Why Reading Self-Help Books Won’t Make You Successful.
“The toxic world of self-help: a world surrounded by toxic positivity, self-help addiction, fake gurus, and hustle culture.” — James Jani
In 2014, I was just a junior in college when I read my first entrepreneurship book, Rich Dad Poor Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki. Up until that point, my sole desire was to become an attorney, work for a Big Law Firm, and climb the ladder to become a partner at Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher, a global law firm I had been eyeing for several months.
Reading that book, however, created a complete and permanent mind shift within me and planted a seed for what I would eventually want to become: an entrepreneur.
Hungry for more of Kiyosaki’s message, I read more and more of his books and eventually branched out to other gurus and their books on entrepreneurship. I call these self-help books “success” books because of the wild success these entrepreneurs achieved and my belief, that by reading and learning how these entrepreneurs achieved their success, I’d eventually become successful too.
However, by 2018 and about 20 books later, I realized that virtually nothing had changed about my entrepreneurial dreams since reading those books.
The problem was that I kept relying on my subconscious belief that if I only read “this success book,” and its “secret blueprint” and “hacks” then everything would dramatically change for me! I’d finally learn everything I needed to know to become a successful entrepreneur and become a successful, high-earning entrepreneur very quickly.
This subconscious belief, however, was getting me nowhere. I had to face the truth that these books were intended for mindset makeovers, and were not step-by-step workbooks for business.
Furthermore, I knew if I wanted to give myself any real chance of becoming a successful entrepreneur, 80% of my time needed to be spent taking meaningful action that solves my problems, moves my needle, yield results, and crushes my goals.
Today, I spend less time reading “success books” and more time taking action.
Not the kind of action that makes you feel like you’re being productive but yields very little results and amounts to nothing more than busywork. I mean the type of action that moves the needle in your business or career goals — problem-solving.
Here’s what this process looks like for me:
Each day I wake up committed to solving the problems in front of me. To avoid overwhelm, however, I confront and tackle one problem at a time and try to not move on or put too many more problems on my plate until I’ve resolved the first problem. When I need to learn how to do something or learn how to do something better in order to overcome my problem, I turn to articles and books that specifically teach me how to resolve that problem.
By doing this, I have been able to move my needle closer to achieving my entrepreneurial goals.
Multimillionaire and Author of The Millionaire Fastlane, MJ DeMarco, recommends that you do the same thing too. Specifically, on a podcast, he said, “the next book you should read is the book that will get you to the next step.”
Other reasons why you should focus on problem-solving are that it will help you build momentum in crushing your career or entrepreneurial goals, it will make you extremely productive, and it will help build confidence within you that “you can do it” because “you did it,” which are all very important in increasing your probability for success.
How Becoming a Problem-Solver Has Helped Me Achieve a Major Roadblock in My Entrepreneurial Goals:
1. Identifying my problem: Several months ago, I decided that I wanted to create a powerful product that would be able to help unsatisfied employees quit their unfulfilling jobs and pursue their career or business goals. The problem that I had was that I had no idea how to create a physical product.
2. I did some research to solve my specific problem. In order to tackle this problem, I went to Google and searched “how to create a physical product,” and pulled up the first long, in-depth article I could find on the topic. Reading the article, I discovered other problems in the form of unknown concepts, logistics, and action steps that I needed to learn more about. By way of example, I had no idea what a “manufacturer” or a “supplier” was, and whether there was a difference; or the difference between a “mock-up” and a “prototype.” This example is a good reminder that you won’t know what you don’t know if you don’t confront your problems. However, through research, you’ll be able to uncover the unknowns and tread the learning curve faster.
3. Then, I set milestones for myself: Once I figured out “how” to create a physical product, I wrote down and set monthly milestones to help me tackle each part of the process. Breaking up my very big problem into monthly milestones made it easier for me to stay focused, productive, and keep the needle moving.
Unfortunately, when reading a “success” book, you get all the information at once and if you’re not disciplined enough to take one step at a time, you’ll likely be pushed into inaction and then your book becomes another “inspiring” success book collecting dust on your bookshelf or another forgotten book in your Kindle library.
To prevent that from happening, and if that book speaks specifically to your current problem, take the concepts of your book and break them down into small, achievable action steps with a firm deadline, so you are making meaningful progress toward your goal(s).
4. I made adjustments when needed. Because it was my first time creating a physical product, I terribly underestimated how much time I would need to create a working product design. As such, I gave myself grace and adjusted my weekly and monthly milestone deadlines to a more realistic one.
Make sure you give yourself a grace period in order to factor in some unknowns or setbacks that may come up in your business or career endeavors.
5. Fast forward after taking massive action, my result: I did it. After several months of working through the problems and reaching each milestone, I created an awesome planner according to the steps I took to leave my job as an attorney to pursue the business of my dreams.
So I encourage you to do more problem-solving. It’s what has made some of the most admired entrepreneurs of our time successful too — their ability to problem solve.
I’d love to hear what has helped you achieve success in your entrepreneurial or career goals. What has helped you keep the needle moving?
