Why 90 percent of self-help is useless

Wow. There's a title with some chutzpah. Here I am, writing what is essentially a self-help blog about becoming a real adult, and I've just asserted that most self-help doesn't do any good. Where do I get off saying that? And what, if anything, makes this blog different?

Let's take those questions one at a time, shall we?

I'm hardly the first person to notice -- nor will I be the last -- that self-help has become a huge and very lucrative industry. Considering the vast quantities of self-help books, movies, blogs (ehem), magazines, seminars, etc. at our disposal, every living person on earth ought to be an expert at everything by now. Yet people continue to buy books, attend seminars and pick up self-hypnosis kits with one goal in mind: shedding their personal insecurities and becoming better than they are today. It's almost as though some people are addicted to the idea of self-improvement.

The question is, after shooting up their self-help fix, do these people actually see any improvement in themselves?

David Wong of Cracked.com has written a clever (if somewhat profane) article that cuts to the heart of this problem: How 'The Karate Kid' Ruined The Modern World. Way too many of us think of skills to be mastered as though they were a 30-second training montage from an action film. In real life, the effort you must expend to master a skill is measured in months or years -- but in entertainment it's always edited down to a quick montage because, hey, watching people practice stuff is boring. Yet the brevity of these montages subtly encourages us to think we can become experts in less time than it takes to talk about it -- and later, we curl up and wail like infants when we find out that gaining expertise in a discipline requires a much bigger investment of time and effort.

We tend to read self-help books with the unconscious belief that reading is all that's required for us to enjoy the promised success, rather than actually getting off our duffs and doing what the books say to do. Worse, many of the people who write self-help materials deliberately exploit this widespread belief that success is effortless. (Think about titles like The 4-Hour Workweek, Think and Grow Rich, and 59 Seconds: Think A Little, Change A Lot. They all point to the idea that personal change is easy and fast.) Even the media hop on board, perpetuating myths such as the "overnight success" of a suddenly-popular artist or band (ignoring the years of toiling in obscurity that an artist or band endured before making it big) or the idea that "natural talents" like Mozart emerged from the womb ready to write The Marriage of Figaro (hint: he didn't).

Here's a simple rule of thumb regarding success. If someone is making wheelbarrow-loads of cash doing something, you can pretty much count on one or both of these being true:

1. It required a combination of significant time, effort and talent to get there.
2. Something illegal is going on.

If Academy Award-level acting were easy, everyone would have an Oscar gathering dust on the mantelpiece. If it were trivially simple to learn speed skating or ice dancing, you'd see Winter Olympics medals being donated to Goodwill. And if everyone had what it took to become a neurosurgeon, brain surgeries would be a whole lot cheaper. Since you don't see these things, it's safe to assume that certain very lucrative activities require a certain base level of talent combined with a whopping crapload of effort, consistently applied over a very long time.

OK, so you get it. It's not enough to know your stuff. Reading self-help books doesn't make you successful, any more than smelling shampoo will give you clean hair.  The point is, no amount of reading is going to do you any good unless you actually get up and DO. IT.

So why is this blog different from other self-help?

Well, for one thing, because I'm telling you outright: The stuff I'm teaching you isn't always easy, and it isn't always fast.  It also requires more than just passive reading -- it requires consistent activity.  In other words, don't just read this blog for pleasure, GET OFF YOUR LAZY BUTT AND DO THIS STUFF.

When I write an entry on this blog -- say, an article on the basics of personal hygiene -- here's the behavior I expect from you, the reader:

1. Read carefully. Smile at the snark, if it pleases you (and I hope it does).
2. Review the points of the article to make sure you remember what you read.
3. ACTUALLY TAKE A FREAKING BATH.

That's it. In this case, it's literally lather, rinse, repeat until you've mastered the art of bathing.

Look, I don't expect you to master all this stuff next week. Becoming an adult does take time and work. But I do expect you to pick an article, read it, and PRACTICE THE STEPS until the skill becomes second nature to you. It may be hard at first, but it does get easier with practice -- so although I'm not going to tell you it's easy, I can definitely tell you that it's worth the effort.

Otherwise, if you don't bother to do anything with the information you learn here, this blog becomes part of the useless 90 percent of self-help materials, rather than the 10 percent that actually helps people effect change for the better.

But remember this: only your efforts determine which materials make up that useful 10 percent for you.

Act wisely, won't you?

How to find time

So, you're not one to brag or anything, but you've got skills. You know about emptying the junk drawer and rooting under the sofa cushions to round up enough change for a late-night Taco Bell run. You know how to find virtually anything online with your keenly-developed sense of Google Fu. You know exactly where to pop some tags when you only have $20 in your pocket.

But do you know how to find extra time?

Our society is full of people, adult or otherwise, who are constantly scrambling to find time to get things done. Most of them would tell you they have no free time available. And most of them would be wrong. If you really look at your waking hours and notice how they're used, you ought to be able to find a number of places in your busy day where valuable extra time is hiding out like a bicentennial quarter in a La-Z-Boy.

