Do you read books on self-development, business or improving efficiency? Not? Perfectly. And don't start.
Still reading? Do not do what is suggested in these books. You are welcome. Otherwise, become a drug addict. Like me.
Donarkoman period
Until I read books, I was happy. Moreover - I was really effective, productive, talented and, most importantly, unstoppable (I don’t know how best to translate into Russian).
Everything worked out for me. Everything turned out better for me than for others.
At school I studied best in class. So good that I was transferred externally from fifth to sixth grade. In the new class, I also became the best. After the 9th grade, I went to study in the city (before that I lived in the village), to the best lyceum (with a bias in mathematics and computer science), and there I became the best student.
I participated in all kinds of foolish things, like Olympiads, I won the city in history, computer science, the Russian language, and 3rd place in mathematics. And all this - without preparation, just like that, on the go, without studying anything beyond the school curriculum. Well, except that I studied history and computer science on my own initiative, because I really liked them (here, in fact, nothing has changed so far). As a result, I graduated from school with a silver medal (there was a four in Russian, because in the tenth grade, the teacher slapped me at once two deuces for an apple tree drawn on the fields of a notebook).
I never experienced any special problems at the institute. Everything was easy, especially when I realized how everything is arranged here - well, you just need to prepare in time. He did everything that was necessary, and not only for himself - term papers for money, went to take exams for correspondence students. In the fourth year I decided to go to bachelor's degree, got a red diploma, then changed my mind, returned to engineers - now I have two red diplomas in one specialty.
In his first job he grew as fast as no one else. Then the 1C programmers were measured by the number of 1C certificates: Specialist, there were five in total, in the office - a maximum of two per person. I got all five in the first year. A year after the start of work, he was already the technical manager of the largest project for the implementation of 1C in the region - and this is at 22!
I did everything intuitively. I never listened to anyone's advice, no matter how authoritative the source was. He did not believe if they told me that this was impossible. I just took it and did it. And it worked out.
And then I met drug addicts.
First addicts
The first drug addict I met was the owner, who is also the director of the company — my first job. He constantly studied - went to trainings, seminars, courses, read and quoted books. He was, what is called an inactive drug addict - he didn’t drag anyone into his religion, didn’t impose books, practically didn’t even offer to read anything.
It was just that everyone knew that he was fond of “this crap”. But this was perceived as a sweet hobby, because the company was successful - the best 1C partner in the city in all respects. And since a person built a better company, then figs with him, let him read his little books.
But I felt the first cognitive dissonance even then. It is very simple: what is the difference between a person who reads books, listens to courses, attends trainings, and a person who does not do all this?
You see two people. One is reading, the second is not. Logic suggests that there should be some obvious, objective difference. Moreover, it does not matter which of them will be better - but there should be a difference. But she was gone.
Well, yes, the company is the most successful in the city. But not at times - by units, maybe by tens of percent. And the competition is not waning, and constantly something new needs to be invented. The company does not have any super-mega-duper advantages, gleaned from books that would leave competitors out of work.
And the leader who read the books is not very different from others. Well, softer he is, simpler - so, go on, his personal qualities. He was like that before books. He sets the tasks in much the same way, asks similarly, he develops the company in the same directions as the competitors.
What for then to read books, to go to seminars, courses and trainings? Then I could not explain this to myself, so I simply accepted it for granted. Until he tried it.
My first dose
True, there was still a zero dose - the first book that can be attributed to business literature, albeit with a big stretch. It was the "Russian Management Model" by Prokhorov. But, nevertheless, I leave this book outside the brackets - it is rather a study, with hundreds of links and quotes. Well, it doesn’t stand in one row even with the recognized bigwigs of the information business. Dear Prokhorov Alexander Petrovich, your book is an ageless, ingenious masterpiece.
So, the first self-development book that I met was Vadim Zeland's “Transerfing of Reality”. In general, the history of our acquaintance is pure coincidence. Someone brought her to work, moreover, an audiobook. I am ashamed to admit, until that moment, I have not heard a single audiobook in my life. Well, I decided to listen, just out of curiosity for the format.
And so it captured me ... And the book is interesting, and the reader is insanely good - Mikhail Chernyak (he voices several characters in Smeshariki, Luntik - in short, cartoons of The Mill). My role was played by the fact that, as I later learned, the audio, i.e. I perceive information best of all.
In short, I hung on this book for several months. Listened at work, listened at home, listened in the car, again and again. This book replaced me with music (at work I always have headphones). I could neither come off nor stop.
