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A review by doc2022
How to Be Miserable in Your Twenties: 40 Strategies to Fail at Adulting by Randy J. Paterson
2.0
How to Be Miserable in Your Twenties: 40 Strategies to Fail at Adulting is a self-help book by Dr. Randy Paterson. It's primarily aimed at people in their twenties. The intention of the book is to help those who feel kind of stuck, lost, unsure of what to do in a decade I personally have had much trouble myself. It's sort of a spiritual sequel / spin-off of the author's earlier book: How to Be Miserable: 40 Strategies You Already Use (which I will call "the original" from now on).
I must confess that I've been having a pretty big stake in this sequel / follow-up book because I've read the original a little over two years ago after watching CGP Grey's video on the matter and the book has had a profound impact on my life to the point it kickstarted my life out of a multiple years-long battle with depression. After I read the book, I quit a job I was slowly being destroyed by, started investigating my interests one by one and did what I thought was unthinkable by starting to travel abroad - twice - that same year. This was all done in 18 months after I read the book.
Like King Théoden from The Lord of the Rings I slowly awoke from a dark, dreamless slumber. I know that sounds overblown and yes, the book didn't hold my hand when I got on the plane and it didn't sign my resignation for me and yes, I've had help from third parties. When you kind of give up on life with it's endless challenges, then nothing really happens for years on end.
This was the case with me until I read the book.
After that I started thinking: "What if I went to Iceland? What if the plane doesn't crash? What if I actually don't get mugged for my phone and wallet on the first day? What if the guy at the car rental station won't screw me over? What if it only rains one day, instead of the entire trip? What if I - god forbid - actually enjoy myself, even with the tremendous uncertainties and high cost?
-> That means I'll have to travel some more, right?
-> If I travel more, that means I'll need a lot of money
-> that means I'll need to find a different job to make that money collecting more enjoyable
-> that means I'll need to figure out what I find enjoyable to make a living from."
This was exactly my line of thinking and it's a mission I'm still pursuing. It's for this reason that the original book has constantly been on my mind and always closeby. The book has done for me what years upon years of living in a toxic society has desperately tried to undo. So imagine then, how excited I was when I received the follow-up to that book in the mail and imagine my disappointment when I discovered that it's not nearly as good as the first book.
I think it helps when I start with what I liked about it. The book is still filled with Randy's signature metaphor-filled humor, where cartoonish examples are shown to visualize how ridiculous negative thinking can be. I have quite the visual imagination so these literally always make me laugh. Also, at their core, if you shorten the teachings to a few paragraphs, they can still be incredibly informative and enlightening, though not as profoundly as the original book for reasons I will elaborate on later. Dr. Paterson's crystal-clear use of oft-disused common sense and simple logic often made me nod in agreement and made the hamsterwheel turn as quickly as it could. My mentioning of the shortening of chapters shows the first sign of trouble for the book.
This book is bloated in a lot of ways. It desperately needed either another editor or a fresh pair of eyes. Randy tends to go on long tangents that aren't immediately relevant for the subject at hand, or the concerns of the reader. Nobody seriously googles advice on life unless they really need it and when you read Tangent #3 in lesson 11 that you already don't fully agree with... well, it can be an exasparating experience. And perhaps this shows my OCD sides, but I don't really see skipping a lesson an option. It's only fair that I keep an open mind to learn what I can. Especially when you consider that almost every single page in the original "How To Be Miserable" was pretty much gold.
Some of the lessons feel polluted with a mixture of bias and agenda-pushing. This was present in the original as well but these were always mild suggestions to inspire or to add creedence to the lesson at hand. An example. In both books, Randy likes to bring up the idea of donating (charity) and how it can have a positive effect on your life, and after reading his arguments sprinkled throughout reading, they made me think long and hard about the value of donating. This was something I'd never even consider in the past. With this book, charity, and plenty of other causes that may need a bit of embellishment to sell are brought up, but it's never really revealed why I should care about them.
This book, just as the last one, contains 40 lessons spread across four distinct themes. While they are all presented as new chapters that tell a story, they can't quite escape feeling repeated from each other. Some of the key words or core meanings of some lessons will echo into others, and you'll swear you've read the same text just yesterday in your last reading session. You could probably create much more impactful content if the text was condensed into, say, 20 to 25 lessons. If Randy finds each of the 40 lessons vital, he could have easily weaved the core message of several lessons into one lesson, and it would have made for a much more engaging read. It would easily cut a third of the pages as well.
