Something to Keep
“Follow your bliss.”
Joseph Campbell
A Second Look
Lately, I realized that I’ve been steering away from self-development content. I haven’t read many books, watched many videos, or listened to podcasts about self-help. In fact, hobbies took their place, and I’ve been happier and more focused. Let me elaborate.
There are several problems with the self-help industry, and the most prominent one is that it encourages you to consume a lot of content. I’m not suggesting that working on yourself is a one-time thing or that it’s easy. If anything, you’re never “done” with self-development. That said, gaining a dopamine rush and a false sense of accomplishment for listening to the latest podcast on dating isn’t the best way to move forward.
When it comes to improving yourself, nothing beats action, even if it’s imperfect. Other problems with the industry include information overload, generic advice that’s unscientific, and the fact that the people behind the content are incentivized to make a profit.
If the self-help work is riddled with problems, what’s the solution? How can you improve yourself without falling into those traps? I think the best way is to identify specific problems and take action on them, not consume content about them. Growth requires friction, and reading a book or listening to a podcast is often frictionless. In other words, consumption means nothing without exposure. Self-development is all about identifying problems, not about following the latest trend.
So why does replacing self-help content with hobbies feel better? After all, I’m still a flawed human with lots of problems and insecurities. While self-help keeps you in a constant state of evaluation, hobbies give you the excuse to participate in something without judging yourself. When I play the guitar, I sometimes forget to judge myself because I’m having so much fun. When I’m trying to learn a new song, there’s no room to overthink my life and learn a new melody, so I just stick to the chords. Self-development is often the opposite of that, giving you several opportunities to think about why you suck and why everyone else is better-looking, richer, or more successful than you.
Another important aspect of hobbies is that, unlike self-development (which is often abstract), they give immediate feedback. If I’m playing a TCG and I lose a match, I know exactly what I did wrong. Music is also concrete. Immediate feedback produces what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called flow, a mental state where you’re so absorbed in an activity that you lose track of time.
If anything I mentioned here sounds interesting, you should try it. Instead of treating yourself like a project, reintroduce play into your life. I strongly believe that play is one of the key ingredients of happiness. Most adults don’t play because they think it’s unproductive and indulgent. In reality, though, play is psychologically regulating: it builds competence, reduces stress, encourages experimentation, and lowers ego. The happiest people I know are less than 10 years old, and they’ve never read a self-help book in their lives. They play, and play builds the skills organically.
Self-help constantly reminds you that you’re not enough, but hobbies let you enjoy yourself now. That message won’t sell millions of books or attract a lot of traffic, but it will save you a lot of time.
Something I Liked
Since I wrote about the problem with self-help, I wanted to share Matt D’avella’s video, where he talks about his own disillusionment with the industry. Not many people interested in self-development can criticize it, but in that video, D’avella does a fantastic job. He talks about how most people rely solely on motivation, but forget about reality, when actually, you need both. Most times, improving someone’s life isn’t about “fixing their mindset” but about something as simple as getting better sleep.
