If you want to get really stressed out - unlikely, I realise, unless you're a method actor preparing for a role as a sleep-deprived heart surgeon being pursued by the mafia - you could do worse than read Change Your Life In 30 Days, a bestselling book by the US TV life coach Rhonda Britten. "By picking up this book you have committed to making dramatic changes in your life in the next 30 days," she writes in the first paragraph. Hang on. I have?
It's unfair, though, to single out Britten, because her book is only one example of self-help promising massive transformations in highly specific periods of time. In fact, 30 days looks relaxed in comparison with Change Almost Anything In 21 Days, Change Your Life In 7 Days, Shape Shifter: Transform Your Life In 1 Day and, my favourite, Transform Your Life In 90 Minutes, an e-book that comes, bafflingly, with a 30-Day Fast-Start Guide For How To Transform Your Life In 90 Minutes.
As a sucker for quick fixes, it took me a long time to realise the problem. Deadlines induce stress and worry. They also lead to things getting done. But when the things you're trying to do include reducing stress and worry, the contradiction is obvious. Worse, these books exude perfectionism - the idea of total transformation, instead of just getting a bit better. "I have been to sales seminars where the motivational speaker implied to 250 real estate professionals from the same company that all of them could be the firm's number one salesperson next year," Steve Salerno writes in Sham, an anti-self-help tirade that's overly negative, but spot-on here. "Consider... the psychic costs of coming up short in a philosophical system that disclaims the role of luck, timing or competition, and admits no obstacles that cannot be conquered by the sheer application of will."
One day I may write a book called Conquer Your Panic Attacks Now! No, Now! Quickly, Before Something Really Bad Happens! Meanwhile, leading the field of authors who create more problems than they solve is the designer Karim Rashid, whose book Design Your Life is guaranteed to awaken obsessive-compulsive disorder in even laid-back readers. "All your socks, T-shirts and underwear should be identical," he advises. "Impose order: line everything up perfectly." Oh, and: "All kitchen products should be hidden."
Why? So I can construct a hugely fragile existence that will send me off the scale with stress if someone gives me the wrong kind of socks?
"Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people," the infinitely more sensible essayist Anne Lamott observes in her book on writing, Bird By Bird. "It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life... perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it." I'm not saying I'm any good at following this advice. But it is really, really good advice.
