On the Critical Path

I used to be an avid reader of self-help books, as they are sometimes called. It started a few years into my career when someone I trusted would recommend one of them. I had not been aware of this genre before, but thought it was worth a try if it had made a difference to the person endorsing it. After reading the first two or three such suggested books, which had similarly made an impression on me in some way, my interest in the category gathered momentum. I was also intrigued with the thought of reading for self-improvement.

I went through several years of reading more and more diverse book categories like personal growth, business skills, spirituality, personality types, and many others. I was enjoying learning new things about life and ways to do better at work.

Eventually my interest waned. I noticed that new books sometimes covered some of the same ground that by now had become familiar to me from previous reading. Some of my original fascination and enthusiasm was lessening. I was less enchanted. Although these books had fed an interest in me, grew my awareness, and schooled me in aspects of life that I would have never otherwise known, I felt I was less “helped” by them than perhaps I had originally hoped and imagined. And novels beckoned.

I was reflecting on this recently and it prompted me to survey my bookcase. What were the books that originally sparked my interest in the genre? Which were memorable? What nugget did I get from them? I remembered two such books.

The one that started it all was a recommendation from a friend who is one of the most impressive people I have known. He told me his sister was well-read and he always valued her book recommendations. She told him to read The Road Less Traveled, by M. Scott Peck. He did and subsequently recommended it to others, including me. This weekend, I took it out of my bookcase and thumbed through it. The early pages helped me recall what hooked my interest. The first section is called “Discipline”. Although it sounds rather dark, its first line is “Life is difficult.” Peck encourages the reader to truly accept that life is difficult. If and when we do, then the fact that it is difficult matters less because we are mentally prepared for it, and less disappointed when it is not easy. So when presented with problems, we are oriented to solve them rather than complain. Peck also recommends in this section the discipline of delayed gratification; for example, tackling the less pleasant tasks of the day first to get them out of the way so you can look forward to the rest of the day doing the more enjoyable ones. Seems simple, but that’s what struck me in this, my first self-help book. I found this useful and subsequently was more conscious of structuring my activities this way.

A short time later, a manager at work recommended The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey. At that time it was relatively unknown, but it became one of the most popular business and personal growth books of all time. A few years later, our company offered classes on it. In reviewing it this weekend, I realized that two things about it had stuck with me. Habit 2 is called “Begin with the End in Mind”, meaning – at the start of an initiative, be clear about what you want to accomplish and envision what you want to get out of it. That made sense to me then and coincidentally is embraced by my fellow project management practitioners today. At the beginning of every project, we create a project charter to document what the project is about and what we are trying to get out of it. We ask our customer to approve it to ensure that we both see the project the same way before we start planning it.

Habit 3 is called Put First Things First, but I also found it just as interesting at the time. It describes a framework for time management that emphasizes prioritizing the important tasks that may be hard and may take a long time, but would help you succeed in the things that you value most in your work or personal life. It helped me understand the importance of scheduling the things with high impact to me first, and then fitting into the rest of the day the other tasks that may be less compelling, but still need to get done.

Leafing through these books, I remember why they had an impact on me, and fueled more than a decade of enthusiastic reading to learn about aspects of life that I had not been exposed to in school or in some other way. And just maybe I helped myself too.