You Read the Book. Nothing Happened

A listener wrote in with a question anyone with a shelf of half-read leadership books will recognise. She reads good books. She underlines the useful parts. Nothing changes. Mel and Michelle did not script an answer. They worked it out in real time, and the diagnosis arrives fast. If your life is already full, work stacked on caregiving stacked on more work, there is nowhere to put the advice. Truth Bomb: The quality of the book is irrelevant. When women still carry 75%+ of the world’s unpaid labour, getting advice to “just make time to reflect” will probably not hit the mark as great life advice! The most useful example in the episode is also the smallest. Michelle read Atomic Habits years ago and took one thing from it: reduce the friction. Her walking shoes lived on the top floor of a three-storey house and she rarely walked, so she moved them to the door. She now keeps her bike, helmet and gloves ready to go wherever she is living. One idea, acted on. Mel read the same book twice, came away with a better grasp of habit theory, and changed no behaviour. The other point made by Mel, after reading “You Can Do Hard Things” by Cate Hall, is that not everything has to be hard won. So thinking that a pile of TBR books is a failure is not, there might be an easier way to consume the content (audiobooks for example!) Truth Bomb: stop trying to solve everything with a book. Take the one thing. Write it down. Do something with it this week. Are you thriving or just surviving? Take Michelle’s life audit quiz. Get full access to Lead to Soar Podcast at leadtosoarpodcast.substack.com/subscribe