The powerful philosopher Bruce Lee once said:

“Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it.”

Any place.

Two weeks ago I was chatting with some Finnish friends and we started talking about what we’re reading.

Someone did the unthinkable. He mentioned a self-help book! Of course, he immediately added a defensive qualifier: “I don’t agree with everything in it, of course.” Then another similar book came up, and again, the same dismissive remark had to be added: “Of course most of it does not apply.“

These discussions have been on my mind for the past couple of weeks as I’ve been trying to understand why so many people (especially academics btway) resent self-help. Or at least, they’re ashamed to talk about self-help publicly.

Even though academics tend to be the most self-sufficient folks on the planet!

I have a hunch about the reasons, of course. It’s “all just woo woo.” Not smart enough. Too pop psychology. Not rigorous enough. Not SciEnTiFic EnOugH.

Don’t judge a book by its cover.

And the book covers…oh boy do they promise! Because they must.

Who’s going to buy a “Revolutionary 5-second solution that might, or might not, work for you, or someone at least, but then again, most likely, it won’t, unless you are in exactly this life situation….?” Nobody. But that’s how we must write our publications. That’s what we’re used to. Limitations and nuance.

But publishers must promise total life transformation with zero work. Which of course sounds ridiculous, and in all fairness, is ridiculous. So the whole genre gets dismissed.

But want to know something cool? Self-help literature works. I think it just has a branding problem.

Self-help books are mostly just lists of ideas. A bundle of life-altering ideas, for the person who is in the correct space and time to receive that idea. Context matters, timing matters, luck matters.

You just could be that person.

So, in that WhatsApp chat with my friends, I had to drop my humble-but-correct opinion: “I think we need to learn to read self-help just to hunt for good ideas. Even one home run here is easily worth the $18 cost of the Kindle download.“

In Finland especially now after the “fun” inflation, that’s like… two (bad) beers. Or a half-decent lunch.

A solid idea for $18 is daylight robbery!

The Academic Trap: Over-Intellectualising Your Way Out of Help

It’s not really a radical idea that you can extract meaning and value from something imperfect. If anything, it’s a skill issue (using the youth lingo here, learned from my son.)

The best self-help is just repackaged psychology with better branding.

And I think self-help overall could use re-branding!

I remember a podcast episode where similar remarks were made about meditation… how many people never even try, because it has this woo-woo-y reputation. Call it “emotional non-reactivity training” or “the bicep curl for the brain” and many more would reap the benefits!

If you never try meditation (or self-help), you’ll never give yourself a chance to benefit. Or if you give it a chance but have already decided it’s all just bogus, your confirmation bias kicks in and you lose the fight before it even begun.

Academics are often quick to dismiss solid research when it’s presented as “pop psychology.” And that’s a shame.

Most over-intellectualise this thing.

Just read.

Find ideas that might work for you, and you alone. You’re not the population average. You’re reading for you, not them. Whatever the book says does not HAVE TO work for everyone.

Just for you. Your uniqueness makes ideas that are crazy on population level (science) perfectly valid for testing!

But in that quest for perfect scientific backing and perfect applicability, many read nothing, implement nothing, and change nothing.

Congratulations, they get to call themselves intellectuals.
The cost?
Losing out on ideas.

It’s just self-sabotage with a PhD.

Three Mindset Shifts to Get More Juice Out of Self-Help Books

A smart critical thinker (hint: you) can 100% find value from a book full of good ideas. Here’s how:

Separate the Promise From the Product

Publishers sell books with big promises because that’s how you sell things. Selling the books is their job.

Intellectually, you understand that.

“Transform your life in 21 days.” “The one habit that changes everything.“

Did you really think you could change… everything?

Good?
Good.
Now we can move past the cover.

Now. James Clear’s Atomic Habits has sold over 25 million copies.

The publisher promised life transformation through tiny habits.

The content? A solid framework for behaviour change grounded in psychology and neuroscience, with specific implementation strategies you can implement today.

You think 25 million people now have better habits?

I don’t think so. But that has nothing to do with the framework being faulty, it certainly is not. It’s just that most people don’t implement.

Are you most people?

You’re not most people.

Why would you even want to be most people?

