Book Procrastination, or Why Books Don't Change Our Lives

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Do you know people who absorb useful information in terabytes, but have not achieved success and positive changes in life? Perhaps you have also come across a situation where there was enough knowledge, but there was no movement. Why this happens and how to defeat book procrastination, we will figure it out in this article.

I came to the realization of the existence of the problem of book procrastination by reading comments on Lifehacker. There are controversial and controversial advice, there are not suitable for everyone. But there are effective universal recommendations, and I have always wondered why under an article with such advice there are comments like: "This is a button accordion!", "It does not work!" or "The author would still be …!"? Why this is happening, I understood from my coaching practice.

Among those to whom I teach, there are very rare people who are narrow-minded and not thinking. For the most part, this is a bunch of purposeful and active people. How many of them do you think will be doing a very simple training task for a week that takes no more than one minute a day? About 30%! Do you think that all attempts to achieve practical action, all persuasions, admonitions, threats and motivation make a big difference in business? Not much. If they change at all.

What happens to these 70%? Since they spent time and effort, received serious information, but did not find any changes in their lives, they are disappointed. Not in myself, but in a book, article, recommendations and the author. This threatened to rupture my consciousness, and in order to save my mind, I began to look for reasons and explanations for this behavior. Banal laziness was the first to emerge. And without her, of course, not without. But it felt that everything was more complicated, and I continued to look for reasons. As a result, there were several of them.

Why books don't change our lives

The wrong paradigm or knowledge as a goal

Unfortunately, book procrastination is growing on the rich soil of the modern cult of knowledge. And the planting of this cult begins at school, when the child receives a grade for the lesson learned and … And that's all. It does not matter what you will do with this knowledge, it does not matter whether you need it and whether it will be useful in life, whether it will make it better than you, your life or the life of others, the main thing is to know. Knowledge acts as a goal, and the one who knows is worthy of respect and honor. It breeds dissatisfied and mediocre personalities.

That is why people boast of several higher educations, honors, stuff themselves with different facts and arrogantly demonstrate their erudition in the company or comments on Lifehacker. They do not want to implement their knowledge in another way. Perhaps they do not know how and, most likely, do not even suspect that it can be done differently.

Imagine a room filled with all the tools that you have spent a lot of money and time buying, but never used and never will. Does your head look like a warehouse like this?

Knowledge is valuable and useful if we treat it not as a goal, but as a tool to achieve a goal.

Magic button

This problem, like the first, is based on a misconception about knowledge. But if in the first case the value of knowledge is exaggerated, then here they are credited with mystical properties that will miraculously change a person's life and solve all his problems even without his participation and efforts.

I know people who lie on the couch, devour books like a mosquito toad, and have been waiting for years for their lives to miraculously change. Consciously or not, they think that the knowledge gained by itself should already accomplish in their life what the book promises. And then they scold the author, book or article and call the advice "ineffective accordion".

Reading superficially or reading for the sake of plot

This is another habit that we get in childhood that gets in the way of getting practical benefits from practical books. From infancy, we are told fairy tales that, you yourself understand, have little to do with reality. As we grow up, we start reading fiction books. These are already more like reality, but still remain the invention of another person. This is how we get into the habit of not taking what the books contain seriously.

We can understand that the author has conducted more than one hundred studies and has many years of experience on the topic of the book, but our model of attitude to the content of what we read, whether we like it or not, is formed on the basis of our attitude to the fruits of someone else's fantasy.

And the maximum that fairy tales, fiction and other fables usually give are moral teachings. They do not call, with rare exceptions, for some kind of change in real life and even less often give effective advice for these changes, because in essence they are created for entertainment, not change.

Information noise and oversaturation

Information noise interferes with concentration and practical application of the knowledge gained. He keeps us in constant fear that we might be missing out on something effective and useful. As a result, we are not engaged in changing ourselves and our lives, but are constantly collecting, analyzing and sorting more and more new methods and advice.

Perhaps, in addition to the reasons listed above, there are others, but often it is more important to know not the cause of the problem, but its solution. Let's look at four ways to overcome book procrastination.

How to help yourself change your life by reading books

1. A paradigm shift- this is one of the few cases where simple knowledge can change your life. But even here you can give practical advice and take concrete actions.

Find ways to motivate yourself to value only practical knowledge. For example, analyze how much practical advice you received, how much you implemented, and how much it has changed. Of course, in this case, we are not talking about specific numbers, but at least an approximate amount is available to everyone. And then try to imagine how your life would change and what success you would achieve if you applied all the tips in practice. Or think about how stupid and pointless it is to waste time and money on a book without taking any advice from it.

2. Take the simplest practical advice and try it at the earliest opportunity. If the book is smart, it will work, and it will inspire you to try others as well. Remember, there will always be a temptation to ignore very simple advice. This is because it seems to us that simple tips lead to small results, so they should not be wasted time. But, as it is argued, it is often small changes that lead to colossal changes.

3. Create a kind of database of practical advice (BDPS) … Enter in it all the recommendations found in books and articles. If you already keep the ideas and thoughts that you like with their novelty or beauty, then still create a separate database only for practical advice, because you will need to work with it almost every day.

And then everything is very simple: you open the BDPS, choose an advice - if you cannot consciously, then at random - and practice it for one day, week or month. The duration depends on the type of advice. There are investment tips, the results of which are visible over time. These include, for example, marketing tips. And there are tips that instantly give results. For example, the “fly on the wall” technique from the book instantly helps (tested on myself) to pull myself together so as not to be rude, shout or be offended.

BDPS can be created without any structure, or it can be divided into areas of life: marketing, relationships, speed reading, foreign languages, running, and so on. So we will be able to simultaneously master several items from our database. After you realize that the advice is not suitable for you, or brought its use to automatism and turned into a habit, move on to the next one.

If you read books on a tablet or smartphone, use an electronic organizer and know how to use the Share button, then it will take you no more than two minutes to create a BDPS.

4. Do not wait when you collect all the methods, tools and life hacksto start changing your life fundamentally. Tell yourself: "Just a little is immeasurably more than nothing" - choose even the first piece of advice that comes across, but choose and start implementing it as soon as possible. Better yet, create this opportunity yourself.

Take action!

In conclusion, I want to say that this article does not pretend to be completeness and infallibility. Therefore, if you have additions, your own methods and personal experience of combating book procrastination or disagreement, share it all in the comments. Together we will look for solutions “on paper” so that life changes in reality.

And do not forget that you already have four points for the BDPS.