Five (and a half) lessons I've learned, from all the self-improvement books I've read

Note to readers: These lessons are by no means mutually exclusive or collectively exhaustive, i.e. I understand that there are many other lessons to be learned and also, significant overlap between each of these lessons.

In addition, I’d like to clarify that I have by no means mastered any of these lessons. I wrote this article for myself, as much as anyone else. In the words of Richard Bach, “You teach best what you most need to learn.”

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Lesson 1: There’s too much to do

In a consumerist culture, where individuals constantly want more of everything - more money, more time and more knowledge, it can be easy to get caught up in the “rat race.” We constantly have overflowing to-do lists, endless commitments and less time than ever to do it all. How can we possibly keep up with the latest TV series, stay on top of our work, and maintain all of our valuable relationships? Surely the next online tip that makes us 1% more productive will help? Actually maybe not. Many of us long for solutions that will allow us to fit everything into our day but realistically, this is not possible. Thus, we need to be proactive about what we prioritise.

• Technique 1.1: Organise tasks based on priority - you can't do everything anyway!

 Acknowledging that there is too much to do should bring to attention the importance of ruthless prioritisation. We must consider what’s most important and what actually gets us closer to the person we want to be. Perhaps more importantly, this idea makes clear that we can, and should, spend time developing relationships with those around us.

“the most important person, is the one you’re with” Ajan Brahm

Furthermore, with so much to do, it’s hard to know what activities will bring happiness and/or meaning to our life. 

• Technique 1.2: When there's too many tasks to do, consider an activity and ask yourself: 

1. Does this activity develop me in any area of my life? 

(e.g., as a more attentive partner, as a more skilled worker, as a more dedicated community volunteer) 

2. Does this activity provide value to me or someone else?

(e.g., will it help them be more efficient, lift their mood, help them to unwind)

Using a rating system for each question may help (e.g. on a scale of 1-10) - then score different activities out of 20!

I’m not arguing to do this for every activity we do, just when we’re overwhelmed and not sure what to prioritise. It’s not a be all, end all, solution, just an idea that might help.

Finally, with too much to do, we can’t trust our memories to remember every task to complete and every concept we’ve learned. That’s why it’s helpful to externalise a system e.g., those seen in David Allen’s Getting Things Done or Tiago Forte’s Building a Second Brain (the latter, being one I’d highly recommend). 

• Technique 1.3: Externalise a system to help you store information

In addition, it can help to think about big decisions in small bursts over time, so our unconscious mind can ponder them while we focus on our task at hand.

Lesson 2: Know your priorities

Many books help us determine our priorities and act on them. This often consists of a few stages. The first stage is to determine what’s important to you i.e., when you look back on your life, what will you wish you had done differently and what relationships/achievements/memories will you treasure?

• Technique 2.1: Write down what's ultimately important to you

The next stage is to reflect on where you’re spending your time and energy. Are you making time to play with your kids and engage with your partner? Are you working in a job that gives some level of fulfilment and satisfaction? For this particular question, Clayton M Christenson breaks up career satisfaction into two different categories in the book, “How will you measure your life”. Hygiene factors, which keep you from being unhappy e.g., the times of day you work, the amount of hours you work, the income you earn, and secondly, motivators, which have to do with the degree of satisfaction and happiness your occupation brings you.

• Technique 2.2: Consider whether you're living your life in line with your long-term priorities 

Thirdly, these books typically require you to determine how you can change your current lifestyle to better reflect your priorities. If you value your family above all else, but work 12 hour days, 7 days a week, with small kids at childcare, perhaps you should start allocating your resources (like time and energy) differently. The reason I say “time” and “energy” is because even if we’re spending time with others, when we’re drained from a long day at work or after a long night out, we typically won’t engage with them as well as when we’re feeling good and (relatively) energised.

