Heck, I think if I read it 10 years ago I wouldn't even have the emotional maturity to appreciate it. There's a beauty to some of these books --- some of the ideas seem obvious and can easily be written off until you have the emotional wherewithal and maturity to appreciate the difficulty of what they are suggesting.
"Think and Grow Rich" is a good example. What do you mean... I just have to write a vision for myself that I believe I can achieve, and read it twice a day? Sounds stupid.
... and then you realize how difficult it is for people to truly come up with a vision statement for their success that they legitimately believe they can achieve within a specific time frame... And that doing this correctly is the hard part.
Brilliant.
That's why I emphasized the right book at the right age. I know successful people who swear by the book. I appreciate it, but I have a small criticism: He basically preaches trampling all over personal boundaries to get what you want. It's an aggressive strategy.
Which had nothing or almost nothing to do with their success.
Bezos didn't succeed because he had the idea to "make an online bookstore".
Prerequisites matter (having the money, VC connections), time matter (dot com golden era), place matters (USA vs say Kazakhstan), the overall economic trajectory matters, execution matters - heck, even luck at various different points on setting up the business matters more than the idea.
Yes, one of those so-called realists.
If everybody has them but only 1 of everybody succeeds with the same idea, ideas [1] are obviously worthless.
[1] At the level under discussion, that is: "let's do a business doing X", because otherwise e.g. Relativity Theory is also an idea, and it's certainly not worthless.
> there is an entire book industry that is focused on the premise that you are merely one good idea away from the future
Many famous people started out with one good idea
> The entire business-focused self-help industry is built on the fallacy that successful people read a lot of books
Many famous successful people promote the face that they read a lot of books, such as Bill Gates and Barack Obama. It's not a fallacy.
There's a lot of junk self help books to wade through, but I have found some jewels among the trash and by jewels I mean they were just right for the situation and age I was at.
Edit: I put together a list off the top of my head of self help books I found useful (again, at the age I was at)
I'm OK – You're OK, guide to transactional analysis by Thomas Harris
Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships by Eric Berne
Trances We Live by Stephen Wolinsky
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
Zen and the Art of Leadership by Thomas Cleary