By sticking only to what works for the population at large, you’re demoting yourself to be…the average.

You’re unique.

So be you.

When you open a book looking for one or two genuinely useful ideas you can actually use, you’ll find them. When you approach it expecting total life transformation with zero effort because that’s what the cover promised, you’ll find nothing.

You’re the Exception, so Make It Work!

Always assume you’re the outlier in the positive direction.

It’s a way to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. You’re not being arrogant, you’re being a confident optimist. Which is a good mental state to be in, by the way. Note: a state, not character trait. You can literally just program yourself to be that!

Let’s take an example again. Modern studies on bibliotherapy show it can be as effective as psychotherapy for certain conditions. 8 out of 10 readers find “self-help” useful, as long as it’s branded…bibliotherapy!

Woah.

But if you go into the same book thinking “well, this probably won’t work for me because self-help is for losers,” you’ve already opted out of the possibility of change.

The alternative?

Just assume you’re disciplined enough, self-aware enough, and totally smart enough to take any decent framework and adapt it to your context.

Because you are. You didn’t stumble into academia by accident.

You’ve already demonstrated the exact qualities needed to extract value from resources and implement strategic changes.

What are you doing at your day job? Have a critical look at that! If you can take a methods section from a paper in a different field and adapt it to your own research, you can take a habit formation framework and adapt it to your productivity challenges.

The skills are identical.

You’re just being weirdly selective about when you apply them.

Hunt for Ideas, Not Perfection

Every good self-help book gives you many useful ideas. Not all of them will land. Not all of them will apply to your situation. That’s fine.

Your job isn’t to implement everything. Your job is to scan for the 2-3 ideas that resonate and test them. Anyone who goes about their work applying the PhD Power Trio is already doing this.

Because it works. I’ve read more self-help books over the years than I care to admit.

Maybe 5% of the content in each one was genuinely useful to me.

Only 5%? No, it’s not “only.” It’s a lot! And that 5%?

Worth the investment. Manyfold.

One self-help book literally got me off meds that I was “doomed” by my doctor to eat for the rest of my life. And yes, precisely one of those books that, to this day, are “debunked” as absolute scams.

(Not joking here btw. It’s a wild story. More on that some other time.)

From the strictly “scientific consensus only” standpoint, sure, it is misleading. Maybe even a scam.

I don’t care. But imagine if I had not read the book because “it’s a scam.” Well, I would have been eating heavy prescription-strength meds for a decade now. And my life would suck a lot more, I’m 100% sure.

Hurts to even think about that option.

So. 5% useful. And 95% inspirational! And whoever dismisses a book because “it’s just inspiration porn” might have their life values a bit out of whack.

We can all use inspiration!
I love inspiration!
Who doesn’t!

Just forget the promise, and read for inspiration.

Measure your gains against “NOT reading the book.”
Not against what the publisher promises.

The easiest way in the world to extract value!

For $18 and a few hours of reading time, every single self-help book I’ve read has been an absurd return on investment.

Compare that to how you actually use research papers.

You don’t expect every paper you read to revolutionise your entire research agenda. You’re looking for useful methods, interesting findings, and theoretical frameworks you can build on. You synthesise across sources. You take what works and leave what doesn’t.

Self-help books deserve the same treatment. They’re tools, not complete solutions. Use them like the trained researcher you are: find the valuable ideas, test them empirically in your own life, keep what works, discard what doesn’t.

The Bigger Picture: Training Yourself to See Value Everywhere

Reading self-help the way I described above is great in another way. It’s training for a much more critical skill: extracting value from imperfect people, situations, and opportunities.

If you can read a book and say “okay, chapters 2 and 7 are gold, the rest doesn’t apply to me, I’m taking what I need,” you develop the mental muscle to work with difficult collaborators, learn from flawed mentors, and find opportunities in otherwise nasty situations.

Anyone can dismiss something as “not rigorous enough.” It takes zero skill to be a critic. But being able to see value in the imperfect?

That’s how you move forward.

Every research paper you’ve ever cited had limitations.

Every advisor you’ve learned from had blind spots.

Every collaborator you’ve worked with had weaknesses.

And yet you extracted value anyway because you had to.

Now apply that same intellectual generosity to your own development.