At the end of the article, by tradition, there is a summary.
Do you read self-development, business, or performance books? No? Wonderful. And don't start.
Do you still read? Don't do what these books suggest. Please. Otherwise, you will become an addict. Like me.
Do-drug period
Until I read books, I was happy. Moreover, I was really effective, productive, talented and, most importantly, unstoppable (I don’t know how to translate it into Russian).
Everything worked out for me. I did better than everyone else.
At school, I was the best student in the class. So good that I was transferred as an external student 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), in the best lyceum (with a bias in mathematics and computer science), and there I became the best student.
I participated in all sorts of foolishness, like olympiads, won the city in history, computer science, Russian language, 3rd place in mathematics. And all this - without preparation, just like that, on the go, without studying anything beyond the school curriculum. Well, perhaps, 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 gave me two deuces at once for the apple tree drawn on the margins of the notebook).
At the institute, too, I never experienced any special problems. Everything was easy, especially when I realized how everything works here - well, you just need to prepare in time. He did everything that was necessary, and not only for himself - coursework for money, went to take exams for correspondence students. In my fourth year, I decided to go to a bachelor's degree, received a red diploma, then changed my mind, returned to engineering - now I have two red diplomas in the same specialty.
At the first job, he grew up as fast as anyone else. Then 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 my 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. I didn't believe it if they told me it was impossible. Just took it and did it. And everything worked out.
And then I met drug addicts.
The first drug addicts
The first drug addict I met was the owner, who is also the director, of the company - my first job. He was constantly learning - he 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, he didn’t impose books, practically he didn’t even offer to read something.
It's just that everyone knew that he was fond of "this crap". But it was perceived as a nice hobby, because the company was successful - the best 1C partner in the city in all respects. And since a person built the best company, then figs with him, let him read his little books.
But I felt the first cognitive dissonance already 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?
Here you see two people. One reads, the other does not. Logic dictates that there must be some obvious, objective difference. Moreover, it does not matter which of them will be better - but the difference should be. But she wasn't.
Well, yes, the company is the most successful in the city. But not at times - by units, maybe by tens of percent. And the competitive struggle is not weakening, and you constantly need to come up with something new. The company does not have any super-mega-duper advantages, gleaned from books, that would leave competitors on the sidelines.
And the leader who read the books is not much different from the others. Well, he is softer, simpler - so these are, I suppose, his personal qualities. He was like that even before the books. He sets tasks in much the same way, asks in the same way, develops the company in the same directions as competitors.
What for then books to read, on seminars, courses and trainings to go? Then I could not explain it to myself, so I just took it for granted. Until I tried it myself.
My first dose
There was, however, still a zero dose - the first book that can be attributed to business literature, albeit with a big stretch. It was Prokhorov's "Russian Model of Management". But, nevertheless, I leave this book out of the brackets - it is rather a study, with hundreds of references and citations. Well, it doesn’t even stand on a par with the recognized bigwigs of the information business. Dear Alexander Petrovich Prokhorov, your book is an ageless masterpiece of genius.
So, the first book on self-development that I got acquainted with was “Reality Transurfing” by Vadim Zeland. In general, the history of our acquaintance is pure coincidence. Someone brought it to work, and - an audiobook. I am ashamed to admit that until that moment I had never heard a single audiobook in my life. Well, I decided to listen, just out of curiosity about the format.
And so I was captivated ... And the book is interesting, and the reader is insanely good - Mikhail Chernyak (he voices several characters in Smeshariki, Luntik - in short, the Mill cartoons). The fact that I, as I later found out, was auditory, played a role. I am best at listening to information.
In short, I hung on this book for several months. Listened at work, listened at home, listened in the car, over and over again. This book has replaced music for me (I always wear headphones at work). I couldn't break away or stop.
I developed an addiction to this book, both the content and the execution. However, I really tried to apply everything that is written in it. And, unfortunately, it began to work.