Having reread the book a second time yesterday, the bloat is a genuine problem and makes it frustrating to go through. The original got to the point so much faster. You open the book up, your eyeballs fall on a random page (hopefully not literally) and bam! Instant action. It was like the 1993 video game Doom in psychology form. In that case, instant brain.
I'm getting increasingly tired of "grown-up" media trying to tell the young dum-dums of the new generation that screen-entertainment such as video games are enjoyed by losers with no goals or future and that it's the root cause of unhappiness. I'm weary of being told that having sex with everything that has a heartbeat is totally awesome ("you need to discover yourself!"). But when you whip out a controller, that's where people draw the line and say "By Jove, the end times are surely upon us."
In the entire book, Randy never says that gamers are losers with no future. However, in many chapters the electronic entertainment industry provides him with a nice, chunky target that I'm almost certain he knows very little about. Video games have a bad rap, and at times, deservedly so. But only gamers themselves seem to see their inherent artistic beauty, technological, educational and meditative qualities. I never got the sense that he was addressing his audience (twentiers, mostly male) free of prejudices. It always felt like he described his way was the best way.
All the other ways? In the chapter titled "Chill" Randy seems to go so far as to mock those who choose to live a life that is simply simple, which includes people I know and respect a great deal. It's irritating to see somebody I respect write that some avenues of life are considered literally better. Risk taking possibly costing money and time? "Calculate your odds". Jumping into the unknown, not knowing what to expect? "Get out of your comfort zone." Not knowing what to do in life? "Just pick and choose something." Most big, paralyzing life questions in this book are answered with a rice waffle-esque, blockheaded response.
I'll be the first to say that trying new things is a necessary component of life, but one should never forget the importance of home. Of your own Hobbiton. One shouldn't forget how many corpses lie dead and frozen on the slopes of Mount Everest and how extremely motivated those people must have been.
I don't know exactly what happened in two years but Randy's very careful consideration for the feelings of others or their difficulties seems to be completely missing here.
The original book went a bit like this: "If you're struggling with life and you feel like it's a struggle, then it really is a struggle and you're not imagining it. You're not diseased or faulty for thinking that it's a struggle." while the new book seems to say "If you're struggling, perhaps it's your fault. Also, life is hard. Also also, you're wasting time." If you read these two sentences carefully you'll notice that it's pretty much the exact same sentence but with a much less motivating tone, and it's this tone that feels off throughout the book.
Take a stand to things you find intolerable, but let everything slide. Don't deliberate. Either accept everything life ever throws at you or stay safe in your cul-de-sac neighbourhood. Try everything, but don't try everything because the clock is ticking.
Wait, what?
The advice veers dangerously close to the "just do it"-mentality that's become a joke on the internet. The original feels serene and wise, the spin-off feels judgemental and dull. It's a shame. Dr. Paterson should know better and, judging from his previous work, does know better.
Text language is funny in the sense that the most well-meaning set of words (that are meant to move you in some way), can, if your perspective is just a few degrees off, be seen as the author making light of what you believe or have experienced. Perhaps this is what happened during my reading? If that's the case then the language and tone needed to be far more clear.
I reread the original "How to Be Miserable" once a year. I never said it was perfect: it had moments where I had to hold back vomit due to it's "life is okay if you let it"-optimism. I'll be the first to admit that I'm a "glass half empty" kind of guy but I always keep my eyes and ears and brain open. But I read further because I could feel it was written with genuinely good intentions and it helps that most of the advice was actually solid and workable (VAPID vs SMART, ...). It felt like being in a really good conversation with a therapist. It had lessons you could literally immediately apply to your own life.
With this next book I was expecting more. When I listened to Randy talk about the hikikomori problem that's cropping up more and more I became incredibly interested in what he had to say. He even includes the subject in the prologue but leaves it dangling there for the rest of the book.