I have developed a dependence on this book - both on the content and on the performance. However, I really tried to apply everything that is written in it. And, unfortunately, it turned out.
I will not retell what needs to be done there - it is necessary to read, I can’t convey in a nutshell. But I started to get the first results. And, of course, I quit - I do not like to finish what I started.
This is where abstinence syndrome began, i.e. breaking
Breaking
If you had or have any kind of addiction, like smoking, then you should be familiar with this feeling: fuck I started?
After all, he lived for himself normally, and did not know grief. I ran, jumped, worked, ate, slept, and then - on you, also addicted to feed. But time / effort / loss to satisfy addiction is only half the trouble.
The real problem, in the context of books, is an understanding of realities of different levels. I’ll try to explain, although I’m not sure what will turn out.
Let's say the same "Transerfig of reality". If you do what is written in the book, then life becomes more interesting and fuller, and quite quickly - in a few days. I know, I tried it. But the key is if done.
If you do, then you begin to live in a new reality that you have never been to before. Life plays with new colors, blah blah blah, everything becomes joyful and interesting. And then you drop it and return to the reality that was before reading the book. That, but not that.
Before reading the book, “that reality” seemed to be the norm. And now she seems dull shit. But following the recommendations of the book does not have enough strength, desire, something else - in short, it doesn’t.
And so you sit and understand: life is shit. Not because she is really shit, but because he himself, with his own eyes, saw the best version of his life. I saw and abandoned, returned to the former. And because of this it becomes unbearably hard. And so breaking begins.
But breaking up is something like a desire to return to a state of euphoria, to return to its previous state. Well, as with a smoke or booze - you continue to do this for years, in the hope of returning to the state that was at the first use.
As I remember now, I tried beer for the first time when I was in the regional center at the informatics Olympiad. In the evening we went with some guy from another school, bought a nine at the stall, drank, and it was so cool - it was beyond words. Similar emotions were from funny drunks in a hostel - energy, uplift, desire to have fun until the morning, e-gay!
Similarly with the smoke. Each, of course, is different, but I still remember with pleasure the nights in the hostel. All the neighbors are already sleeping, and I'm sitting and cherishing something in Delphi, Builder, C ++, MATLAB or assembler (I just didn’t have my own computer, I worked at the neighbor while the owner was sleeping). Just one solid buzz - you program, sometimes you drink coffee, and you run to smoke.
So, the subsequent years of smoking and booze are simply attempts to return those emotional experiences. But alas, this is not possible. However, this does not stop from smoking and booze.
The same with books. You recall the euphoria from reading, from the first changes in life, when you were breathtaking, and trying to return ... No, not the first changes, but the euphoria from reading. Stupidly take and read again. The second time, third, fourth, and so on - until you stop perceiving at all. This is where the real addiction begins.
Real addiction
I must admit right away that I am a bad drug addict who defies the main trend - increasing the dose. However, I saw a lot of good addicts.
So, do you want to return the state of euphoria that you experienced when reading the book. You read it again - the sensations are not the same, because you know what will happen in the next chapter. What to do? It’s clear to read something else.
It took me seven years to get from Transerfing Reality to “something else”. Second on the list was Jeff Sutherland's Scrum. And here I, like the previous time, made the same mistake - not just read it, but started to put it into practice.
Unfortunately, the use of book scrum has accelerated the work of a team of programmers by half. Repeated, in-depth reading of the same book, opened his eyes to the main principle - start with Sutherllen's advice, and then improvise. It so happened to accelerate the team of programmers four times.
Unfortunately, at that time I was an IT director, and the success of introducing scrum turned me so crazy that I was really hooked on reading books. I began to buy them in batches, read one by one, and, stupidly, put everything into practice. I tried on so much that my successes were noticed by the director and the owner, and they just liked it (I will explain why later) that they included me in the team developing the company's strategy for the next three years. And I got so divided, after reading and tested in practice, that for some dick I took a direct, super-active part in the development of this strategy. So active that I was appointed the main one for its implementation.
I read dozens of books in those few months. And, I repeat, I put into practice everything that is written there - why not use it if the development of a large (by the standards of the village) company is in my power? The most rotten - it turned out.
And then it was all over. For some reason, I decided to dump in one of the capitals, quit, but changed my mind and stayed in the village. And I was unbearable.
