Chasing Self-Improvement

The self-help and self-improvement industry feeds us a steady stream of content that might not ultimately help us improve much at all.

What I read: “On Self-Improvement” by Thomas J. Bevan. Published December 9, 2024.

I’ve written often about my past obsession with self-improvement, which is also often packaged under the self-help label. In “The Self-Improvement Hamster Wheel,” I wrote about the constant pursuit of self-improvement imposed by outside influences.

It’s a hamster wheel with no end because we shouldn’t simply be creatures on a never-ending quest for improvement, especially externally influenced improvement which I contend is from where most such messaging emanates. It’s not our natural internal processes nudging us to constantly consume the next self-improvement book, finally get those six-pack abs, or buy the massive luxury home. Most often it’s outside influences making us do those things.

This is not healthy. It’s bad for our mental health. It’s a no-win proposition. It’s not a good mindset to arrive at any kind of internal peace, calm, happiness, or contentment.

In “Rethinking Self-Improvement,” I reflected on a book written by Svend Brinkmann, Stand Firm: Resisting the Self-Improvement Craze (paid link) in which Brinkmann suggests we should stand firm against the ubiquitous cultural obsession with constant self-improvement.

Brinkmann makes a compelling argument that our culture has sped up to a velocity that is difficult to sustain. He contends that although it might at first glance appear to add to the burden of expectations heaped on us in recent years, we should consider learning to “stand firm,” and at least at times resist the cultural obsession with constant “development, change, transformation, innovation, learning and other dynamic concepts that infuse the accelerating culture.”

In “The Self-Improvement Strategy That Works For Me,” I laid out my own self-improvement strategy which I still stand by as working well for me. But even so, I still balk at using the “self-improvement” verbiage because I know how culturally loaded that term is.

I’ve written frequently about self-improvement and productivity topics in other places. It’s clear this stuff is probably on my mind far more than it should be.

So, what’s the current thing that’s working for me? It’s pretty simple.

It should be clearly evident that self-improvement and its associated catchphrases of productivity, personal growth, or any other branded phrase a self-appointed self-improvement expert might coin, are often idealized actions few people will take beyond consuming information about them.

So, Thomas J. Bevan’s post resonated immediately when I read it. Bevan’s post is timed to coincide with that time of year so many of us make New Year’s Resolutions or otherwise believe that simply because one year ends and another begins we’ll somehow be magically propelled into vastly better self-improvement habits. We won’t. Certainly most of us won’t.

One thing Bevan wrote really hit home for me. I’ve contended for a while that many of us should develop the skill to live more intuitively rather than living by to do lists and rigid daily practices. In “Living Intuitively,” I point out how many of us (me included) often replace doing something with preparing to do something. The emotional high we get from preparing somehow tricks us into thinking we’re already halfway there.

That’s why so many people consume mountains of self-help literature and content. They’re constantly trying to get that hard hitting blast of satisfaction that accompanies making lists, creating goals, and ticking off tasks from a checklist. I’ve certainly done that, to the point of it seriously blocking progress in my life.

In “More On Living Intuitively,” I discuss living intuitively and how our accumulated tacit knowledge allows us to better do that.

I struggled for a while with the word intuitive because it elicited an amorphous and intangible sense of mysticism, or something like that. But over time I’ve become comfortable with the word intuitive in part because it aligns with the concept of tacit knowledge we accumulate over time.

Brinkmann concurs in principle that a rabid self-improvement mindset robs us of much needed intuition.

Because all Self Improvement1 at root robs you of your intuition. It is a deferral of responsibility and nearly always an extremely clever and covert way of the mind playing a trick on you. The mind loves to procrastinate as a means of preventing change. And what better way to procrastinate than to wrap it up in the trappings of productivity?

The self-improvement industry is vast and a big money-making proposition for those embedded deep within it. The size of the industry varies by analysis, but Custom Market Insights suggests the industry is rather huge.

Global Self-Improvement Market is poised for significant growth from 2023 to 2032, driven by the increasing emphasis on personal development, mental well-being, and lifelong learning.

The market is expected to achieve a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of approximately 8% during this period. In 2023, the market is estimated to be valued at USD 41.2 Billion, projected to reach USD 81.6 Billion by 2032.

That’s a lot of monetary incentive to feed a hungry content consuming public wanting to improve ourselves. Of course, we all want to improve ourselves and our lives, but I contend only a smidgen of the self-improvement content circulating is significantly beneficial. Much of it is a single person’s perspective opining about self-improvement gleaned from that person’s experience, or simply a set of ideas constructed in their heads that they’ve concluded sound good enough to sell to others regardless of whether there’s any facts or research to support their claims.

Most of us know what we need to do to be better people and live better lives. It’s not a mystery. If we get honest, we already know the steps needed to bring about the self-improvement we claim to want to manifest. We just don’t do it and instead replace the hard doing with the easier preparing.

Here’s the thing, and a lot of often painful self reflection has taught me that this is true. At any given moment we know what the next step is. We know what needs to be done and we know how to do it. We just don’t do it. Because the mind loves the comfort of the familiar, even if the familiar situation is lacklustre, if not downright slowly killing us. The amount of seriously unhealthy people who know a staggering amount about nutrition and exercise from endless sedentary ‘research’ and ‘looking things up’ dwarfs the amount of people who actually manage to get in shape through trial and error by many orders of magnitude. The same goes for the dead broke stock market experts, filmless filmmakers who have seen the complete Criterion Collection but never shot and cut a single minute of film together and yes, the novelists who have yet to write a novel. Consuming expert opinion3 to the detriment of actually participating and finding out as you go is the procrastination method par excellence for this current era. That and memes. Experts and expertise are not the same thing. At all.

Here’s a tip from me, take it or leave it. Stop consuming so much self-help or self-improvement content whether it’s books, articles, or videos. I’m not telling you to go cold turkey and stop altogether. Some self-improvement stuff is good. For example, I read almost every post that Oliver Burkeman writes. His stuff is grounded in reality, and it's not neatly packaged, one-size-fits-all self-improvement pablum.

Burkeman also wrote one of my favorite books, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals (paid link), which I discuss at length in “Your Life Will Be Absurdly Brief.” If you want one good nonfiction book to read, I strongly suggest this one. It might change your life perspective considerably.

Bevan’s post isn’t long, and I suggest you read it in its entirety (I also recommend following him). It might save you countless wasted hours of chasing self-improvement and instead help you focus on a truly better mindset and associated actions that really matter.

Bevan ends his post with this.

These are the questions that matter. You can’t improve a self, not really, but you can refine the self that you are and let it shine forth. But first of all you have to know yourself, and to do this you have to accept yourself, and stop cultivating an image for unfeeling4 strangers.

The Self Improvement industry is the opposite of this. It’s escapism masquerading as productivity. And don’t get me wrong, escapism certainly has its place. All art and culture is in a certain sense escapist in nature. So the question is this- do you want your form of escapism to be a self flagellating and covertly egotistical masquerade of ‘hard work’ and joyless development, or do you want it to be a genuinely fun and meaningful diversion from a life that you actually enjoy living?

The answer seems obvious to me.

It seems rather obvious to me too.

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