• Technique 2.3: Consider how you can make changes to better achieve your long-term goals

Beyond these stages, many books have various systems to schedule in reflections where you can evaluate your progress towards professional goals, e.g., the next project, and personal goals, e.g., the amount of time you’re spending with family. A good example of these is Graham Alcott’s weekly and termly checklists from How to Be a Knowledge Ninja - they’re essentially templates where we look back on our week and term (e.g., every three months) to evaluate if we’re progressing towards goals we value. These help us avoid getting too caught up in day-today matters, by providing time to think about our long-term goals for various areas of life (family, friends, work, community etc).

• Technique 2.4: Periodically review progress towards your long-term goals

Exercises to help determine priorities that I’ve found helpful, include Stephen Covey’s funeral exercise and mission statement description from “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” and Benjamin Hardy’s contextual purpose from “Be Your Future Self Now: The Science of Intentional Transformation.”

Lesson 3: Start small

It can be hard to ever feel like you’ve done enough. But, when we celebrate our successes and start small as BJ Fogg suggests in Tiny Habits, we can feel good about what we have done, without dwelling on what we haven’t got to.

This starts with changing one’s mindset. The “go big or go home” mentality is often infertile and unsustainable in fostering, lasting, long-term change. Small actions we do regularly are easier to focus and take action on. They also don’t come with the same pressure or commitment as large, intimidating goals (which are easy to put off).

• Technique 3.1: Aim for small actions 

In support of this idea, Carol Dweck stresses the importance of self-efficacy in Mindset, because without some kind of belief we can change, it’s unlikely we’ll reach our goals. That belief often comes from setting realistic goals. You wouldn’t be frustrated with yourself if you couldn’t jump a story in the air, so similarly, we shouldn’t measure our progress against unachievable targets.

• Technique 3.2: Make sure your goals are achievable 

One small, attainable target is presented in James Clear’s Atomic Habits when he emphasises the importance of getting one percent better, everyday. If we’re able to do this for a year, that equates to a 37 times increase. That’s right, just one percent everyday, leads to a 37x increase. One percent is realistic, it could be communicating your ideas at a meeting with more clarity by refining your slides, or providing more positive feedback to show your appreciation for a colleague’s effort or even, thanking your partner for cooking dinner. Small changes are possible and when they are done consistently, they can be transformative.

]Technique 3.3: Focus on consistency

With the idea of starting small in mind, it becomes more clear that it’s easy to procrastinate when we want a session of work to be “perfect” or “high focused,” - these desires are not always attainable. Sometimes, the best thing we can do is to start small with low expectations and to do something. Using the pareto principle and Cal Newport’s equation from Deep Work, “the amount of high quality work done = time spent x intensity of focus” helps us choose what’s most impactful (e.g., learning about new technologies in your field) and work at this as efficiently as possible (e.g., with 15 minutes at the start of your workday before checking your inbox, rather than 30 minutes late at night when you’re sleepy and restless). Of course, for some of you, the morning may be when a time of still ‘waking up’ and the night may be a time where you focus best - find what works for you!

Lesson 4: There’s no substitute for action

With so much to read, watch, listen to and do, it’s easy to get caught up in a trap where we endlessly consume content. But as Jim Kwick says in Limitless, knowledge is not power. 

Knowledge × action is power. 

We only reap a small portion of the benefits by reading a book once, but we obtain much more when we consciously ask ourselves how we can apply it to our lives. Imagine reading a book on finance and understanding the power of compound interest, without changing any of your financial strategies. Crazy, right? The same logic applies to almost any self-improvement book we read. Tiago Forte goes as far as to claim that “information becomes knowledge–personal, embodied, verified-only when we put it to use.”

• Technique 4.1: Focus on actioning what you learn

One factor that can stop us taking action, is waiting until things are perfect. Waiting until you finally have the time. Waiting until that next project is over, or until you hit that next milestone. Waiting until everything lines up. Well, I’m here to tell you that the time will (probably) never be just right. It’s easy to put off what you most need to do until “later” and remain paralysed by a fear of failure. To overcome this, we must take action when things are “good enough.”

• Technique 4.2: Act now, not later

Furthermore, what we most struggle getting ourselves to do, can be what we most need to do. Whether we’re reluctant due to our biases, fear of failure or resistance to new circumstances, when we overcome this and embrace ongoing challenges as part of our learning journey, we can strive for our ambitions. This doesn’t mean there won’t be setbacks and struggles that attempt to derail you from your path - have a look at the childhood of Dave Goggins in Can’t Hurt Me if you need an example. It just means that a fear of action won’t prevent you from overcoming your fears. 

