Books: I think self-help books are a mixed bag. If it's the "top 10 things to be motivated!" I'm not a fan. Books that are grounded in psychology a bit or work on exploring concepts like growth mindsets can help people become a bit more aware of themselves. I think self awareness is one of the biggest gains I got from psychology. For example, "Power of Habit" is technically a self-help/psychology book and has taught me so much about habits and started me looking into them more. And now I'm just more aware of how I can plan for a more reliable day or things like that. At the end of the day, if you want to be more productive, the key is to just "do it". But, books and the like can sometimes help you understand why just "doing it" is so difficult sometimes. Communities: Big fan! That's my incentive behind Oink. I was in an academic focused server that was really helpful to me for a little bit, and posting little public updates on Oink kinda helps me out and it's nice to see other people getting things done and worked on as well. I think the thing to watch out for is "self help gurus". There is a ton of free info online and usually those "courses" are just condensed versions of what is offered by them. Books can be great because they're research backed, but self help gurus tend to be experience backed- and experience is something that has to be experienced, it can't just be told (in my opinion). I have never paid for a program like that and never will, the only exception being donations to communities that seem to matter to me. Or maybe people want to buy into accountability communities, that's cool too, but not personally my thing. But for every "self help guru" course for $600 USD, there's a free course out there- like Coursera- or someone on KZfaq- like Ben Hardy (though he kinda pitches his paid stuff but his free stuff is good, or so it helped me and I like his books) or to some extent some of those "Notes" videos I put out, dare I toot my own horn. Anyway that's kind of a concise form of my thoughts there. Nothing trumps fully "doing it", but books can help understand why that is so hard and bring a sense of self awareness around that. Bonus points for the gumball pfp 😎 Thanks for dropping by another vid!

@@markbacon78 haha thx a lot. You're hired.