Looking for “anti-cliched” advice? Stop reading too self-help many books.
By: Ranveer Mohite
Tags: Self Help Books, Take Action, Inspirational Books, Books Recommendation, Management And Leadership

Let me start with a standard sentence — Self help books are designed to change your life.

Now let’s shake it, bake it & flip it to the other side — If you read too many self help books in a short span of time, you may not change your life.

Reading too many books? Credits— Jarred Craig

This is the time to take a perfect look at the why?

In the modern day & age, everyone is confessing how that one book changed their life. Everyone, from top entrepreneurs to your virtual neighbor.

So if so many people are preaching about books & their benefits, why should you stop it? If you read too many books, you too will improve quickly. Logical enough, right?

There are many reasons & by the end of the article you’ll understand why you shouldn’t be reading too many books, self help books, in a short span of time.

Information Overload — Reading too many books at once is equivalent of consuming too much information at once. I have experienced it first hand & I know how easy it is to fall into the excessive information consumption pattern.

Today with information at your finger tips, it’s just a matter of a few clicks before you find what’s relevant to you. When it becomes easy to access information, you start to devalue it. As a result, you end up consuming more & executing less.

For any major changes to happen in your life, taking action is what will eventually change your life. If you don’t change what you do, nothing will eventually change.

Information is useful because it guides you towards the right path. But you if don’t choose to walk the path, you are fooling yourself into believing that you are growing. For me it’s tough. I consciously have to make an effort to take action on all that I read.

Exactly this is what happens when you read too many books at once. You become overloaded with information & your implementation suffers.

One of my friend, gave me a very useful advice about this once. He told me that he reads only one page of the book & tries to implement that in his life. It resonated with me. As a result, I cut down on a lot of excessive reading & began to focus more the execution aspect.

2. Cliched advice — Once I remember having a casual conversation with my friend on why he was reading mythology books. He told me he was fed up of listening to the same self-help advice which almost each & every other book hammers. We both burst into laughter when he said it.

If you’ve read a lot of self-help books, you realize how similar the advice is in most of them. Even including the best sellers. The authors give a sound piece of advice, it’s just packaged in a different way. There are very few books where I have found some really unique insights. Most of them sing the same song.

In such cases, I prefer to re-read books rather than to buy new ones. We forget things very often. Revision helps us not only to remember but to also solidify the knowledge we have in our head.

3. Progress is about addition & subtraction — When you only read books, you add to your existing knowledge base. But that’s not where real progress happens. Progress happens when you subtract & unlearn the old patterns.

Let’s visualize it.

Tomorrow you are thrown into the ocean with an anchor attached to your body. What do you think is the most reasonable way to swim to safety? To add extra power or to remove the anchor? The same thing happens when you wish to improve.

As a chess professional, subtraction means analyzing your games & learning from your mistake. In general, subtraction means taking the time out to self-reflect & weed out the old patterns.

4. Everyone wants to sell! — Today with so many books available in the market, it’s difficult to separate the good ones from the really exceptional ones. Personally I look for the credibility of the author rather than the title of the book. If the author is an expert with a proven track record, it usually is an exceptional book.

On the other hand though, a book which is better packaged has a great chance to sell. I feel the importance of what’s inside the book has started to matter less. How it’s packaged matters more.

And that in my opinion is a sad reality.