Pure Writerly Moments (Blog Posts, Short Stories, and Musings on the Craft)

Review - Seven Habits of Highly Successful People

"You don't need this book. Put it down. Do something great! Start something righteous! You don't need any self-help book to learn to be successful or happy. So there you go."

That wonderful quote comes not from "7 Habits of Highly Successful People" but from the far superior book "The Underground Novel: An Alternative Guide to LIfe after Graduation."

The book was written by me. That was an example of gratuitous self-promotion.

I don't usually toot my own horn, especially not in a review of another author's book, but this time I must.

Why? Because I feel like my book is vastly superior to 7 Habits. I also feel like I can't write a review of 7 Habits without stating that from the outset.

Underground Novel is better because...

1- Because it's free.

You can start reading on Wattpad!

2 - The book knows that behind every self-help book is a bit (or more than a bit) of bullshit. Thus, the book is always borderline against self-help books.

3 - The book also has vampires and ninjas.

4 - The book has J.P. (read it and you'll see how J.P. is the book's competitive advantage).

In short: Underground Novel -- shorter, freer, cooler! While also being more vulgar, you might find the book to be deceptively smart.

I also have to push my own book because 7 Habits checks a lot of bad self-help book boxes.

It borrows a lot of quotes from famous people and uses them out of context

It features lots of dated 1980s can-doism that, given what has transpired in the US, will seem cringe-worthy.

It repackages concepts in other books that were conceptualized better.

It also creates another weird box of its own.

It creates a new weird meta self-help genre of Christian sermonizing, mixed with the aesthetics of management jargon and management consultant flow charts, and the mysticism of eastern philosophy.

The book is also about 180 pages too long. The One-Minute Manager books might not be perfect, but they work under the assumption that go-getters are busy people. Mr. Covey makes no such assumptions. It's also a very cluttered book. Covey attempts to tell stories, but his stories are of mixed quality (and also genre), as if he knows some of his stories will miss the mark so he offers up three or four different kinds to cover his bases. I found that many of the charts, graphs, and jargon cluttered up his writing as well. The author argues against books such as How to Win Friends and Influence People (supposedly for its value-agnosticism), but for all its demerits, that book had a knack for simplicity and story-telling this book lacks.

Aw, simplicity!

Strangely, there is one good point I took away from this book -- hence the three stars I assigned on Goodreads -- be proactive. I actually really liked that point and the examples it included. For some reason, that simple point seemed one I hadn't really absorbed from any other book.

(I do have to point out -- and this proves that for every piece of self-help advice there is another piece of self-help advice arguing the opposite -- that at various points the writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb has offered up examples where "laziness", the art of doing nothing and still benefiting, can work wonders. I have often found in my life that people can work exceptionally hard just to go backwards.)

Finally, I have to talk about the book's most glaring weakness. A weakness that pained me to my inner core. The messy way the author deals with two concepts: Values and Efficiency.

At the beginning of the book, the author makes the point that self-help books published after World War I had begun to discuss efficiency at the expense of values. People started wanting the results without having to put in the hard work of building their internal character. Thus, what is needed is a return to internal character building before seeking out external rewards.

But the question was never answered -- What led to the collapse of character-based self-improvement? World War I was the first introduction to the horrors of industrial warfare. No longer was war a noble profession that rewarded courage and valor. Instead, trench warfare exposed the limits of chivalry in an era where murder could be mass-produced. Victorious nations would be those with the most efficient industry, not those with honor-bound warrior codes.

Indeed -- without getting too philosophical -- the modern industrial era has been an era where efficiency has challenged traditional virtues in all manner of ways (moving people away from towns into cities, exposing people to the amoral logic of far-flung markets via globalization, and redefining people's values in terms of calculations on spreadsheets).

Many have made calls for a return to virtue. But typically these calls have been made from the perspective of the "value" professions: clergy, soldiers, social activists. (Unfortunately, too, many have been made by religious fundamentalism to promote a supposedly "pure" form of virtue). These calls are made credible (the ethos part of the rhetorical triangle) by the personal risk the authors have taken for these causes.

So, what can a management consultant, loading up his book with graphs and jargon, add to the conversation about the collapse of character? The answer is very little but to quote extensively from clergy, soldiers, and activists -- borrowing their credibility.

I could be wrong here. Covey could have participated extensively in civil rights marches, served in the armed forces, or done extensive missionary work. I apologize, but I haven't researched the author too much...and if I'm honest, I skimmed much of the book once I realized that my own lazily-written "Underground Novel" was superior.

If I am wrong, my apologies.

But, what can't be disputed is that this book has one foot in two realities. It has one foot in a pre-industrial (perhaps classical) sense of virtue and a second foot in a modern (efficiency-based) world. In trying to have it both ways, Cover absolutely misses something crucial -- People who have held onto classical virtue have often faced horrifying (but perhaps honorable) defeats and death...not success, death and defeat. And many people who are public successes are absolute moral disasters. I'm sure it doesn't take much imagination to come up with some very recent examples. There may be a synergy between the two sometimes, but quite often there is just a stark choice.

To really be virtuous in the world you need to risk losing everything....and if you're willing to be morally flexible, you can earn a lot in terms of money and maybe even public acknowledgment (as people have come to worship success over virtue).

But the book does earn 3 stars. Why? Because it encouraged me to be proactive. I had a lot to say about this book and instead of keeping it to myself -- including my gratuitous self-promotion -- I put it out there.

Wow, I had a lot to say about this book...and I was proactive about it!

Now, go read Underground Novel!