GreyShuck t1_j1uphjj wrote on December 27, 2022 at 3:24 PM

Not a genre that I have spent a great deal of time on - largely because I have yet to encounter one that wouldn't be better summed up as a handful of powerpoint slides or a wiki page etc - and of course most of the standard/popular ones do have summaries like this on the web somewhere or another.

There are ideas in some of the books that 'work', obviously, but I don't think that book format is the best way to get those ideas across - at least to me. 90% of the books that I have looked at are just anecdotes and repetition - and outright snake oil too in some - probably a lot of - cases.

The key thing is to put any useful ideas into practice - regardless of how you discover them.

jefrye t1_j1w1xfc wrote on December 27, 2022 at 8:49 PM

>I have yet to encounter one that wouldn't be better summed up as a handful of powerpoint slides or a wiki page etc

This is true in the most literal sense as unlike many other types of nonfiction, self-help has absolutely no literary value (as a general rule). The ideas have only been compiled into written form because that is the most convenient way of selling them to people.

julian_devid OP t1_j1w10tx wrote on December 27, 2022 at 8:43 PM

What do you think would be the best format to convey the ideas of these books? An application, a web page? What do you think?

GreyShuck t1_j1w4dng wrote on December 27, 2022 at 9:05 PM

To some extent it will depend on what the significant ideas are, but in most cases a simple web page of some kind seems perfectly adequate.

For those that need regular reinforcement of habits you can set reminders for yourself if you need to. I doubt that there are many that actually need a standalone app.