Why I Stopped Reading Self-Help Books

It all started with How to Win Friends and Influence People. To this day, this is the book that I recommend to every single one of my supervisees and basically anyone I meet who is trying to become a better leader.

After Dale Carnegie, I moved to a book on habit stacking. And then a book on productivity. And then a book on how habit stacking productivity made me a millionaire. And then a book on how all the productivity gurus were wrong, and you ACTUALLY only had to work 4 hours a week to become a millionaire (spoiler alert: Tim Ferriss works way more than 4 hours a week).

On and on, I dove down this self-help, biohacking, productivity-worshipping rabbit hole. From the age of 18 to 24, I read dozens of these books and listened to even more.

And honestly, they helped.

I think that a lot of my early confidence and career success came down to my early reading of these books. While those around me were worried about asking for a $5k raise, I had already read three books on how 75% of people will get a raise if they just ask, always ask for double, and the worst they can say is no. (Try it; you will make more money).

So, what changed?

Consuming information as a procrastination tool

I realized that the consumption of knowledge was my own procrastination tool, and the idea that there was “just one more nugget of info” in a book that was going to change my perspective on things was false.

After I finished one particularly well-reviewed book series (Russell Brunson’s Expert Secrets series), I realized that from the time I started reading to the time I ended, nothing changed in my life.

• Even though I learned all about the perfect email funnel, I had not sent any emails.
• Even though I read about the perfect video sales letter, I had recorded no content.
• And most of all, even though I had read the success stories of dozens of entrepreneurs just like me… I had made no money.

My life was the same, and while I gained a bit of knowledge, I took no action; I simply procrastinated.

What I do now

Now, instead of consuming information, I take action, collect data, and reevaluate. And I do it fast. In fact, if you were to ask me the #1 reason I scaled the Digital Marketing Agency 500% faster than the Behaviorist Bookclub, I would say it’s because the mistakes that took me 4 years to make in the Bookclub, I made in 4 months with the marketing agency.

Here are some examples:

• Instead of watching videos and reading books about mastering short form, I have published 1,250 pieces of content over the last 2 months and tracked the data daily.
• Instead of reading a 700-page book on “Mastering Cold Email Copywriting,” I have sent 450 cold emails daily to my target audience (for the last month), split-testing offers, copy, and tracking reply and close rates.
• Instead of reading 3 books on how to close high-ticket deals, I took every sales call I could get, recorded as many as possible, and tracked the close rate.

And sure, some of those early sales calls were probably awful, and if I had a bit more information I would have done better… But the next 50? The next 100? There is no way I would have the confidence and sales style I have now without taking those calls. Information didn’t get me there; action did.

Trying to find a middle ground

At this point, I think I have leaned almost too far into this bias towards action. Consider this writing challenge! Instead of reading books about better copywriting, I decided to commit to writing 5k+ words a week for months to accomplish the same goal! I absolutely believe that the writing will get me farther than the reading, but maybe there is a comfortable middle ground where I still do the work, but I also consume some info, too.

If we were to create a number line from negative one to positive one, with -1 being total information consumption and +1 being total action, right now I think I am around 0.8. I lean HEAVILY into action, to the point where I actually don’t pursue marketing channels (door-to-door, for example) that do not allow me to leverage massive action to move fast. I am not sure if on that number line, it would be better to be at 0, or 0.5, or even -0.5.

What I do know is that, given the option between taking action and consuming information, I have had a hell of a lot of both personal and business success taking craptons of action.