Self-Help

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 I want the self-help genre to be part of my staple readings.  Timeless works (at least for me) like Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich or Stephen Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People will remain at the leading edge of this category.  However, listening to Cal Newport's podcast on Self Help is reframing the way I look at Self-Help books.  I might add, I am glad I am re-evaluating my approach to Self Help books in general.

In his podcast, Dr. Newport categorizes Self Help into three sub-groups:

  1. Predigested self-help contents:
    1. Short how to videos (On You Tube, Tik Tok, etc.)
    2. Podcasts
    3. Self-Help books like Hill's and Covey's bestsellers mentioned above
  2. Interpersonal (Books or movies that persuade you to make empathetic connections with a character)
    1. Memoirs
    2. Feature Movies
    3. Novels
  3. Heavier Philosophical Works
    1. Works of the Stoics
    2. Heidegger (I am surprised I got the spelling right on my first try)
These categories provide intriguing mental models to classify contents that we consume as our staple self-help diet.  I know that Dr. Newport offered these categories as help to organize our efforts and make progressively deeper considerations when trying to improve ourselves.  I believe he offered these categories with an implicit trust in our critical thinking to personalize these meta-self-help models to align with our personal values and experience.
As a personal example, these categories help me reevaluate a book that I am currently grappling with: Martha Beck's The Way of Integrity.

In this book, Dr. Beck mentions that she read Dante's The Divine Comedy as self-help book in her youth.  This was an interesting take on such literary work.  Dr. Beck uses excerpts from Dante's work to guide us towards living a fulfilling life of integrity.  Now, she is careful to define integrity as being "whole" rather than using the word in its more familiar usage to mean honest or faithful.  With that definition in place, she is using (remember, I am still grappling with the book) to guide the reader to live a life of integrity.

I think this book combines the power of predigested self help book with that of Interpersonal literature effectively.  I am thankful to have Dr. Newport's categories to evaluate the contents of Dr. Beck's work.  I think ithe categories provide, to borrow Charlie Munger's phrase "lattice works of mental models" to help with internalizing Dr. Beck's work.



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