Fiction: the True Self-Help?

Time to put Atomic Habits down

Fiction often gets looked down upon in this day and age. Most people think that it is a better time investment to read the trendy self-help books, as you can get information about the real world from those books. So if you were gonna spend your time reading a book then why would you read a story that isn’t even true?

Let’s say you open Atomic Habits, you read the advice in the book and you start to think to yourself: “Yes I should really apply those tips”. The next day you wake up and you can’t find the motivation to follow through with the promise you made yourself, perhaps you even forgot that you wanted to change anything at all.

This is a problem that people (including myself) often encounter when reading self-help books. They are good and of great value, but the advice in them just fails to stick.

What if you tried something else, instead you pick up the book Oblomov. A classic about a guy who suffers from immense procrastination and laziness. In the book you witness all the consequences that his behaviour has on his life. And because you’re emotionally invested in the book you really start to hope he will change, leading to you starting to change yourself.

Instead of thinking about maybe changing this in your life, you really get it. Something shifts inside you. Besides the book being 10 times more amusing than a self-help book, you got real value from it!

The second reason would be that reading fiction increases your understanding of others and often of yourself as well. You are able to look into the mind of people who are completely different than you, leading you to be more understanding of others. You can read a psychology paper about murderers and get some interesting factual information or statistics. But reading a book where you are inside the mind of one will give you a radical different understanding of how murderers actually work.

You are able to confront parts of yourself which you often neglect. For example, when encountering a book where the main character struggles with a problem you often surpress. You force yourself to think about how you would act in situations which you often avoid, leading to a better understanding of yourself. All the whilst reading something which is actually very enjoyable!

If you are going to start, my advice would be to read something that you actually want to read. That way it will be much easier to stick to it. Ofcourse I’m not forcing you to put your self-help books down, as I do think that they can be very valuable. However I do hope that after reading this essay you will reconsider reading some fiction again.