Self-Help Advice I Actually Use

My partner Alex says I read too many self-help books, and he’s probably right.

To be honest, I’ve slowed down a lot recently. I’ve packed my brain full of so many of them that it’s now pretty easy to remember a nugget or two here and there and apply it to what I’m creating at Book Hero - which has kinda become my life right now. (I think I skipped the book about work-life balance.)

Here are a few of the ideas that have actually stuck.

Build a life you don’t need a vacation from

I’m not sure Tim Ferriss ever uses those exact words in The 4-Hour Workweek, but that’s one of the ideas I took from it - don’t live for the weekend.

Book Hero has been an incredible journey that our whole team has poured their hearts into. We started with no customers, no books and - outside of Tim, Alastair and me - no team. It has taken an enormous amount of work to get to where we are today in less than two years.

I am tired. We all are. 

But beyond that, we absolutely love what we do. Work often doesn’t feel like work anymore. We’re creating things. We’re playing. We’re solving problems, challenging ourselves and constantly pushing the boundaries of what we - and the business - are capable of.

If we’re living for the weekend, it’s usually only because we want to pop in and see our bookstore humming on a busy Saturday :P

Of course we take holidays, and we love them, but we’re also always checking in on the business because we love it like a child. Before long, we’re excited to get back and see what’s happening.

Will we want something different one day? Possibly. Probably. But right now, we’re moulding Book Hero into exactly the kind of daily life we wouldn’t want a vacation from. For many of us Book Hero has become an expression of who we are and what we believe in - who would want a break from that?

Expect to get splashed - Epictetus

“If you are going to the bath house, imagine the things which usually happen in the bath house - some people splash the water, some push, some use abusive language, and others steal.”

I’m not sure that’s the exact translation I first read, but I remember the general gist and it floored me.

To be honest, I am exactly the kind of person who goes to the pool and then complains when someone splashes me in the face, or lets their kids scream and take over the whole pool. In the wrong mood - usually when I’m running late or hungry - I’m exactly the kind of person who gets stuck in traffic and becomes convinced I’m surrounded by the world’s most useless drivers. I’m also the person who goes to the movies and gets increasingly wound up because someone nearby has decided to provide a running commentary.

But that’s Epictetus’s point - these things were always going to happen.

You can’t go to a public pool and realistically expect never to be splashed. You can’t drive through Auckland and expect every journey to be traffic-free. You can’t sit in a cinema full of strangers and control how every one of them behaves.

The same is true at Book Hero.

You can’t ship hundreds of thousands of books and expect every single one to arrive on time and in perfect condition. You can’t stock tens of thousands of different products and expect there never to be a stock discrepancy. You can’t work with dozens of suppliers and couriers and expect everything to go exactly to plan. You can’t grow quickly without occasionally discovering that a process that worked perfectly six months ago no longer works. And you definitely can’t bring together a team of people with different personalities, strengths and ideas and expect everyone to agree all of the time.

You can expect all of those things, of course. You just probably won’t be very happy.

The lesson for me isn’t to lower our standards or shrug our shoulders when something goes wrong. Quite the opposite - fix the problem, improve the process, help the customer, have the difficult conversation. Just don’t waste too much energy being surprised that problems exist in the first place.

If you choose to go to the bath house, every now and then you’re going to get splashed.

“Life is difficult.” - M. Scott Peck

The opening line of M. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled has stuck with me since the day I read it - life is difficult.

I love this because I, more than anyone, need to be reminded of it. 

I have a habit of seeing every obstacle as a challenge and, occasionally, an injustice. I get outraged by things other people seem perfectly capable of shrugging off. I don’t let things go easily and I’m more than happy to have a rant - my friends poke fun and call it outrage hour.

Sometimes the only thing that can talk me off the ledge is accepting that life is, indeed, difficult - and that’s the entire point.

Life is a never-ending series of problems to solve. Some are tiny. Some are enormous. You solve one and eventually another one takes its place. Buy a nice car? It’ll eventually break down. Buy a nice house? It’s going to need maintenance. Start a business? There will always be something to keep you up at night.

The sooner we stop expecting life to be free of problems, the sooner we can get on with actually living it.

“Just keep swimming.” - Dory, Finding Nemo

It could just be that Dory from Finding Nemo said it best - just keep swimming!

I’m pretty much always over-prepared for any meeting, and I’m a self-diagnosed overthinker, but I’ve learned that sometimes you simply need to put your head down and keep moving. There’s another slightly less cheery version of this, often attributed to Winston Churchill - if you’re going through hell, keep going.

I’m lucky that my Book Hero co-founders, Tim and Alastair, spend a little less time living inside their own heads than I do. They live this philosophy every day - rolling up their sleeves, getting stuck in and working through an enormous amount without complaint. They accepted that life was indeed difficult a long time ago :P

Tim is always reminding me, “One day at a time Dylan.” Dom has his own version - “Just another day Dylan. Just another day.”

Sometimes you just need to keep swimming.

Trust Makes Everything Easier

“Your ability to build trusting, human connections with the people who report directly to you will determine the quality of everything that follows.” - Kim Scott, Radical Candor

I work really hard to build trusting relationships with the people I work with. It has helped me enormously at Book Hero, and played a big part in creating Book Hero in the first place. Several key people I’d worked with previously joined us - and then people they’d worked with joined them.

For me, trust starts with taking the time to really see people - understanding what they’re good at and helping them see those strengths in themselves. I believe everyone has something they can be great at, and one of the most rewarding parts of working with people is watching them figure out what their thing is.

Trust also comes from levelling with people. I’m very open about my own weaknesses - basically anything physical in the warehouse, setting up a piece of technology, or anything requiring more than an ounce of patience. Being open about what you’re bad at makes it easier for other people to do the same.

And trust makes everything else easier. You can be direct. You can have difficult conversations. You can admit when you’re wrong. You can make decisions quickly, fix things and move on.

Trust lets you get stuff done - and that’s pretty much exactly what Kim Scott is getting at.

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” - Dr. Seuss

Alex may have told me to tone down the self-help books, but he never said anything about the children’s books!

This beautiful line from The Lorax has stuck with me for years, and has probably helped me as much as anything I’ve read in a self-help book.

I truly believe that sometimes success simply comes down to who cares the most.

It can be something big or something incredibly small. At Book Hero, one of the qualities I value most in people is how much they care. Do they care that all the orders went out today? Do they care that all the received stock got put away? Do they care that every customer received a reply to their email and a solution to their problem? Do they care that we followed through on the promises we made? And importantly, do they still care when nobody is checking? Do they care because they know it’s important and the right thing to do?

You can teach someone how to use a system. You can teach them about books, how to pick an order or how to solve a customer problem. But it’s much harder to teach someone to genuinely care about the outcome or the work that they do.

I don’t expect anyone at Book Hero to care about every little thing as much as I do - that would probably be both unreasonable and exhausting! But I do want us to be a company full of people who care about something. People who take ownership, notice when something isn’t right and want to make it better.