Richard Wiseman’s latest book, 59 Seconds, is a scientific perspective on the self-help movement. From the book description:
A psychologist and best-selling author gives us a myth-busting response to the self-help movement, with tips and tricks to improve your life that come straight from the scientific community.
Richard Wiseman has been troubled by the realization that the self-help industry often promotes exercises that destroy motivation, damage relationships, and reduce creativity: the opposite of everything it promises. Now, in 59 Seconds, he fights back, bringing together the diverse scientific advice that can help you change your life in under a minute, and guides you toward becoming more decisive, more imaginative, more engaged, and altogether more happy.
From mood to memory, persuasion to procrastination, resilience to relationships, Wiseman outlines the research supporting the new science of “rapid change” and, with clarity and infectious enthusiasm, describes how these quirky, sometimes counterintuitive techniques can be effortlessly incorporated into your everyday life. Or, as he likes to say: “Think a little, change a lot.”
Sounds really interesting. Anyone read it yet? If so, what did you think?
I got the audio book to listen to from Barnes and Noble and it made the ride to and from work very enjoyable.
Just ordered from Amazon UK.
Is this a self-help book? Words like science/scientific in a book description sounds like just a marketing angle. Then it goes on to promising a quick fix…
Wiseman is a veteran of the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, and he’s led several science programs. He’s one of us.
I got the book from the library recently. It’s really pretty good. He reads through a lot of the psychology literature and tries to boil some of what he’s learned into little exercises that you can do.
I could have done without all the material on attraction and speed dating, though. Felt a little off somehow.
So he goes against self-help… by writing self-help.
Fun.
I’ve read it. It’s honestly good since it approaches the problems or situations from a no-BS, scientific perspective. And the tips/insights are mostly helpful and easy to implement. You wonder why you didn’t figure them out yourself, d’oh …
I’d recommend it. It’s definitely not the usual self-help bull.
Re: “Now, in 59 Seconds, he fights back, bringing together the diverse scientific advice that can help you change your life in under a minute, and guides you toward becoming more decisive, more imaginative, more engaged, and altogether more happy.”
In what way, exactly, is this not itself a self-help book? The way this description reads, it could have been applied to just about any self-help book.
I can only assume 1) The book is a parody of self-help books and the description is a kind-of lead in to the joke; or 2) It is actually just another self-help book, which is pumping itself up by promising to be better than all the rest of the self-help books.
PsiCop:
Yes, it is a self-help book. But without the bull. He offers intelligent, evidence- and research based advice and tips.
Just like you would get, at times, from random (clever!) people. He just aggregates them all in one book.
You should read it. And then judge. It’s not good to ALWAYS be a skeptic, you might miss out on good things ;)
It is fundamentally self-contradictory to write a self-help book which is, itself, a self-help book, yet which also condemns self-help books. Sorry, but you can’t do both. It’s like saying, “I always lie.” Anything that ever comes after that, can never be trusted.
As for whether or not I will read it, given what I know about it … that it’s based on a self-contradictory premise … I don’t see how or why it would even come near being worth my time to read.
As it is, I have FAR too many reading options open to me. I already have to do “triage” regarding what I plan to read. This book’s paradoxical premise does not merit my time. If the author thought he was being clever by pulling a “Norman” … too bad for him. No sale.
Huh? Why can’t you write a serious self-help book that points out (and proves) the bull of the other-self help books while showing up proven and effective tips itself??
You’re assuming that ALL self-help and EVERYTHING connected to self-help is bogus and can’t really help? But that’s a silly assumption since I guess you use tips and tricks in your life too, that you either have seen, heard or experienced yourself. So what’s the difference?
But hey, you sound like you have figure out the world anyway, so what possibly could you learn or gain from that book? ;)
Dumb people like me on the other hand have appreciated some of the real-world, down-to-earth kind of insights and tips from that book.
“It’s not good to ALWAYS be a skeptic, you might miss out on good things”
I think you have some misconceptions about what it means to be a skeptic and to take a skeptical attitude. It certainly does not mean being unwilling to accept something, or, in this case, denying the usefulness of a “self-help” book simply because most other self-help books are bullshit. A skeptical outlook simply entails giving a fair analysis of both sides of an issue – in this case, it means refraining from uncritically accepting this book, despite the fact that doing so would probably give you a short term burst of hope and excitement for the quick fixes the blurb promises.
Based on Richard Wiseman’s skeptical credibility, and what I have read and seen and heard of him in the past, I am hopeful that this book will contain scientifically accurate and useful information, so I am going to give it a try. If, upon reading it, I find that it does not in fact have adequate scientific sources and simply offers vague, unproven methods like the other “self-help” books that have rightfully earned scorn among skeptics, then I will discard this book along with the rest. That is what it means to be skeptical.
As for the apparent hypocrisy of a self-help book criticizing self-help books, I agree that it appears dubious, and the marketing is somewhat off. However, it is perfectly reasonable to criticize the way most self-help books typically operate, and then write a better self-help book. Wiseman isn’t saying that it’s impossible to offer any advice for making people’s lives better, and then offering such advice himself. He’s just saying that most self-help books offer advice that is completely unfounded, and as it turns out, sometimes detrimental, and he’s then offering his own advice that is in fact supported by evidence. The marketing should have made this clearer.
I agree. And your decision to judge the book a posterio, and not a prioro like PsyCop, seems much more rational and wiser.
The whole “you can’t condemn self-help books by writing a self-help book” response is a good example of how a point of view rooted in unsupported assumptions can prevent someone from dealing effectively with reality.
It’s simplistic and inaccurate to say the author of _59 Seconds_ opposes or condemns self-help books.
_59 Seconds_ does advocate against slack-jawed, wide-eyed adoption of self-help systems rooted in nothing more than hype and anecdotal evidence.
As an alternative to these, _59 Seconds_ offers small, quick, easy-to-implement lifestyle changes based on well-documented, frequently-replicated, peer-reviewed study.
It may also be useful to distinguish between the marketing copy — not written by the author — and the actual content of the book.
Really? Nice to know.
Me, well, I wouldn’t buy the book marketed. One, because the aforementioned ad reads as little more than the usual bs self-help books explore. If the author says nothing of the sort, good for him, but his marketing is doing it wrong (or right, if you’re into that kind of thing).
Whatever you say, man.
Wow, I thought I would never have a real life opportunity to say: don’t judge a book by its cover.
It seems the book is based on this blog: http://59seconds.wordpress.com/ It’s fairly interesting reading so far