“Without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable.” - William Pollard

You might have noticed that my posting frequency has slowed down lately. Don’t worry (or start partying), I’m not leaving. I’m just getting started, actually.

The less frequent posting is due to two reasons:

1. The offline world requires more of my time this period of the year;
2. I have a rather strong feeling that there is something wrong with what I do on this blog.

I’m sure no one will have trouble understanding the first reason, but what about the second one. What do I mean by saying there’s something wrong with what I do on this blog? What could possibly be so wrong as to make me question doing it? If you’re a personal-development blogger yourself, or if you enjoy the topic of personal-development, you need to read this.

But first, look again at the title. It says “fixing the self-improvement concept,” implying that there is something wrong with it.

To better understand what you’ll read further on, you might want to read one of my older articles, called The 5 principles of sustainable innovation. In that article I wrote that the logical chain leading to innovation (which is a pragmatic crystallization of creativity) has five steps.

1. Dissatisfaction
2. Problem-solving
3. Imagination
4. Vision
5. Luck

The first two steps are the ones that are relevant to this article. Those two steps are the reason why I’m writing this.

In the same article on innovation, I wrote that an innovative idea isn’t necessarily a completely new one, but often times an improved version of an old idea. Improved either by introducing something new, or by fixing something that was broken. And because there’s something wrong with the self-improvement concept, it needs fixing - through innovation.

Now let’s change gears and see what is wrong with the current self-improvement environment (the concept and most of its applied forms).

What needs to be fixed

First of all, it is the “industrialized” feel that self-improvement has got. It has become a very profitable business, and like all businesses it has deception at its core; you can’t make a profit if you don’t deceive in some way or another, that’s what all businesses do. To a certain degree, the monetization of the concept is good, as people need to live. However, we’re witnessing a non-healthy state in which the concept has lost its sanity and usefulness almost completely, in favor of bigger profits. Fluffy, empty ideas, are endlessly repeated in a hope that people will pay good money to hear them. It’s like buying a $650 pill to artificially boost your morale for 2.5 seconds; short lived artificial value.

Second, the lack of coherence in the presented ideas - applies to personal-development bloggers. Today they talk about creativity, tomorrow about money, then about relationships, etc. It’s like watching many TV channels at once; the information presented gets messy. Of course, designing something coherent takes more work, but if people say that their life-mission is to help others, they should not walk only one extra mile but one thousand of them. I know, I’m guilty of this myself; I will try to change my approaches from now on.

Third, the lack of closure. This applies to the self-help industry as a whole, because I haven’t ever stumbled upon a material that had finality. I’ve seen advice, advice, advice, and then some more advice. It’s like a never-ending story; a boulder going down an endless slope. And it is especially true when talking about blogs… you’ll see the same core idea repeated *many* times, with no planned ending.

Fourth, the entry bars. As I’m writing this, in January 2008, virtually anyone with a good amount of common sense can become a self-improvement guru. Globalization, in its wide economic sense, allows unknown individuals to become self-proclaimed gurus in self-improvement in no time. There are absolutely no requirements whatsoever, and because of that, there are many shady characters entering the arena.

(to be continued in part 2)

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