I will not retell what needs to be done there - you need to read it, I cannot convey it in a nutshell. But I started to get the first results. And, of course, I quit - I don’t like to finish what I started.
It was then that the withdrawal syndrome began, i.e. breaking.
Breaking
If you have had or have any addiction, like smoking, then you should be familiar with this feeling: why the hell did I even start?
After all, he lived normally for himself, and did not know grief. I ran, jumped, worked, ate, slept, and here - on you, I also feed the addiction. But time / effort / loss to satisfy addiction is only half the trouble.
The real problem, in the context of the books, is understanding realities at different levels. I'll try to explain, although I'm not sure how it will work.
Let's say the same "Reality Transerfig". If you do what is written in the book, then life becomes more interesting and fuller, and quite quickly - within a few days. I know, I tried. But the key is "if you do it".
If you do, then you begin to live in a new reality, which you have never been before. Life plays with new colors, blah blah blah, everything becomes joyful and interesting. And then you quit and return to the reality that was before reading the book. In that one, but not in that one.
Before reading the book, “that reality” seemed to be the norm. And now she looks like a sad asshole. And there is not enough strength, desire, or something else to follow the recommendations of the book - in short, it’s not rushing.
And here you sit like this, and you understand: life is shit. Not because she is really shit, but because he himself, personally, saw the best version of his life. I saw and threw, returned to the former. And that makes it unbearably hard. And so the breakdown begins.
But withdrawal is something like a desire to return to a state of euphoria, to return to the previous state. Well, as with smoking or booze - you continue to do it for years, in the hope of returning 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 Olympiad in Informatics. In the evening we went with some guy from another school, bought a "nine" in a stall, drank, and it became so high - beyond words. Similar emotions were from cheerful booze in a hostel - energy, excitement, desire to have fun until the morning, e-ge-gay!
Likewise with chicken. Everyone, of course, is different, but I still remember the nights in the hostel with pleasure. All the neighbors are already sleeping, and I’m sitting and hacking something in Delphi, Builder, C ++, MATLAB or assembler (I just didn’t have my own computer, I worked on the neighbor’s while the owner was sleeping). It’s just one solid buzz - you program, sometimes you drink coffee, and you run around smoking.
So, the subsequent years of smoking and booze are just attempts to return those emotional experiences. But, alas, this is not possible. However, this does not stop smoking and booze.
The same with books. You remember the euphoria from reading, from the first changes in life, when it took your breath away, and you try to return ... No, not the first changes, but the euphoria from reading. Stupidly you take it and read it again. The second time, the third, the fourth, and so on - until you stop perceiving at all. This is where the real addiction begins.
real addiction
I admit right away that I am a bad drug addict who does not succumb to the main trend - increasing the dose. However, I have seen a lot of good drug addicts.
So, you want to return the state of euphoria that you experienced when reading a book. You read it again - the sensations are not the same, because you know what will happen in the next chapter. What to do? Sure, read something else.
It took me seven years to go from "Reality Transurfing" to "something else". Second on the list was Scrum by Jeff Sutherland. And then, like the previous time, I made the same mistake - I didn’t just read it, but began to put it into practice.
Unfortunately, the use of book scrum made the work of the programming team twice as fast. Repeated, in-depth reading of the same book opened my eyes to the main principle - start with Sutherlenl's advice, and then improvise. So it turned out to speed up the team of programmers four times.
Unfortunately, I was the CIO at the time, and the success of implementing Scrum turned my head so much that I actually became addicted to reading books. He began to buy them in packs, read one after another, and, foolishly, put everything into practice. I applied it to the point that the director and the owner noticed my successes, and they really liked it (I’ll explain why later) that they included me in the company’s strategy development team for the next three years. And I was so dispersed, after reading and tested in practice, that for some dick I took a direct superactive part in the development of this strategy. So active that I was appointed the head of 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 apply if the development of a large (by the standards of the village) company is in my power? Worst of all, it worked.