I'm probably completely wrong on this one but it just doesn't feel like Dr. Paterson understands how imprisoned twenty year olds feel, let alone the hikikomori, and how their long life before them stress-inducingly stretches out endlessly, with their minds as their only company, with nowhere to go. In a way, I can't blame him for trying but failing. How could he have ever succeeded? His twenties are behind him, and he never experienced living in 2020 when he was in his twenties. Your memories, that very distinct feeling of how incredibly mentally stuck you can be in life wears out when you become older.
I must confess that I've been having a pretty big stake in this sequel / follow-up book because I've read the original a little over two years ago after watching CGP Grey's video on the matter and the book has had a profound impact on my life to the point it kickstarted my life out of a multiple years-long battle with depression. After I read the book, I quit a job I was slowly being destroyed by, started investigating my interests one by one and did what I thought was unthinkable by starting to travel abroad - twice - that same year. This was all done in 18 months after I read the book.
Like King Théoden from The Lord of the Rings I slowly awoke from a dark, dreamless slumber. I know that sounds overblown and yes, the book didn't hold my hand when I got on the plane and it didn't sign my resignation for me and yes, I've had help from third parties. When you kind of give up on life with it's endless challenges, then nothing really happens for years on end.
This was the case with me until I read the book.
After that I started thinking: "What if I went to Iceland? What if the plane doesn't crash? What if I actually don't get mugged for my phone and wallet on the first day? What if the guy at the car rental station won't screw me over? What if it only rains one day, instead of the entire trip? What if I - god forbid - actually enjoy myself, even with the tremendous uncertainties and high cost?
-> That means I'll have to travel some more, right?
-> If I travel more, that means I'll need a lot of money
-> that means I'll need to find a different job to make that money collecting more enjoyable
-> that means I'll need to figure out what I find enjoyable to make a living from."
This was exactly my line of thinking and it's a mission I'm still pursuing. It's for this reason that the original book has constantly been on my mind and always closeby. The book has done for me what years upon years of living in a toxic society has desperately tried to undo. So imagine then, how excited I was when I received the follow-up to that book in the mail and imagine my disappointment when I discovered that it's not nearly as good as the first book.
I think it helps when I start with what I liked about it. The book is still filled with Randy's signature metaphor-filled humor, where cartoonish examples are shown to visualize how ridiculous negative thinking can be. I have quite the visual imagination so these literally always make me laugh. Also, at their core, if you shorten the teachings to a few paragraphs, they can still be incredibly informative and enlightening, though not as profoundly as the original book for reasons I will elaborate on later. Dr. Paterson's crystal-clear use of oft-disused common sense and simple logic often made me nod in agreement and made the hamsterwheel turn as quickly as it could. My mentioning of the shortening of chapters shows the first sign of trouble for the book.
This book is bloated in a lot of ways. It desperately needed either another editor or a fresh pair of eyes. Randy tends to go on long tangents that aren't immediately relevant for the subject at hand, or the concerns of the reader. Nobody seriously googles advice on life unless they really need it and when you read Tangent #3 in lesson 11 that you already don't fully agree with... well, it can be an exasparating experience. And perhaps this shows my OCD sides, but I don't really see skipping a lesson an option. It's only fair that I keep an open mind to learn what I can. Especially when you consider that almost every single page in the original "How To Be Miserable" was pretty much gold.
Some of the lessons feel polluted with a mixture of bias and agenda-pushing. This was present in the original as well but these were always mild suggestions to inspire or to add creedence to the lesson at hand. An example. In both books, Randy likes to bring up the idea of donating (charity) and how it can have a positive effect on your life, and after reading his arguments sprinkled throughout reading, they made me think long and hard about the value of donating. This was something I'd never even consider in the past. With this book, charity, and plenty of other causes that may need a bit of embellishment to sell are brought up, but it's never really revealed why I should care about them.
This book, just as the last one, contains 40 lessons spread across four distinct themes. While they are all presented as new chapters that tell a story, they can't quite escape feeling repeated from each other. Some of the key words or core meanings of some lessons will echo into others, and you'll swear you've read the same text just yesterday in your last reading session. You could probably create much more impactful content if the text was condensed into, say, 20 to 25 lessons. If Randy finds each of the 40 lessons vital, he could have easily weaved the core message of several lessons into one lesson, and it would have made for a much more engaging read. It would easily cut a third of the pages as well.
