Most of us are too busy to be better: the lazy person's guide to self-improvement
I am lying on a mat, looking up at the bright blue of the skylight above me. I exhale purposefully, then let my lungs reinflate of their own accord. I am trying hard to concentrate on this slightly counterintuitive way of breathing, but the voices in my head are distracting me. They are telling me about business regulation, specifically about the inhibitory effect of hairdresser licensing in Utah.
I do not, as a rule, make New Year resolutions. As an anxious person, the 12 months that lie ahead of New Year’s Eve do not fill me with excitement or anticipation. I just wonder what else could go wrong. I am as susceptible as the next person to notions of promise, to the idea that, with the right effort, I could become fitter, smarter, happier, better. But each new December, as I coast towards the end of the year on squeaky wheels, I find myself feeling the same way: older, wiser, worse.
It’s the time and effort involved that puts me off most kinds of self-improvement. Many years ago, I signed up for an online life-coaching course, and when I complained about the difficulty of one of the exercises I’d been sent – I was meant to make a list of my qualities, keeping to the strict format “I am (quality)” – the instructor immediately replied by email, saying, “Yes, this is REAL WORK, isn’t it?’ I thought: I already have a job, thanks.
In recent years, however, a new school of self‑improvement has sprung up, one that seems to recognise that, frankly, most of us are too busy to be better. Books with titles such as The 10-Minute Millionaire, The 5-Minute Healer, 10 Minutes To Better Health and 10 Minutes A Day To A Better Marriage represent, if not a global revolution in self-improvement, at least a reliable publishing trend.
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