Judging from the French movie (with Pierre Niney) I saw last year (which was awesome btw) , and my vague recollection of the book, there's lots of physical skills involved. It's not just an intellectual pursuit, but more like applied science in getting vengeance. Really fun read. Big chunk of social media is self improvement. Stumbled across this guy yesterday and actually gives pretty solid advice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYsr2jkf_3A