Having reread the book a second time yesterday, the bloat is a genuine problem and makes it frustrating to go through. The original got to the point so much faster. You open the book up, your eyeballs fall on a random page (hopefully not literally) and bam! Instant action. It was like the 1993 video game Doom in psychology form. In that case, instant brain.
I'm getting increasingly tired of "grown-up" media trying to tell the young dum-dums of the new generation that screen-entertainment such as video games are enjoyed by losers with no goals or future and that it's the root cause of unhappiness. I'm weary of being told that having sex with everything that has a heartbeat is totally awesome ("you need to discover yourself!"). But when you whip out a controller, that's where people draw the line and say "By Jove, the end times are surely upon us."
In the entire book, Randy never says that gamers are losers with no future. However, in many chapters the electronic entertainment industry provides him with a nice, chunky target that I'm almost certain he knows very little about. Video games have a bad rap, and at times, deservedly so. But only gamers themselves seem to see their inherent artistic beauty, technological, educational and meditative qualities. I never got the sense that he was addressing his audience (twentiers, mostly male) free of prejudices. It always felt like he described his way was the best way.
All the other ways? In the chapter titled "Chill" Randy seems to go so far as to mock those who choose to live a life that is simply simple, which includes people I know and respect a great deal. It's irritating to see somebody I respect write that some avenues of life are considered literally better. Risk taking possibly costing money and time? "Calculate your odds". Jumping into the unknown, not knowing what to expect? "Get out of your comfort zone." Not knowing what to do in life? "Just pick and choose something." Most big, paralyzing life questions in this book are answered with a rice waffle-esque, blockheaded response.
I'll be the first to say that trying new things is a necessary component of life, but one should never forget the importance of home. Of your own Hobbiton. One shouldn't forget how many corpses lie dead and frozen on the slopes of Mount Everest and how extremely motivated those people must have been.
I don't know exactly what happened in two years but Randy's very careful consideration for the feelings of others or their difficulties seems to be completely missing here.
The original book went a bit like this: "If you're struggling with life and you feel like it's a struggle, then it really is a struggle and you're not imagining it. You're not diseased or faulty for thinking that it's a struggle." while the new book seems to say "If you're struggling, perhaps it's your fault. Also, life is hard. Also also, you're wasting time." If you read these two sentences carefully you'll notice that it's pretty much the exact same sentence but with a much less motivating tone, and it's this tone that feels off throughout the book.
Take a stand to things you find intolerable, but let everything slide. Don't deliberate. Either accept everything life ever throws at you or stay safe in your cul-de-sac neighbourhood. Try everything, but don't try everything because the clock is ticking.
Wait, what?
The advice veers dangerously close to the "just do it"-mentality that's become a joke on the internet. The original feels serene and wise, the spin-off feels judgemental and dull. It's a shame. Dr. Paterson should know better and, judging from his previous work, does know better.
Text language is funny in the sense that the most well-meaning set of words (that are meant to move you in some way), can, if your perspective is just a few degrees off, be seen as the author making light of what you believe or have experienced. Perhaps this is what happened during my reading? If that's the case then the language and tone needed to be far more clear.
I reread the original "How to Be Miserable" once a year. I never said it was perfect: it had moments where I had to hold back vomit due to it's "life is okay if you let it"-optimism. I'll be the first to admit that I'm a "glass half empty" kind of guy but I always keep my eyes and ears and brain open. But I read further because I could feel it was written with genuinely good intentions and it helps that most of the advice was actually solid and workable (VAPID vs SMART, ...). It felt like being in a really good conversation with a therapist. It had lessons you could literally immediately apply to your own life.
With this next book I was expecting more. When I listened to Randy talk about the hikikomori problem that's cropping up more and more I became incredibly interested in what he had to say. He even includes the subject in the prologue but leaves it dangling there for the rest of the book.
I'm probably completely wrong on this one but it just doesn't feel like Dr. Paterson understands how imprisoned twenty year olds feel, let alone the hikikomori, and how their long life before them stress-inducingly stretches out endlessly, with their minds as their only company, with nowhere to go. In a way, I can't blame him for trying but failing. How could he have ever succeeded? His twenties are behind him, and he never experienced living in 2020 when he was in his twenties. Your memories, that very distinct feeling of how incredibly mentally stuck you can be in life wears out when you become older.