Review: How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be

How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Katy Milkman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm not a big reader of advice books. There's a fairly concise reason for that: They're mostly bullshit. Books written by people who think they can solve their own problems by selling a best seller that tells you they can solve yours. The problem with a field that is littered with crap, is that it can be hard to find the one patch of good ground. I'm here to tell you, this book is one of the good ones. There's also a fairly concise reason for that: Science. This book has several points to make and it can back up what it says.

Overall, I liked what this book has to say. It's structured well enough to get to the point but isn't so concise that it is just a list of ideas. If you highlighted just the useful bits of information, you can truncate this book to less than five pages. However, that information is useless without the context the book creates. It just doesn't give you useful advice, it makes the argument of why it's useful. It's easy for the less civilized to be dismissive of context, but that doesn't mean you should be.

That being said, be sure to highlight/underline the useful bits.

There are a lot of studies and assimilated information from said studies, but, if I can be negative (which I'm a Gold Medal winner of being), there isn't much of a plan to use this information. Or, to be more accurate, lack of a system. This book isn't so much about making a path to change, but rather giving someone the tools to make their own path. Which isn't so bad when you think about it.

I would say this book is mostly for those who feel as if they aren't fulfilling their potential. The advice is geared more to nudging you, bit by bit, in the right direction. If you have a serious problem with things like addiction or living in Florida then you should look elsewhere. The assimilation of this book's knowledge isn't as cut and dry as I would like, but it is otherwise a useful volume. Way better than most of the bullshit that's out there.

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