Site is hugged to death, but as usual I won't let that stop me from commenting.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>The older I get the more obvious it is that there are no new ideas, there's just new branding.
I've only read three self-help books that have dramatically changed my thinking:<p>* 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.<p>* 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.<p>* 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.<p>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.
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?
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.
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.
Cloudflare is reporting a 502 Bad Gateway (for me). The article is available at The Internet Archive [1].<p>[1] <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20200712144005/https://dailyjag.com/literature/read-these-self-help-books-and-make-most-of-our-this-downtime/" rel="nofollow">http://web.archive.org/web/20200712144005/https://dailyjag.c...</a>
On "When":<p>> This book explores scientific facts that imply that the impact of the decision taken is dependent on their timing.<p>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.<p>In any case the use of the word "fact" seems strong but perhaps the book addresses this.
I would watch <a href="https://youtu.be/dmLTLkCBSN8" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/dmLTLkCBSN8</a> for a contrary view. These books are brain crack and rarely lead to any significant life changes.
<i>Range</i> is not a self-help book.<p>Sure, it's thesis is practicable and generalizable, but it's more of a pop-psych book.<p>That said, I'd recommend <i>Range</i> 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.<p>It's a great book, just not self-help.
Dan Pink is fairly good. I enjoyed <i>A Whole New Mind.</i><p>In it, he set out a fairly useful exercise for me, called "The mini-saga" (I don't think he originated the idea).<p>The goal is to write a story in <i>exactly</i> fifty words (not characters).<p>It was an enjoyable exercise.<p>I always like the story that was attributed to Hemingway, that the shortest story ever told was <i>"For sale, baby shoes, never worn."</i>
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>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.
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.
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.)<p><a href="https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/" rel="nofollow">https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/</a><p>Also<p>> 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.<p>Who writes like this? "Upskilling?" C'mon