Vexing Volumes

Scott Hardie | September 14, 2019
A few years ago, I tried the Atkins diet. I'm normally skeptical of self-help books and especially of fad diets, but the more promises that Dr. Atkins made in his book about how my fat would just melt off and how his diet was guaranteed to work, the more convinced I became that it was the life-changing solution I needed; I actually cried with happiness at one point that I had found it. Unfortunately, two months and well over $1000 later, my body refused to enter ketosis and I had to give up on the useless project. I know the diet works for some people (a good friend of mine just lost half of his body weight on it), but for me it was an utter failure. I felt lied to by the book, and I felt like a sucker who fell for a scam.

I'm currently reading The 4-Hour Workweek after hearing good things about it for years. I'm overwhelmed and it's difficult for me to find time for the things that I really want to do (including tinker with this here website), so I really hoped that the book would help. And it certainly makes a lot of promises in the early pages! Tim Ferriss is a born salesman and makes all kinds of lofty guarantees.

But his actual advice leaves a lot to be desired. Some of his time-saving tips are obvious (check email less often, figure out what tasks are mere procrastination). Some of his tips are unethical (arrange to work from home and then only work for 1-2 hours per day but pretend to work for 8). And some are just downright stupid (go to a mall and walk up to attractive strangers asking for their phone numbers as a way to build confidence). The book is quite a disappointment. I sensed from the early pages, when Ferriss provided a brief autobiography that made him sound like a snake-oil salesman, that it wasn't going to work out, and my instincts were right. I'm glad that his cynical techniques worked for him, but I cannot imagine any universe in which they work for me or many other people.

Have you ever been disappointed in a book that you thought would really help you?

Erik Bates | September 14, 2019
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Steve West | September 14, 2019
I had great expectations for Robrt Bly's, Iron John. I blame me, not him necessarily, for being generally disappointed in it. An overly simplistic synopsis is that the expected role of men changes over time. I finished it years ago with the sense of, "Is that it? Really?"