There’s a self-help book on just about every subject, but I find most of them useless. They are good at spouting out a lot of ideas, but they rarely tell you specifically how to carry out the ideas they mention.
Is there some reason why?
Yes, it’s called “we can sell you a load without ever having to go to the trouble of actually gathering real facts and information, and you’ll buy it because it’s much easier to think that ‘visualization’ (i.e. daydreaming) and ‘networking’ (i.e. shooting the bull) will get you where you want to go than it is to believe it takes years of hard work, tight financial discipline, and a good deal of luck.”
I think 95% of all dating self-help books are useless. They offer the same advice; be yourself, make sure you’ve taken a bath and brushed your teeth beforehand, don’t dominate the conversation or talk about yourself the whole time on a date, and so on. They also universally recommend supermarkets as a great place to meet MOTAS, which seems rather odd; single women NEVER make eye contact with anyone else there, unless they’re the cashier.
Looking through the “Relationships” self-help section of a bookstore, it seems like most dating books come in just a few flavors:
- “How to land a boyfriend/husband” books for women
- “Men are abusers/cheaters/liars/stalkers/creeps” and “How to train your man” books for women
- “How to get laid” books for men
- Vague dating advice for both sexes, but generally oriented towards women (pink covers, feminine typefaces, etc.)
My father and I used to run a business consulting firm. He hated business books - The One Minute Manager, Seven Habits, blah blah blah.
The problem with a lot of them is not that they’re full of lies or anything, but that anyone can read a book, but few people will change their behaviour. If an asshole reads “Zapp!” - the message of which is pretty much “don’t treat your employees like an asshole” - he’ll likely nod and agree and say it’s all good advice and then go on acting as if he had never read the book. It’s sort of a management Forer effect; when people read those books they tend to see THEMSELVES in the role of narrator, and confirm to themselves that they already act like that even when they don’t.
Anyway, back when I worked for my Dad the Seven Habits books was all the shiznit (of course, since then, Stephen Covey has managed to come up with a few new habits to sell books about, presumably because his favourite habit is counting money.) Whenever someone would rant and rave about Seven Habits and how it was the new Bible, my father would say “Neat, where’s your values card?” Then it would go like this:
Moron: “What”
Rick’s Dad: “Your values card, that Covey says you should write out and carry with you.”
Moron: “Huh?”
Rick’s Dad: “It says right there in Chapter 2 that the first thing you’re supposed to do is put down the book, write your five key values on a wallet sized card and put them in your wallet.”
Moron: “Durrrrrr.”
Rick’s Dad: "Don’t you remember that part?
Moron: “Well, yes.”
Rick’s Dad: “Oh. What other parts of the book did you read but don’t actually plan on following?”
It’s like diet books. Read diet books all day, but if you keep eating Big Macs, don’t be surprised if you still have a gigantic fat ass.
Business and relationships are too complicated to provide a set of instructions. What works for one person in one situation might fail for another person in another situation.
It’s easier to provide a MINDSET to running a business than to try to tell someone what to do.
“Plan ahead” is vague, but useful advice.
Whereas, “make sure you have two months worth of inventory” might be perfect advice for someone who sells a retail product and sometimes gets surprise large wholesale orders, but it’s pretty bad advice for a guy who runs a grocery store.
Easy… Vague sells. And it sells well.
No one who buys these books wants the hard complicated systematic methodology of attaining their desired goals. They’d rather be told taht they can achieve, except for one easily over come hurdle.
I think these things read much like a fortuneller tells a future.
It is awhole bunch of vague statements that “speak” to the reader. Some very basic common sense advice that are vague enough that they can fit into any business or relationship venture. And a lot of “empowering” language (Like empowering) to make make the messge seem deeper than it really is.
In the end they can claim success whenever some one who happens to have read the book does well and the reader can fool themselves into thinking they are that much closer to whatever goal they want wthout having to put any effort towards it.
Because most dating self-help books fail to state the obvious:
Be good-looking
Be attractive
Don’t be unattractive
Most things have a very simple solution that people refuse to try.
It’s like self-help books on “leadership”. Well…leadership is actually pretty easy. Just lead. Think of ways to do a certain job and suggest them to people. Come up with ideas and communicate them. Demonstrate competance. Eventually, people will be like “hey! he has good ideas! We should have listened to him!” or “wow! He’s good at that! I’ll try to find out how he does that!”
Except that what most people take away is that you can be a more effective leader by using a bunch of stupid buzzwords.
The problem I have with most “management” style books is that they take a very simple premise and then draaaag it out for an entire book. Something like “the 7 habits” book could easily be condensed into the “7 habits” memo. But nobody buys memos or pamphlets. They need a whole book for their $25.
Other “Get Rich” or “Be Successful” books are just filled with common sense insights. You turn page after page going “well, yeah, that makes sense. I agree with that. Yes, I can see that,” but when it comes to some solid go-do actions they fall flat.
