The Self-Improvement of Jonah Franks

Another guest post

I first met Jonah Franks, founder of Public Intellectuals for Charity, in Fall of 2021. Though I thought he radiated success, he recently sent me this email on his path of self-improvement. Obviously I’d love to accept even half the credit he hands me, but that seems like a stretch. Decide for yourself…

---

Dear Bryan,

Happy New Year! I hope you and your family have enjoyed a pleasant holiday. I am wondering: When are you planning on releasing Self-Help is Like a Vaccine? I am very eager to read it! Since I've known you, you have been the source of several life-changing self-help insights, especially "obsessive self-experimentation," "do 10 times as much," and "pick your battles." 

Oh, and "don't clean your plate!" Following your dieting advice (don't eat breakfast, exploit the natural appetite suppression effects of the sleep wake cycle, and delay mealtimes to later in the day; prefer high-volume low-calorie foods; avoid sugary, highly palatable and appetite-stimulating foods while dieting) has caused me to lose 15 pounds since September, according to my digital scale history! I think Vyvanse has also been helpful with this.

Your recommendation of Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People has also been monumental. You pointed out to me two years ago that I showed no sign of trying to minimize conflicts with my family, to go out of my way to talk about what my parents/other people want to talk about, to smile and be pleasant, lavish sincere praise and appreciation whenever you can identify something praiseworthy about someone, etc. I listened to you, and my relationship with my parents is forever changed for the better. 

I think maybe the most important thing I've learned from you is your general bias for action and orientation toward living a high-agency life. That is, when there's something that seems like it would actually work to solve a problem, you just do it, even if it sounds weird or the result of nerdy analytical thinking. God bless nerdy analytical thinking! If expected value theory says have another kid someday, I think you've made me the kind of person who will just do it, and have another kid. 

You also helped me to see how unreliable introspective judgments can be, and how important it is to rely on objective measures in order to know what's really going on with subjective variables. For example, when I used to say I liked a certain kind of food or TV show, your sons would often ask me, "but I never see you smile/laugh when you do watch it, are you sure?" Or "but do you ever grunt with unmistakable outward signs of pleasure when you eat salads?" I took a moment to reflect and began to realize there's a huge difference between what I think makes me (or "should" make me) happy in retrospect, and what actually does. 

It's striking to me just how little insight I had about the quality of my own moment-to-moment experiences. Now, I don't waste time watching shows that don't make me genuinely, involuntarily display pleasure. This may sound inconsequential, but this simple insight has extended to helping me get clarity on which people I really enjoy hanging out with, which intimate partners are worth my time, and what medications actually work. 

The old me was also not very empirical about what habits improved my productivity and what didn't. When I thought that intervention X improved my study time, Tristan and Aiden would demand, "by how many hours?" Who knew that holding oneself accountable to objective quantitative standards makes a difference? In all frankness, not me, until I met you and your sons!

Your general advocacy of cognitive behavioral therapy also caused me to discover Feeling Good by David Burns and totally reform my mental instincts. I now have a strong tendency to seek out the positive, avoid overstating the negative, think in terms of what I can control, etc. I used to have very stereotypical depressive cognitions all the time, but that feels like ancient history now. 

I also think a lot of the lack of an observed effect of many therapies is an under-dosage issue. Most people barely try; 50 minutes of therapy once a week for a couple of weeks drown out in the blizzard of competing influences because that just isn’t that much time in the grand scheme of things. As you would say, do ten times as much. Read and listen to 15 books on becoming more social, or more at peace with yourself, or better at managing your "ADHD" (read: impulsiveness), or less financially impulsive, multiple times each. Endless repetitious exposure to sources of encouragement, endless self inundation with positive messaging, causes intention formation and identity change, which are necessary for behavior change.

Whenever there’s something I want to change about myself, this is where I start. I have observed in my n=1 self study that it actually does work. I went from being someone who was utterly socially incompetent to someone considered fairly charming, and an "ADHD" freak to being someone who is considered an exemplar of discipline by my friends and family. To be sure, part of how self help literature had this effect on me was by causing me to become more likely to do the things that you’re supposed to do to treat these problems, such as becoming more compliant with medication or more likely to get good sleep/exercise. But it seems like a crucial first step was the identity change fostered by self inundation with encouragement by preachers of the conventional and expert wisdom. Importantly: you’re not just reading to learn things, but to emphasize them so strongly that they become permanent fixtures in your consciousness through which you involuntarily filter all of your experiences and deliberation about what to do.

Becoming more explicitly aware of status also had a transformative effect on me motivationally. I used to have an absolute bitch of a time getting up in the morning. But now that I’m way more status conscious (thank you, Robin Hanson & Will Storr & Amy Chua), when I’m in bed about to doze off instead of starting my day, I compulsively ask myself, the same question that should answer any motivation block: what’s better than this? “What’s better than staying in bed? How about becoming a centimillionaire real estate developer one day. Which will never happen if I don’t pull my shit together.” And abra kadabra, the impossible always happens: I get up against seemingly every intrinsic personality predisposition to the contrary. My prior on motionlessness and depression has always had a Herculean grip on me, so it’s hard to overstate how remarkable this change has been. I now habitually, effortlessly filter my experiences through the basic working presupposition that my identity is “Someone Who Has Their Shit Together,” and it’s awesome. My room has never been more clean.

My favorite self help books so far are:

1. The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life 

2. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua.

3. The Status Game: On Social Position and How We Use It by Will Storr.

4. Feeling Good by David Burns. (The ultimate CBT book.)

5. Atomic Habits by James Clear.

6. Taking Charge of Adult ADHD (I think authors surname was “Barkeley”?)

7. Driven to Distraction and ADHD 2.0 by Hallowel

8. The Social Skills Guidebook by Chris MacLeod

9. Conversationally Speaking by Alan Garner

10. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (the bottom line of how to navigate the social world)

11. Weight Training for Dummies (despite its odd choice of branding, the entire for dummies series is amazing; the authors are carefully selected and most of the books are now in their 5th+ editions with very favorable popular ratings. I especially like Eric Tyson’s personal finance series.)

Soon: 12. Self-Help is Like a Vaccine

PS: Will "Build a Beautiful Bubble" get a book of its own after all? 

Best,

Jonah