Let's take a look at some time-mining strategies, shall we?

Don't let things hang over your head. Got some project you're putting off indefinitely? *BZZT* Wrong! Endlessly procrastinating when you know you should be working on something is a surefire way to burn daylight for no good purpose. I know whereof I speak, since I'm a champion procrastinator; in my case, it's usually fear of failure that makes me stall out. If that's your problem too, try giving yourself permission to screw up -- as long as you keep working at it.

Start early or work late, but not both. Face it, some people are early birds; others are night owls. It may be hardwired into our brains to be one or the other. You could try to fight your programming, or you could make it work for you. If you prefer to get up early and work in the small hours when most people are still sleeping, go ahead on. (Just make sure your house or apartment is insulated against noise if you decide to vacuum at 5 a.m. Your neighbors will appreciate it.) On the other hand, if it's easier to stay up really late and work when everyone else is going to bed, do that instead. (And remember to put on the headphones if you want to enjoy some rousing death metal at 2 a.m.) But whichever method you choose, choose only one method. Getting up early and going to bed late all the time is colloquially known as "burning the candle at both ends." It's also known as "stupid." Burning yourself out is no way to get anything done. Besides, going into a sleep-deprivation coma takes up a whole lot of time.

Do things while you're waiting. Stuck in a soulless laundromat while your clothes flop lazily in the dryer? Bring a pencil and notebook with you and start writing down ideas or making sketches of current or future projects. Spending quality time with the DMV for the next two hours? Take along some portable project to work on (I knit socks). Phone company just put you on hold? Might as well fold that laundry or empty the dishwasher. Commuting to work by train or bus? What could you be doing with that half-hour-plus of free time? You get the idea. Modern life is filled with unavoidable waiting times; if you plan for them, you can use these spaces in your day to get needful stuff done and out of your way. (Or you can use them to become more literate. Using his smartphone and the Kindle app, which offers a library of classic book titles free of charge, Captain Midnight has read over a dozen classics of English literature in the last two years. He pops open his latest read any time he has more than 60 seconds to wait.)

Make your errands work double duty. During the gas crunch of the 1970s (yes, I'm old enough to remember that. Shut up, punk kid), people tried saving gas by looking over their errands, identifying and grouping together things that could all be done within a particular area, and accomplishing as many tasks as possible in one run. Even if you're not trying to save gas, errand planning can save you time -- especially if you can also plan out your errands to avoid the worst traffic times of the day.

Automate and delegate. Ever since I set up my checking account to pay my rent bill automatically, I don't have to take the time to do it any more. Doing that with all my fixed-cost utilities would save me even more time. If I sat down and thought about it, I could probably find many repetitive tasks I do weekly or monthly, and find ways to automate them -- everything from home grocery delivery to once-a-month cooking to planned laundry days.

And in situations where you value your time more than your money, things that can't be automated can often be delegated -- in other words, hire somebody else to do it for you. This isn't just a trick for celebrities and power brokers -- these kinds of services are available to everyone, and many of them cost less than you might think, especially if you shop around. Once when she was on a very tight production schedule, a friend of mine hired a professional maid service to come clean the house for her, allowing her to focus completely on her work. In that situation, she felt it was worth it to spend some money so she could free up her time.

During crunch times, turn off all electronic time-suckers for 24 hours. That means broom the TV, the game system, the computer and the cell phone. They can vacuum up huge amounts of time on the sly. When you're not tweaking Facebook or playing endless rounds of Words with Friends on your smartphone, big rolling vistas of time seem to open up in your schedule. You don't have to do this every day, but when you really need to get something done fast, temporarily getting the electronics out of your face is an easy way to free up a good chunk of time.

Don't be afraid to say no sometimes. If you have no time because you're constantly agreeing to do things for or with other people, start taking a few rain checks or just flat turning them down (politely, of course). If it makes you feel nervous or you still feel pressure to participate, consider: you have limited time on earth, and you have every right to decide how to spend your precious time in the way you think best. Don't let people walk over you -- stand up for your own life!

Make like Ferris Bueller and give yourself a day off. This might not make sense to some of you at first. "I'm trying to find time, not waste it!" But if you're religious, you probably already know the personal side benefits that come from having a day of rest every week. Even if you're not religious, you need to designate a day off to rest, recharge and prepare for the week ahead. Unless you have an emergency on-call job like firefighter, police officer or doctor, DO NOT let work intrude on this day off. (Time to practice your newfound "saying no" skills.) I promise you will start seeing a positive difference in your sense of personal peace and your attitude toward life within a few weeks.

Now you know how to find extra time to do all sorts of things. So, in the classically eloquent words of Mr. Daniel Lawrence Whitney, "GIT-R-DONE!"