a producer to management, and having seen just how inept most colleagues who had gone that route before me turned out to be in their new roles, I grabbed every bit of help going – I went on training courses, hired a management coach (Peter Burden, who was brilliant), and started buying the sort of books I wouldn’t formerly have read if you’d held a gun to my head. 

Hanging around the sections of bookshops I had previously thought should be labeled “Sad Losers”, “Get A Life”, or “Pseudo-Philosophy for Gullible People” meant swallowing some pride – but I’d got proficient at that working in TV News.

It was immediately apparent that many Self Help authors are flagrant mountebanks, exploiting confused people by shouting violent slogans at them. But I soon learned to recognize these unpleasant charlatans from their bullying book titles: Learn to Knee Life in the Nuts!, Stop Being a Wuss – Grab It Now!, Hey Doormat – Man Up!

Then there were the ones that could only have been written by the chemically coshed: Let Your Soul Shine Like a Sunbeam, How to Release Your Inner Mongoose. 

Then there were the ones evidently not aimed at people like me: Women Who Run With Hyenas, or Just Too Nice: A Guide for the Tender-Hearted.

Anything involving a Spirit Guide or spending time in a desert taking drugs was generally to be avoided, as was anything sporting a picture of a huge-jawed American with masses of blindingly white teeth, or of a boring-looking besuited bald bloke heralded on the jacket as “Legendary Engulf & Devour CEO”. 

Finally, I learned to avoid anything that sounded too easy: Neuro-Linguistic Programming, with its insistence that using upbeat, positive words will help you achieve a state of positive upbeatness, struck me as vaguely sinister.

But in amongst all this terrible tosh, there were some gems, and it would make me proud to share their wonderfulness with you today (sorry – the prose style is catching).

I found Stephen Covey’s 1989 mega-seller, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, revelatory (no, honestly!). Steve’s an immensely tall bald old Mormon gentleman who admits that he’s offering nothing new: simply restating principles that have been stated many times over the past 2,500 years. Without referring back to the book, or my notes from the course I attended, I can still remember exactly what stood out: don’t over-promise (you will ainevitably rue the day); seek to discover what the person you’re negotiating with actually wants (it may not be what they say they want); know exactly what you’re trying to achieve from the outset (or you’ll wind up achieving nothing); and always try to come up with a solution that allows both sides to feel they’ve won (because the chances of a successful conclusion are increased exponentially).

I know all this sounds positively simple-minded, but all I can say is that it worked for me.

A bit later, I came across the 1990 work, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced: Me-hi Chick-sent-me-high-ee, by the way), it struck a definite chord. Much of modern life consists of trying to get a host of things done at the same time: i.e. simultaneous multi-tasking. But skimming over the surface of multiple tasks is thoroughly enervating. Contentment arises from what Mike (it’s easier, as he himself acknowledges) calls “flow”. Very roughly, “flow” results from being totally immersed in an activity. In that state, our consciousness is at its most ordered, and it’s when our consciousness is at it most ordered that we feel calmest. It’s when we forget about ourselves – our egos – that we are at our happiest. It’s when we are not immersed in what we are doing – when we’re distracted, not fully engaged – that we’re dissatisfied. It’s the level of engagement, not the level of achievement, that makes us happy. (All the above is a wild paraphrase, of course – I’m not sure how much of this Me-hi would agree with.)

Of course, this principle applies to every aspect of our lives. What constitutes a flow activity for different people will vary enormously – for me, it includes writing (just about anything), making music, exploring a new city – or reading a book as well-written and absorbing as “Flow”. 

Again, this sounds simple to the point of dumbness – but it worked for me.  

Richard Koch’s 1997 bestseller, The 80/20 Principle represents the other side of the “Flow” coin – it’s all about the relative effectiveness of our activities, as opposed to the degree of satisfaction they yield.

In brief, 20% of whatever we do or produce yields 80% of the results. Take a piece of software: 80% of usage will revolve around 20% of its features. In TV, 80% of viewing figures will result from 20% of programmes. 20% of motorists will cause 80% of accidents. 20% of your clothes are worn 80% of the time. 

Is any of this actually true? Well, approximately. 

Whether accurate or not, the fact vast swathes of software development time are squandered on features which the vast majority of people won’t ever use was enormously helpful to me. As was the realisation that TV producers spend most of their time fussing about aspects of the programme that will only matter to a minority of viewers –  and a sizable portion of that minority will comprise other programme-makers, who don’t matter at all. 

Scarily, in any large organization, 80% of executives’ time is spent thinking about and dealing with the rest of the organization rather than viewers, taxpayers, customers or passengers they exist to serve. It explains why so many projects get bogged down in details which, on reflection, never mattered, and why the civil service and the NHS are so massively, ruinously overstaffed. Most employees spend most of their time engaged in activities which are literally useless.

Remember how, in the 1970s, we thought we’d end up doing fifteen hours’ work a week for the same money, and the challenge of the future would be how to occupy oodles of leisure time? Well, I’m pretty convinced the reason such a scenario failed to materialize is that those in employment now spend at least 80% of their time doing things that simply don’t need to be done – and now they’re raising the age of retirement! 

M. Scott Peck’s genre-defining The Road Less Travelled helped me understand that most of our dissatisfaction stems from our basic belief that life is meant to be easy – when the exact opposite is the case. 

Richard Carlson’s Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff was all about simple methods of relieving stress. Again, they worked for me. I can’t remember exactly why, but after reading Carlson, I started learning poetry on my formerly maddening tube commutes – “and that has made all the difference”.

And that’s why I have chosen these particular books – they all made a difference. None of them are particularly stretching intellectually, and most of the hints, suggestions and truths they contain are, on reflection, not that earth-shattering. But I’m delighted that I read them when I did: at least they proved that not all self-help gurus are fatuous rogues.

The problem is that the only other person I’ve heard confess to the same addiction is Peter Mandelson!