There was a time not too long ago when personal development and self-help books seemed to be all the rage, with people proudly walking around with their own copies of titles such as Steven Covey’s “The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People” and the likes. I don’t know, perhaps personal development and self-help books are still all the rage and people are just reading them in digital copy formats like Amazon’s Kindle reader or just as PDF e-books so no-one judge their cover (or their  neuroticism).

One thing I’ve always asked myself though is whether or not those personal development and self-help books are as good as they’re made out to be in terms of just how many people actually truly go on to benefit out of the advice they read in those books. How many people did indeed go on to “Get out of Debt” or “Make a Million” after reading a book and implementing whatever steps, plans or advice they read?

Most books are purely motivational, though, and just as is the case with information obtained anywhere else, if everybody does the same thing the market becomes saturated (as with those books with a theme focussing on money and getting rich). My specific interest falls on the personal development side of things, which is why I opened with a reference to Steven R. Covey’s book on leading a more efficient life.

I’ve read many other self-help and personal development books myself and can say I’ve come away with some valuable insights, but ultimately I think it comes down to what you want to achieve in your life or just how you want the life you lead daily to be. I’m pretty sure there are some people out there who couldn’t otherwise be bothered about establishing a career of some sort, whom given half the chance would wake up naturally and then spend the day lazing about on the beach until something else to do comes up. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with any of that, but to get to that stage in your life you’d have to have some passive forms of income – another widely discussed topic in self-help type books.

What I came away with, though, is that efficiency needs to be built into all areas of your life, from small decisions such as fitting your car with winter tyres when the season calls, to spending and investing your money wisely to enjoy a better life all-round. It’s the tiniest of details in your everyday life which make the biggest difference.