11 Simple Rules of All Self-Help Books

Stumbled on a brilliant article — every self-help book ever, boiled down to 11 simple rules (archive). It all started with the first-ever self-help book aptly titled Self-Help by Samuel Smiles released in 1859. Read the book at Project Gutenberg.

Here are the eleven points condensed in the article, reproduced verbatim;

1. Take one small step at a time. The best way to get big results is to make tiny, continuous changes to daily habits. This is the ever-popular Japanese term Kaizen (改善). Learn to make your daily practice “too small to fail.”
2. Change your mental maps. In achieving any goal, you have to thoroughly visualize your preferred end result, then work backwards in precisely-planned steps. The planning part is key. The plan is how you get to your goal, and the process may take years. You’re playing the long game.
3. Struggle is good. Scary is good. Once you accept this, the next level is not simply to expect it — but to rush headlong into the things that make you afraid.
4. Instant judgment is bad. Call it empathy, call it compassion, call it playing devil’s advocate, call it examining your privilege. It’s all one and the same purpose — avoiding a rush to judgment about your fellow humans.
5. Remember the end of your life. We’re going to die, the inane squabbles of daily life tend to fall away, revealing a sudden clarity of purpose. Memento mori is an artistic or symbolic trope acting as a reminder of the inevitability of death.
6. Be playful and have fun. No matter how difficult your task is, you can always make it playful. Have fun.
7. Be useful to others. Find the thing that makes you you, then use it in a way that will help as much of humanity as possible: This is as close as we get to the meaning of life.
8. Perfectionism = procrastination Perfect results are impossible in this world, so if you’re expecting them, of course you’re going to procrastinate. In traditional Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi (侘び寂び) is a world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of appreciating beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete” in nature.
9. Sleep, exercise, eat, chill out. Repeat. Have a routine, be disciplined, and do them regularly.
10. Write it down. You need to hone a plan. You need to visualize. You need to make lists. You need to write it down. Capture literally everything you think you might have to do or want to do, now or in the future.
11. You can’t get it all from reading. Get out there and do it.