Five Steps to Freedom from Self-Help Lists

I am one of those people.

I find a daily routine that enhances my health and makes me feel good, and then I put a lot of effort into inventing reasons why I should quit doing it. I discover behaviors that waste my time and make me feel bad, and I cannot quit them.

I have a problem with lists. I don’t make lists, other than when going grocery shopping, but I am incapable of passing up internet articles that promise me a list. The algorithms created to sell me things on the web zeroed in on my weakness, and I could not resist.

Like a lot of people, I keep up with friends, family and modern culture using my phone. I have Facebook and Instagram and Reddit. Those businesses provide me information in return for my agreeing to let advertisers try to sell me stuff. Google assistant curates my news, plumbing my internet history for reporting I have read in the past and giving me more of the same. That way, rather than getting all the news that is fit to print, I get only the news I want to read. It is creepy but convenient.

Google, its partners, and its competitors believe that I cannot say no to a list. They are right and I hate myself for it.

Over a two day period a while back I read The Seven Habits of Outlandishly Wealthy People, Five Little-known Things you Can Do With…