If more information was the answer, we all would be billionaires with perfect abs.

Like everyone, I wanted to be more productive and more motivated, so I thought, “Hey, why not read Atomic Habits and other books that people on social media recommend?” As I thought, I did.

I found and read two or three self-help books, and I came to the conclusion that they suck, and I’m not the only one. But before I go further, let me acknowledge that some people genuinely do find real value in these books. For many, self-help books offer fresh perspectives, practical tips, or even just a sense of encouragement. If they’ve helped you, and you took action in a better direction, that’s great.

But first, why do people continue to buy those books? They make you feel good because it feels productive. It gives you the illusion of progress, that something in your life is changing. It feels like you’re learning something.

However, that is the issue of “self-help” books.

Inside them lies the most obvious advice that you can ever find. However, they don’t feel like it, because they are covered in pretty buzzwords and tens of personal anecdotes, testimonials, and a few charts if you’re lucky. “Atomic habits” advice can be boiled down to: “design your environment so the right behaviour is easy and automatic”.

Well, if that’s the prodigy worth reading for over 300 pages for you, go for it. Have fun, because you will probably forget what was in the book in a month, or even while reading the next chapter. I can almost bet you won’t apply the advice, busy reading another “self-help” book, if you can even call that a book.

Stop being an incel wannabe-yuppie and read fiction, because unlike self-help, it actually changes how you see the world.

Fiction will provide you with immeasurably more value than any “self-help” literature ever will. Lessons from fiction don’t just inform you. They shape you, they leave you with an imprint far stronger than any bullet-point list or chart will. Read what you’re actually interested in, and wisdom will find you on its own.

When you read a novel, you don’t receive instructions. You live through consequences. You sit inside another mind long enough that it starts to rearrange your own. In “Crime and Punishment” by Fyodor Dostoevsky, you don’t get a lecture on morality. You feel the paranoia, the rationalisation, and guilt. You experience how a single idea can corrupt a person from the inside. That kind of understanding cannot be summarised into a productivity framework. It sticks because it was lived through, not listed.

Good prose will also change the texture of your thinking. Language shapes perception. After reading ”1984” by George Orwell, you start noticing euphemisms, propaganda, and empty political phrases. You become sensitive to manipulation not because someone told you “watch out”, but because you’ve seen what happens when language is engineered to blur reality. The lesson embeds itself in your perception. Think about social media enforcing the use of “unalived” instead of murdered. Once you become sensitive to how language softens reality, you start noticing it everywhere. Fiction develops that sensitivity without feeling like instruction. It doesn’t sit you through a presentation. It alters how you see.

Self-help books promise shortcuts to improvement, but lasting change comes from experiences that shape perception and judgment. Fiction gives you that in ways no checklist ever can.

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