Exactly for the same reason as after "Transerfing reality". I knew - exactly, absolutely, without a doubt - that the application of Scrum, TOC, SPC, Lean, the recommendations of Gandapas, Prokhorov, Covey, Franklin, Kurpatov, Sharma, Freud, Manson, Goleman, Tsunetomo, Ono, Deming, etc., to infinity - gives a strong positive effect for any activity. But I no longer applied this knowledge.
Now, after reading Kurpatov, I seem to understand why - the environment has changed, but I will not make excuses. Another thing is important: I again fell into withdrawal symptoms, like real drug addicts.
Real addicts
I, as mentioned above, are a bad junkie. And I also mentioned that I’ll explain why the director and owner took it into my head to appoint me the head of the implementation of the company's strategy.
The answer is simple: they are real drug addicts.
In the context of book addiction, to distinguish a real drug addict is very simple: he does not apply what he reads about.
For such people, books are a bit of a series, on which almost everything is now hooked. The series, unlike the film, forms dependence, affection, desire and the need to continue watching, return to it again and again, and when the series ends, grab the next one.
It is the same with books on personality development, business, trainings, seminars, etc. Real addicts are addicted to all of this, for one simple reason - they experience euphoria in the learning process. If you believe the studies of Wolfram Schulz, then, most likely, not during the process, but before it, but - knowing that the process will definitely take place. If you are not familiar, then I’ll explain: dopamine, a neurotransmitter of pleasure, is developed in the head not at the moment of receiving the award, but at the moment of understanding that the award will be.
So, these guys are "expanding" often and constantly. They read books, study courses, sometimes not once. I’ve been at a business training once in my life, and that’s because the office paid. It was Gandapas training, and there I met several real drug addicts - guys who were not on this course for the first time. Moreover, there was no success in life (in their own words).
This, in my opinion, is the key difference between real drug addicts. Their goal is not to gain knowledge or, God forbid, their application in practice. Their goal is the process itself, whatever it is. Reading a book, listening to a seminar, networking during a coffee break, active participation in business games at business training. Actually, that’s all.
Returning to work, they never use anything from the knowledge gained.
Trite, I will explain by example. Scrum we read at about the same time, it coincided. Immediately after reading, I applied in my team. They are not. TOS was told to them by one of the best specialists in the country (and they didn’t call me), then everyone read Goldratt’s book, but I used it in my work. Self-management was told to us personally by Doug Kirkpatrick (from Morning Star), but they did not lift a finger to introduce at least one element of this approach. A professor from Harvard personally explained Boundary management to us, but for some reason, only I began to build processes in accordance with this philosophy.
Everything is clear with me - I'm a bad addict, and in general - a programmer. And what are they? I thought for a long time what they were, but then I realized - again, using an example.
At one of the past works there was such a situation. The owner of the plant went to study at the MBA. There I met a dude who worked as a top manager in another company. Then the owner returned and, as it should be a decent drug addict, did not change anything in the work of the enterprise.
However, he was a bad drug addict, just like me - he was not addicted to studies and books, but the unpleasant feeling inside continued to swarm - because he saw that it was possible to manage in a completely different way. And he saw not at a lecture, but on the example of that dude.
That dude was distinguished by one simple quality: he did what he needed. Not that simple, what is accepted, what is expected. And what is needed. Including - what was told on the MBA. Well, it has become a legend of local management. It’s straight so simple - it does what is needed, and things are going. In one office he raised everything, in the second he raised it, and then our factory owner lured him to him.
Comes - and then begins to do what is needed. Eliminates theft, builds a new workshop, disperses parasites, pays loans - in short, does what is needed. And the owner prays directly to him.
See the pattern? A real addict just reads, listens, studies. He never does what he learned. He feels bad from this, because he knows - it is possible better. She doesn’t want to feel bad. Get rid of this feeling. But not by “doing,” but by studying a new piece of information.
And when he meets a person who has studied and does, he simply experiences incredible euphoria. Literally gives him the reins of government, because he sees the realization of his dream - that which he himself cannot decide.
Well, he continues to study.
Summary
Read books on self-development, efficiency, changes only if you are sure that you will follow the recommendations.
Any book is useful if you do what is written in it. Any.
If you do not do what is written in the book, then you can become addicted.
If you do not do it at all, then the dependence may not form. So, grumble in consciousness, and will disappear like a good movie.
The worst thing is to start doing what is written and then quit. In this case, depression awaits you.
You will now know that you can live and work better, more interesting, more productive. But you will experience unpleasant feelings because you live and work as before.
Therefore, if you are not ready to constantly change, without stops, then it is better not to read.