I am tired of wasting money and time on self-development books. I am talking about a broader genre, whether it is about career and business, health and wellness, relationships, or communication. They fall into the same category that this post talks about: books that give advice directly to the reader.
They are full of fillers and repetitive ideas
Self-help books are trying to bring a few main ideas to readers. If we summarize them, it may be sufficient to represent them in a few bullet points in 2-3 pages. But that breaks the essence of reading a book. If we have to pay $10 for a list of advice, we can just Google it or ask AI.
A book should try to grind the ideas into your brain in an enjoyable manner. This is the greatest challenge of writing a book of advice for readers. You need to expand these ideas to make your book a lot thicker than just 2-3 pages. If the writer is not too careful, they may expand it unnecessarily, just for the sake of thickness and to make it seem worth purchasing for $10–$20.
They are written for non-book readers with a Twitter thread style
Maybe for the sake of reaching or building a new market of readers, some books are written in a Twitter-thread style, with a lot of bullet points. Again, this breaks the true essence of reading a book. Reading bullet points may give you a quick ingestion of information, but since it is quick, it will be forgotten quickly too.
The writer should at least invest a few more paragraphs into a sub-idea, making better and more enjoyable sentences that grind the ideas into our brains.
They take examples that are too far-fetched or unrelated
Take this example: a leadership self-help book that I just read mentioned Tom Hanks. It started by mentioning his success and net worth, then went straight to Tom Hanks’ personal take on his life that led to his success.
Tom Hanks is a Hollywood royalty, not a leadership figure.
They bring unrelated ideas into the main ideas
One of the books that I read was talking about empathy. It began with the probability of a couple meeting each other, then the probability of the couple’s sperm entering the egg, then you being born and calling it a miracle. Then it asks you to think about this probability for other people and call that a miracle too in order to increase your empathy.
That is not how empathy works.
They cite other books like scientific papers
Many writers are too lazy to maintain their originality. This is the most common pattern that I find too frequently.
- The writer is trying to give you an idea or advice.
- They give you an example of why this idea makes sense. But the example is not convincing enough, so they go to step 3.
- They mention another writer like this:
Dr. Foo Bar, author of The Foo Bar, highlights some common X that Y. These include:
- They start again with a Twitter-thread style list.
They are incredibly abundant
Go to Periplus and you can find 5-6 books from different writers that are trying to sell the same ideas. They compete on three things:
- Attractive book covers
- Thickness
- Storytelling style
Waiting for you to pick the wrong books. A gamble you discover too late.
Please see the “How to hunt for a good book” section
They may be written by LLM
This is a scary era for us.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/business/media/future-of-truth-ai-quotes.html
What good self-development books look like, in my opinion
They cite scientific papers, for real
The ideas that they are talking about are supported by scientific data. The writer put some efforts on linking some researches to their writing.
They should be as thin as possible
If it is thin and you are sure that you can read it in one sitting on a cozy morning, then that’s it.
They should be written in article anthology style
A good example of this is The Psychology of Money. It breaks down a few ideas into chapters, then focuses on each chapter as an article. Each chapter can even be considered a standalone article.
They are better written by people who have actually made it in the subject
Take The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham (which is actually more of a financial textbook) or What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami. They try to tell the story of their own journey and experience.
You can trust these kind of books.
How to hunt for a good book
Should be work for all genres.
- Find the title on Goodreads. If you find nothing, skip it.
- If you find it but it has no reviews, skip it.
- Don’t look at the 4–5 star reviews, go straight to the 2–3 star reviews and read them. If the reviewers’ concerns are also your concerns, skip it.
Perhaps it is time to go back to fiction. It has been a while.
>> Home