“Rich Dad, Poor Dad” comes to mind. He tells you about making money work for you, not to be an “employee” or a “worker”, don’t trust the stock market with your money. But by the time you get to the end of the book you find out that the guy got lucky in real-estate and doesn’t really have any idea of what you “should” be doing, just what you “shouldn’t” be doing.
Because if they tell you in complete detail how hard you’ll have to work to help yourself, you’ll throw your hands up in defeat and throw the book in the trash.
I once read one of those ‘How to Make a Million Dollars a Year in Real Estate and Not Spend a Dime’ type books. The author was explaining how to leverage a purchase. This was one of the instructions.
“Convince the seller to give you a no-interest mortgage.”
That was it. No explanation of how you’re supposed to convince someone to use his money to finance your purchase. No explanation of how to reply to the perfectly understandable reaction “No.” No advice on how you’re supposed to find someone so desperate to unload their property that you can negotiate a deal completely in your favor.
The book might as well have said “Convince the seller to give you a million dollars and skip all the intermediate steps.”
Ahahahahaha! Where’s the rolling on the floor smiley when you need it?
Or “If you can routinely persuade people to give you a no-interest mortgage, please may I borrow a million dollars from your small change, Mr Real Estate Tycoon?”
I believe that the society we live in is one that celebrates vaugeness and opposes specificity. We are all taught to praise and appreciate vague-sounding concepts. Motivational posters are a perfect example. On the other hand, once you lay down specific rules, you’re being “pushy”, “pretentious”, and “arrogant”.
I’ve barely read any business books or self-help books, but I can think of examples from guides to writing and literary style. Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, the definitve style manual from the 20’s, is full of specifics: put a comma here, place the subordinate clause there, don’t write a paragraph of only one sentence. By contrast, recent manuals are squishy. They give advice such as: “Arrange your sentences for maximum clarity.”
They’re vague because it’s much more difficult to accuse them of not working that way, or easier to claim that what you did, that worked, was more or less what the book said you should do.
Same thing, in a way, with horoscopes; make them nebulous and you can always coerce a hit.
I have a theory.
Most people who are authors of popular self-help and business books are already successful. They simply just don’t want to “spread* the wealth” or level the playing field.
*Or is it “share”, I always get things like this mixed up. :o
Not all of them are vague. I found “Color Me Beautiful” very helpful for tips on what colours to wear; and I’ve found Lou Paget’s books on sex very to the point and concrete.
[hijack]
There speaks a man who prefers to blame his lack of dating success on the shallowness of women’s only considering looks. Except that I’ve been a female for 50 years, and have NEVER met such a woman! Do we like a guy who looks good? Sure. Why not? Eye candy is always nice. But I have yet to meet any woman who refused to date someone on the basis of “not good looking enough,” although I have known some to just find a particular guy so repulsive that they couldn’t do it. But that’s unusual.
If a woman turns you down, it’s generally because of one or more of the following:
- she’s already involved or otherwise uninterested in dating
- she knows you well enough to realize that, whatever she’s looking for, you’re almost certainly not it (common interests, personality type, etc).
- she doesn’t know you at all and doesn’t feel comfortable going out with you until she does.
- there is something about the way you present yourself that is just really, really not working for her - lots of piercings and/or tattoos all over the place would certainly qualify for me in that case.
If she DOES turn you down because of looks, why the hell would you want her anyway? Consider yourself rescued!
[/hijack]
This suggests that there is some magic formula that when imparted upon others will just enable them to succeed. The problem is, there is no such thing.
The successful aren’t hoarding that advice. It just doesn’t exist.
You seem to be thinking that there’s some nugget of wisdom out there and if you could just have access to it, you’d be on your way.
Here’s some specific advice: if you want to be successful, stop thinking that way.
See, the mistake you guys are making is in assuming that the lesson is found in reading the book. The real lesson here is to go out and write your own vague book and sell it to as many people as possible! That’s how you get rich/popular/smart/sexy/confident. 
Actually I prefer to blame my lack of dating success on the fact that I’ve had a long-time girlfriend which doesn’t leave me much time to date.
Not to continue the hijack, but in my observation, if a guy is tall, handsome, pleasent and holds down a decent job women have a little more interest in dating him, think he might actually be what she’s looking for, feels a little more comfortible going out with him and doesn’t mind so much how he presents himself.
Women are just as shallow as men except for some reason they refuse to admit it.
Another question.
Why are these books soooooo damn PC?
Not just books, but workshops and seminars too.
The subject can be on conflict…instead of them training you how to reason better, they go on and on about stuff like learning how to listen and show empathy. Okay okay, those are good things, but listening and empathy alone won’t help you get where you want.
I’m with you mate. Except for the presentation. If you show up in nice/trendy/hip clothes and a nice car and don’t make an ass of yourself during the evening… it’s basically a sure thing.