How nonfiction books changed my life.
Books changed my life. They can change yours too.
Let me explain:
From the beginning
For a lot of my childhood, I was reading fiction books constantly. Now, I don’t mean to say you should never read fiction, but nonfiction reading is where a lot of magic happens.
Why?
From nonfiction reading, you learn, and I’m not counting the fiction “lessons learned”. I mean true learning about the real world. Still, not all nonfiction books are created equal, and so to have the vocabulary for the rest of the post I’m defining a nonfiction book (for this post) as a book that immediately affects your real-world actions and experiences. I know this is kind of like the definition for self-help books, but it’s different for reasons you’ll see later.
Back to the personal story: For a lot of my childhood I was constantly reading fiction books, and it was only a year or so ago that I started reading nonfiction books. Here’s a graph of what my life looks like:
Before I started reading nonfiction books my life was going at a steady decline and this graph isn’t 100% accurate- the decline was more of a curve, so the difference between the last yeaBooks changed my life. They can change yours too.
Let me explain:
From the beginning
For a lot of my childhood, I was reading fiction books constantly. Now, I don’t mean to say you should never read fiction, but nonfiction reading is where a lot of magic happens.
Why?
From nonfiction reading, you learn, and I’m not counting the fiction “lessons learned”. I mean true learning about the real world. Still, not all nonfiction books are created equal, and so to have the vocabulary for the rest of the post I’m defining a nonfiction book (for this post) as a book that immediately affects your real-world actions and experiences. I know this is kind of like the definition for self-help books, but it’s different for reasons you’ll see later.
Back to the personal story: For a lot of my childhood I was constantly reading fiction books, and it was only a year or so ago that I started reading nonfiction books. Here’s a graph of what my life looks like:
Before I started reading nonfiction books my life was going at a steady decline and this graph isn’t 100% accurate- the decline was more of a curve, so the difference between the last year and the current year was MUCH larger than the difference between last year and 2 years ago so the graph probably looks more like this:
Pretty much, when I was engaging in pleasure, my life was exponentially decreasing.
After, when I started engaging in education, my life exponentially increased (and is currently increasing)
Why is this?
As previously stated, nonfiction books educate and directly positively affect your life.
This means that the more nonfiction books you read, the more your life is positively affected. Simple!
What else do nonfiction books do?
Disclaimer: This post might get a bit scientific so I’m going to be using some terms which I’ll define as I’m writing. If you’re psychology-phobic and/or book-phobic you’re free to leave. I also sound a lot like a mom telling you to stop some things.
There are 2 main purposes of nonfiction books. These are:
- Education.
- The fact that nonfiction books can be boring.
I’ll get more into the education purpose later, but why is it good that nonfiction books can be boring?
Dopamine. Your brain’s reward system functions off of a simple chemical called dopamine. You crave dopamine, no human doesn’t.
Primally, dopamine was given when a human did an activity that was beneficial: eating, new things, pleasurable things. And for a long time, this was amazing. When humans were the same as apes, when we lived in tribes and hunted animals this was an absolutely spectacular chemical.
You see, dopamine is the want chemical. It’s the chemical that makes humans do stuff. In the 1900s, a medication was created to essentially stop dopamine and the side effects were like what you see in medication TV commercials: the family is extremely happy (the idea of this medication) and then the super-speed reader starts talking at the end of the commercial,
“Side effects may include extreme sleepiness, clinical depression, uncontrollable rashes, an inability to move, a coma, death”
And then the main narrator comes back on:
“Try this chemical and you’ll be free!”
This is what happens when you try to unnaturally stop dopamine.
“Well, why should we even try to stop dopamine? If you try to unnaturally stop dopamine I get it, bad things come, but why should we try at all?”
Because, as mentioned before, dopamine was an amazing chemical… up until today. You see, nowadays dopamine is in abundance. Sugar is a very dopamine-stimulating chemical and primally this was COMPLETELY okay because you’d find a fruit with some natural sugar every month, but now every food we eat has sugar and therefore carries dopamine.
Next: the Internet. The internet is also one of the most dopamine-stimulating things we have now that prehistoric humans didn’t have.
The Internet is a special type of dopamine stimulator because it carries 2 functions.
First, the Internet already is very dopamine-stimulating. Every other second you see big red colors and flashing things, novel opportunities you’ve never seen before. If I load up a new Edge page right now I can see news, big bright things that tell me they’re important.
Second, probably the more important function is that the Internet is a host to other dopamine-driven activities. Think about it. The Internet is a host to:
- YouTube- constant video stimulation. Even on just YouTube, you get so many dopamine-driven activities that all compete with each other; only the most dopamine-driving activities are the ones you see. If there’s one video that’s not stimulating enough you’ve got 20 other options, all of which competed with other options and had to be more stimulating than all other videos, to choose from.
- Fake social connection- You understand why social media isn’t an actual social connection. Even if you use social media in the “best way possible”- text messaging and “communicating” with friends- you’re still not actually communicating- an idea supported by many more studies that I’m not going to find.
- Reproduction- The need for love and intimacy is necessary for any human. Just look at Maslow’s Hierarchy: he places it alongside breathing, food, and water!
But guess what? Proof of concept: We humans still value love… but it’s so much easier to get intimacy! Prehistorically love was to reproduce, to help the human race. Now overpopulation’s being considered a genuine problem and we can get the feeling of intimacy from the internet!
There are more things the internet is a host to, but it just constantly provides so many ways to stimulate your dopamine.
Why have I said all of this, though?
