What can anyone glean from business book-ese?

I haven't posted a lot on this site, generally, because I feel that doing so would be veering into territory I’ve always hated: writing about business like a book sold at the airport.

I’ve always been deeply skeptical of self-help books, business books, and career coaching books. It usually takes me about 5-10 pages to roll my eyes at nearly every business book I’ve ever read. It often feels like all of them fall into the following categories:

• This Collection Of Anecdotes Will 1000% Change Your Life, by Definitely Not a Wannabe Technocrat Cult Leader
• I Can Prove To You That My System Works, And To Do That, Pay Me $1000 Several Times To Learn More About How My System Works, by A Speaker At Ramada Inn Conference Rooms Around The Country
• Success In Business Is The Most Important Thing In The World And Anything Resembling Morality Is Just A Roadblock Designed To Hold You Back From Being The Sociopath You Truly Are, by The CEO Of A Fortune 500 Company.

It’s easy to suss these out immediately, and often, the most commercially successful examples are the most blatant. The podcast If Books Could Kill does an incredible job of eviscerating these kinds of books.

That’s why it’s even more frustrating when I find something in these books that legitimately improves my life. I feel like a traitor to myself and the circle I keep. But when I do get a slice of insight from a self-help or business book, it makes me feel more well-rounded in the same way I do from reading anything else.

Sturgeon’s law (the principle that 90% of writing in any genre is crap) is so over-cited at this point that I cringe even mentioning it. I feel like I’m cherry-picking a theory in exactly the same way as the business books I hate. But if I can be critical of dystopian fiction writers, sports journalists, music biographers, classic novelists, philosophers, and Op-Ed columnists (oh god, Op-Ed columnists), I can find as much in business books that I like as I can in those genres, which I tend to devour without hesitation.

I’ve had so many books recommended to me by friends and colleagues who say “I know, but”, and more often than not, they’re right. The Artist’s Way’s philosophical rigidity weirds me out, as does the obsession certain groups of people in LA have with it. But when I journal in the morning or when I can’t sleep, in the manner the book recommends, I’ll be damned if I don’t feel better every single time. Profit First features a wildly overreaching all-purpose philosophy that veers into the territory I mocked above. It also gave me tools that have genuinely improved how I handle my personal and professional finances. Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive gave me about 5–8 ways that have helped me become more persuasive.

The older I get, the more I realize that keeping an open mind and a critical eye aren’t incompatible, but in fact, symbiotic. I don’t believe any all or nothing philosophy will change my life, but I believe theoretical and practical insight, however small in scope, can be obtained from almost anything.

#businesswriting #selfhelpbooks #careercoaching #badwriting #goodwriting #linkedinposts