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 "Reality Transurfing". I knew - exactly, absolutely, without a doubt - that the use of Scrum, TOC, SPC, Lean, the recommendations of Gandapas, Prokhorov, Kovey, Franklin, Kurpatov, Sharma, Fried, Manson, Goleman, Tsunetomo, Ono, Deming, etc., to infinity - gives a strong positive effect for any activity. But I did not apply this knowledge any more.
Now, having re-read 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 junkies
I, as mentioned above, am a bad junkie. And I also mentioned that I would explain why the director and owner took it into his head to appoint me to lead the implementation of the company's strategy.
The answer is simple: they are real drug addicts.
In the context of book addiction, it is very easy to distinguish a real drug addict: he does not use what he reads about.
For such people, books are something like serials, which are now addicted to almost everyone. The series, unlike the film, forms addiction, attachment, desire and need to continue watching, return to it again and again, and when the series is over, grab the next one.
It is the same with books on personal development, business, trainings, seminars, etc. Real addicts get addicted to all this, for one simple reason - they experience euphoria in the process of learning. If you believe the research of Wolfram Schultz, then, rather, not during the process, but before it, but knowing that the process will definitely take place. If you are not familiar, then I will explain: dopamine, the neurotransmitter of pleasure, is produced in the head not at the moment of receiving a reward, but at the moment of understanding that there will be a reward.
So, these guys are "expanding" often and constantly. They read books, study in courses, sometimes - more than once. I once attended a business training in my life, and that was because the office paid. It was the Gandapas training, and there I met some 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, it seems to me, is the key difference between real drug addicts. Their goal is not to gain knowledge or, God forbid, to put it into practice. Their goal is the process itself, whatever it is. Reading a book, listening to a seminar, networking during a coffee break, actively participating in business games at a business training. Actually, that's all.
Returning to work, they never apply anything from the knowledge they have gained.
Trite, let me explain with my example. We read Scrum at about the same time, so coincidentally. I, immediately after reading, applied in my team. They are not. TOS was told to them by one of the best specialists in the country (but they didn’t invite me), then everyone read Goldratt’s book, but only I used it in my work. Self-management was personally taught to us by Doug Kirkpatrick (of Morning Star), but they did not lift a finger to implement at least one element of this approach. Boundary management was personally explained to us by a professor from Harvard, but, for some reason, only I began to build processes in accordance with this philosophy.
Everything is clear with me - I am a bad drug 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 previous jobs there was such a situation. The owner of the plant went to study for an MBA. There I met a dude who worked as a top manager in another company. Then the owner returned and, as it should be for a decent drug addict, did not change anything in the work of the enterprise.
However, he was a bad drug addict, like me - he didn’t get hooked on training 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 I saw it not at a lecture, but on the example of that dude.
That dude was distinguished by one simple quality: he did what was necessary. Not what is simpler, what is accepted, what is expected. And what is needed. Including - what was told at the MBA. Well, he became a legend of local management. It's just that simple - he does what he needs to do, and things go. In one office he picked up everything, in the second he picked it up, and then our owner of the plant lures him to him.
Comes - and then begins to do what is necessary. It eliminates theft, builds a new workshop, disperses parasites, pays loans - in short, it does what it needs to. And the owner directly prays for him.
See the pattern? A real addict just reads, listens, studies. Never does what he learned. He feels bad about it, because he knows he can do better. He 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 is doing, he simply experiences incredible euphoria. Literally gives him the reins of government, because he sees the realization of his dream - something that he cannot decide on his own.
Well, he continues to study.
Summary
Reading books on self-development, efficiency improvement, change is worth it only if you are sure that you will follow the recommendations.
Any book is useful if you do what it says. 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, it sticks around in the mind, and disappears like a good movie.
The worst thing is to start doing what is written, and then quit. In this case, depression awaits you.
From now on you will 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 stopping, then it is better not to read.
Source: habr.com