this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
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Self Improvement
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A community which focusses on improving yourself. This can be in many different ways - from improving physical health or appearance, to improving mental health, creating better habits, overcoming addictions, etc.
While material circumstances beyond our control do govern much of our daily lives, people do have agency and choices to make, whether that is as "simple" as disciplining yourself to not doomscroll, to as complex as recreating yourself to have many different hobbies and habits.
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Been trying to read more in the past couple of days. Borrowed one of those demonic self-help books that everyone on my instagram is swearing by, and while the book itself is brainwormed (LOTS of great-man thinking, and reverence for people who's only job is "investor"), forcing myself to spend a 60-90 minutes every evening has been quite interesting. I sort of fell out of the habit of reading seriously since my son was born, especially since I already had a daughter, and trying to keep them alive has been a handful.
The book in question is "Deep Work" by Cal Newport, and it includes an incredibly funny section about the statistical genius known as Nate Silver, which has aged absolutely perfectly.
Read Peak by Anders Ericsson, I liked that one, none of these self books will ever acknowledge class struggel tho
If you feel like reading more, we’re going a Marx’s Capital reading club over on /c/theory only three weeks in so not too much to catch up (5ish hours). If that sounds like your cup of tea come along!
I'm currently in the middle of reading both the self-help book mentioned above (which is liberal as hell, but still useful as a disciplinary exercise), and before I got started on that brief tangent, I was about 100 pages into Seymour Hersh' biography of Kissinger, which is depressing as hell, but gives a decent insight into the mind of the demon king.
There are only two self-help books I find remotely useful.
You are a badass by Jen Sincero (For personal reasons, I want to give her a re-read)
Be Useful by Arnold Schwarzenegger (Yeah, he is your standard centrist
, but there's no denying the guy went through hell and back and slogged through all kinds of bullshit to get to where he is. For that, I'll admit I have some respect for him.)
Would you say that the book is worth reading, aside from the brainworms? That guy also has a book on digital minimalism. I've listened to some podcast episode where he was being interviewed and it was interesting.
You can sort of skip the first half-ish of the book, if you don't want to know the historical background for why the book is important. The second part, where he begins talking about how to get better at scheduling focused work, and the benefits of doing it are much more interesting. It's also an incredibly easy read, and only about 250 pages, so even a busy person can get it done in like a week / long weekend. If I have to give Cal Newport some commendation, he is actually pretty good at writing in a way that is accessible, and he avoids a lot of the #Grindset shit that you see on instagram and hear on podcasts. In particular his point about concentration being a muscle that you have to exercise regularly, and if you don't it will wither and must be retrained.
Thank you for the info, I will check it out! The best book on productivity and organization that I've read is Getting Things Done by David Allen, I definitely recommend it.