Personal Development
I have a sort of fascination with self-improvement. I’ve been reading Steve Pavlina’s blog on and off for about a year; Stephen Covey and I go back at least half a decade. Over the weekend, I had the good fortune of snagging a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People (original 1936 printing) for $5 from a street vendor near NYU.
Carnegie’s book, arguably the first self-help book written by an American author, is the most “primary” in its orientation; it’s filled with lucid firsthand observations of daily life, along with a lot of statistics from direct measurement. Covey’s book, on the other hand, is more longitudinal, presenting what he’s found to be “recurring themes” in other authors’ writing. Steve Pavlina writes about everything from failure in the video game business, to how to become an early riser, blending what he’s read with firsthand experiments.
In some respects, these three couldn’t be more different. Behind the facade of similarity put on by being male and white, one finds a Mormon with a PhD, a machine-part salesman from Missouri, and a game-programming atheist from Las Vegas. Maybe, in a parallel dimension, we could put the three against each other in an ultimate deathmatch over, say, same-sex marriage. For now, however, I’m content in the knowledge that these three can’t be that far from the truth, given that they’ve managed to arrive at consensus on how to improve one’s life.