It’s to show you that dopamine is becoming outdated. The things dopamine is stimulated by is in abundance now and there’s an entire idea- hedonic adaptation- for why this is a bad thing!
Dopamine is outdated. One thing not mentioned on the dopamine-stimulating activity list is drugs! You didn’t have drugs when you were hunting a deer. Now people are throwing their lives away for drugs, or, rather, the dopamine it provides. That’s crazy!
Dopamine is outdated. The activities that it promotes- internet usage, drug addiction, constant stimulation, wasting time, love- and intimacy-driven websites- are detrimental!
So how does this relate to reading? How is dopamine- a brain chemical- supposed to relate to nonfiction reading?
Nonfiction reading is boring.
Do you know what boring things do?
Boring things don’t stimulate dopamine.
Since nonfiction books don’t stimulate dopamine they actively contribute to the opposite: managed dopamine. Now, remember that medication that stopped dopamine unnaturally? One of the biggest interest points of dopamine is that while this unnatural stopping can cause serious side effects, if you regularly don’t stimulate yourself with as much dopamine your life just goes up and up and up, explaining my dramatic happiness increase.
Essentially, nonfiction books don’t stimulate dopamine, increasing your happiness and productivity.
Ryan Dempsy on Medium attempted a dopamine detox- abstaining from extremely dopamine-stimulating activities- for 1 month. His results:
“I have gotten clearer, this month, on what my direction in life is. I’m still not 100% but I’m working on it. When I cut the distractions, I noticed where my attention was pulled. I have worked in Finance, Accounting and currently English teaching.
None of these things are my real interests or what I want to spend my life doing. I realized that what I really care about is why we do the things we do. I find it fascinating how we process what is going on in life. How some people love their life and other people are miserable.
There are certain things that we can do to make our lives more fulfilling and, for me, this is the most important thing. That is why I started writing and making videos. I wanted to direct this new-found energy in the direction I find most interesting.
I also applied for a master’s program in psychology, to move my career in a direction that is more aligned with my strengths and interests. This was only made possible by cutting out the distractions.”
“My personal belief system believes that our natural state of being is one of happiness, contentment and connection. In our society we are seeing rising numbers of people who are unhappy, discontent and feeling disconnected and lonely.
I believe this is because we get in our own way. We don’t allow ourselves the time or space to process what is going on around us because we always think we need to be doing something. If we just cut the distractions for a while, we can process the world around us and let the mind settle down.”
But the benefit from reading nonfiction books increases with another key aspect nonfiction brings:
Education.
No, not that education. Real education.
There’s a very big difference between real education and classroom-education and oftentimes people are confused between the two. Real education is education that serves you for life, it’s education you’re supposed to learn in the real world because you use it in the real world. If you can get enough real education, you’re going to be much more successful than somebody who got decades of classroom-education.
You’re supposed to be able to learn real education only in the real world, but guess what allows you to learn it super quick and easy?
That’s right. Nonfiction.
Imagine being able to learn a lifetime of experience, decades of expertise, in a short few hours. That’s the beauty of nonfiction. It just provides so much education!
Let me give a few examples of skills you can learn with nonfiction and for some of these skills, I’ll give specific books that address them:
- How to negotiate- Never Split the Difference
- How to get a 4-hour work week and get paid 4x as much- The 4-Hour Work Week
- How to improve your social life- How to Win Friends & Influence People
- How to goal-set and think big- The Magic of Thinking Big
- How to change your routine and what you do every day- Atomic Habits
- How to prioritize and not care what others think- The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F***
- How to earn more money- The Millionaire Fastlane, Every single Robert Kiyasoki book, Think and Grow Rich
- How to reframe your mind to be tougher- Can’t Hurt Me
- How to be more at peace with yourself- Think Like A Monk
- What habits you should do- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
- How to live your life based on past actions and current principles- Every religious book (The Bible, Quran, Agamas, Vedas, Tanakh
- How to parent based on past traditions- Hunt, Gather, Parent
- How to find your passion- Your Blue Flame
- How to take action and achieve spiritual success- The Power of Now
- How to account for big decisions in your life- The Big No
- How to take control of your life and set boundaries- Boundaries
- Relationship advice- The 5 Love Languages, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship
- How to achieve more work in less time- Deep Work
- How to grow your online business- Dot Com Secrets
- How to manage your time- Tiny Habits, The 5AM Club, Eat that Frog!
- Setting foundational rules for life- 12 Rules for Life
- How to be more successful- every book on this list + The Power of One More
- Living in the arctic tundra- We Die Alone
- How to declutter your kitchen- Decluttering Your Kitchen in 5 Easy Steps
DO YOU SEE THIS? I know I always say this when I make lists, but this is only a fraction of the true list. What even is this “true list” I always talk about anyways? That’s an introspective question for later.
Back to the topic- there are so many things you can learn from nonfiction books. It’s education at its finest. Now, the main piece of advice I hold for nonfiction books is that, although you should try to, you don’t have to memorize every lesson from every book. You need to develop a general understanding of what actions you need to take.
Nonfiction reading provides so much education, it’s THE reason self-change exists and self-learning exists. Think of nonfiction reading as Khan Academy on steroids, you can change your life and get a school-level education for free and in 11 years less time.
I understand that my use of nonfiction can be kind of related to self-help but, just to clarify, there are many non-self-help nonfiction books that can truly change a life.
Nonfiction books’ educational value is truly something. I mean, look at all of the skills you can learn, the way of life you can cultivate to become something amazing! Nonfiction education truly is a treasure.
Thank you so much for reading this post and have a great day!