• Technique 4.3: Let go of your fear of failure

When we embrace our finitude as Oliver Burkeman argues in 4000 weeks, it becomes strikingly clear that acting now is the only we can guarantee we’ll ever act at all, regardless of our likelihood of failure.

As the famous Batman quote goes “Why do we fall?” “So we can learn to pick ourselves up”

When we’re lost or struggling to get ourselves to the actions we need, sometimes the best thing we can do is take a step back and look objectively at a situation. Then, we can map out our best course of action. An exercise that can help this process (which I’d highly recommend) is fear setting, which Tim Ferris talks about in his Ted Talk.

Lesson 5: Look up. Look around. Look about.

We can learn more than we think from our experiences and from others. By observing their behaviour, listening to feedback and guidance, and reflecting on our own experiences, valuable insights emerge. The people you work with, live with and interact with, will have different strengths to you. Our daily lives have so much to teach us, we just need to look out with the desire to learn.

• Technique 5.1: Look to learn from your experiences

Our experiences can help us critically evaluate the information we consume. If a technique we hear in a podcast doesn’t resonate with us, we don’t have to pursue it. Frankly, you don’t have to agree with the five lessons I’ve detailed. Everyone has different needs, values and weaknesses, so our experience is often a better teacher than a book or video, that has no personal connection to us.

• Technique 5.2: Critically evaluate the information you consume 

Beyond learning, when we look around intentionally, we may notice more of what we are grateful for. Whether it be your boss’ flexibility, your partner’s patience or your colleagues’ support, when we look to observe the strengths of others, we typically notice more traits we appreciate about them. Furthermore, when we open ourselves up to constructive criticism without being defensive, and action it, others’ feel that there feedback is appreciated.

• Technique 5.3: Acknowledge the strengths of those around you

Looking up, around and about helps us design for the changes we need in our lives. Just because something seems like a good idea and is advocated for online or by friends, doesn’t mean it will work for you. When we look up, around and about, we can see where new behaviours might fit into our life, e.g., journaling while drinking your morning coffee and, we can see which behaviours will be most helpful e.g., stretching because your muscles are constantly sore and tight. Furthermore, only we know what behaviours we have the time, money and physical/mental capacity to do. Everyone’s skillsets, routines and strengths are different. Focusing less on online media and more on our own lives enables us to better understand what drives us, so we can chase our own fulfilment, rather than society’s imposed view of success.

• Technique 5.4: Focus on your own goals

And of course:

“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value” Albert Einstein

Lesson 5.5: Your systems will never be perfect

Many books inspire us to strive for improvement. Whether this be a better way to manage tasks, smarter methods to reflect on our progress or new ideas to organise priorities, self-improvement books help us improve. It’s in the name “self-improvement”. 

But before you think (in a sarcastic tone) “Gee, thanks captain obvious, what a thrilling revelation,” there’s a reason I’m pointing this out. When we’re always looking for something else, outside ourselves, that will help us be fulfilled, our ambition can lead us astray. Instead of feeling good about the improvements we make, we can trap ourselves in a cycle of self-criticism and dissatisfaction. What once was a productive habit, soon becomes a downward spiral taking away our confidence, positivity and at the worst of times, our self-worth. Every book contains new ideas, techniques and systems but none can directly provide you with satisfaction, that comes from within. 

Now, before you think of this lesson as some kind of philosophical commentary on contemporary issues, in a culture where ambitious, driven individuals, struggle to find meaning and happiness - I’d like to clarify that’s not my area of expertise (so I’ll stop there). But what I do know, is that these five lessons can help you grow as a person, and get a little bit better at whatever it is you do.

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Writing this article led me to some really interesting discoveries. After reviewing practically every book summary I’ve ever written, I found some significant trends emerging from the books that most resonated with me. Those trends have been transformed into the five lessons you’ve read through today.