here we go <3
this is less of a book review and more so the start of my long-winded tirade against self help books. i have a weird relationship with them. i hate them but i can't stop reading them. LOL!!!! 🤣😂🤣🤣
self help books are packaged so compellingly - they tell you your life will be so much better after you read them. if you just make that one tiny change or apply some life hack, your life will magically improve. it sounds too good to be true. it usually is. and this is where my problem with these books lies: they're selling an impossible dream. i think it's symptomatic of a greater issue, where as a society (especially younger folks!) we feel so dissatisfied with our lives. especially if we’ve grown up with privilege - i think it’s why we reach for the self help book in the first place. we're convinced we're living the wrong way, that we can't start living until we graduate, or we get a dream job, or we move to a new city. the weight of these questions: how can i live the most meaningful life possible? how can i make the most with so little time? how can i do all the things i want to do in my life? an oasis, suddenly: these self-help expert videos, multiplying like gorgon heads, the limited-edition on-sale time management courses, the prioritization softwares designed by 20-year-old silicon valley bros; i kneel down and scoop my hands into the water; endless how-to books with pleasing yet numbing illustrations, the tiktok # thatgirl trend, productivity hacks like a hand reaching down into the abyss, siren voice calling, i did this and it changed my life and here's how you can do it too; i drink from the water and it disappears like the mirage it is.
i'm distrustful of most self help books because they almost always position themselves as the gateway between you and a better life. the ultimate solution, if you can bear to part with the low, low price of $20. think of the returns! i get that books exist within a greater ecosystem of industry & how publishing the typical book is inextricable from someone, somewhere, needing to make money. but the marketing is ultimately dishonest. like north american research as a whole, the advice in these books almost always comes from the same perspective and voices -- white, heterosexual, middle/upper-class, christian, and able-bodied men. how do you give advice to people you don't take the time to know or care about? how do you trust someone who doesn't acknowledge your unique hardships? this has always been my problem with the self help book.
but also this is still a book review lol, and a book review it will be!!! atomic habits: an easy & proven way to build good habits & break bad ones by james clear was, ultimately, not that bad. it provides a useful and accessible toolbox to the reader, explaining a little bit about why it works, and some case studies of when it REALLY works. if you think of it as a really long (and kind of annoying) manual for how to set better habits / break bad habits, it's pretty good. i made a summary graphic checklist thing of what i thought were the most important parts for you so you don't have to read it HAHAHA
ok it’s not that bad
atomic habits works off the philosophy of compounding, which is why it's so intensely alluring (see the hundreds of videos with millions of views about how to become 37x better at something. it's from this book). you want the exponential returns. you want to make a tiny, easy change to your life and reap the huge benefits. here's an excerpt that illustrates its overarching philosophy:
Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits. Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits. Your weight is a lagging measure of your eating habits. Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits. Your clutter is a lagging measure of your cleaning habits. You get what you repeat.
it's certainly attractive. but i don't think we can think of our human selves and identities as things to be compounded. it sets an unrealistic standard. we're tempted to think of our life as an investment account, where, if you put in a certain amount of work or effort, the returns will be exponential. but we’re active participants in our life. we can’t passively put in work at the very beginning and wait for it to compound like an investment account. to be consistent with something you need to put in MORE effort over time, not less.
i think this applies to everything. relationships take work, and the more precious people become to you, the more work that relationship takes. this isn't a bad thing, nor is it something to be avoided. clear talks about this other plateau, the Plateau of Latent Potential, where habits you work at seem to make no difference to the outcome you want until you cross a critical threshold, after which you begin to see progress. but this is not the plateau i'm talking about. i'm talking about the point at which you get pretty good at something. beyond the intermediate plateau of language learning, playing an instrument, painting, and writing, you realize there is so much more that you need to learn and there is so much you don't know. it's thrilling and it's the reality. you need constant practice just to maintain these skills, let alone improve at them. and your work and career - the more responsibility, prestige, and opportunities you receive, the more work you need to do. i suspect this is true for anything that calls for time and energy and that's the wonderful thing about it. look at all these things we can sink our teeth into and enrich our life with!
i DO think he's onto something with caring about the process instead of the product, though habits do affect our life in some way, ultimately - that can't necessarily be separated from the outcome or product he talks about. but it is a nice thought:
When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy. You can be satisfied anytime your system is running.
i think this leads well into my other main thought about this book: even if we consistently achieve the habits we want to achieve, our life might not actually get better. we might not be happier. it's not like, once I wake up at 4 am and take cold showers and save money more wisely that I can relax and focus on what really makes me happy and what will make my life great. what is the point of these habits and outcomes? are we morally obligated to live extraordinary, notable lives? are we all destined for greatness? underneath it all, this book seems to think so. i challenge that with this quote from 4000 weeks, by oliver burkeman:
“No wonder it comes as a relief to be reminded of your insignificance. It’s the feeling of realizing that you’d been holding yourself all this time to standards you couldn’t reasonably be expected to meet. And this realization isn’t merely calming, but liberating, because once you’re no longer burdened by such an unrealistic definition of a life well spent, you’re free to consider the possibility that many more things than you’d previously imagined might qualify as meaningful ways to use your finite time. You’re freed, too, to consider the possibility that many of the things you’re already doing with it are more meaningful than you’d supposed and that until now, you’d subconsciously been devaluing them on the grounds that they weren’t ‘significant’ enough. From this new perspective, it becomes possible to see that preparing nutritious meals for your children might matter as much as anything could ever matter, even if you won’t be winning any cooking awards, or that your novel’s worth writing if it moves or entertains a handful of your contemporaries, even though you know you’re no Tolstoy, or that virtually any career might be a worthwhile way to spend a working life, if it makes things slightly better for those it serves.”
ultimately, habits can have a lot of power and influence in improving the quality of your life and the lives of your communities, which is a beautiful and freeing thing. but where are you finding dissatisfaction? how perfect can your life become? what happens if you DON'T accomplish all the beautiful things you want to do in your life? maybe, instead, acknowledging that we can't do it all, this ultimate and feared truth, is what actually will set us free.