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The Pragmatist's Guide to Life

A Guide to Creating Your Own Answers to Life's Biggest Questions

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The Pragmatist's Guide to Life

Written by: Malcolm Collins, Simone Collins
Narrated by: Rene Rodriguez
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About this listen

As humans, we get to choose what we believe and who we want to be. This book is a ruthlessly pragmatic guide to creating your own answers to life's biggest questions.

Each of this book's four chapters covers one of the most important questions a person must ask themselves: What is the purpose of my life? How can I best realize the purpose of my life? Who do I want to be? How do I want other people to think of me?

Rather than give you answers to these questions, this guide provides a framework that helps you develop your own answers while equipping you with the neuroscientific tools necessary to transform yourself into whomever you choose to be.

If you are looking for an easy-listening book that will make you feel good about yourself, this isn't the book for you. If you want to take the time to think hard, take full ownership of the person you have allowed yourself to become, and permanently transform yourself into the best iteration of that person then you have found your book.

©2018 Malcolm Collins (P)2018 Malcolm Collins Education Philosophy Agnostic
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If you've never thought deeply about what you want out of life, this book is a great start.

There are plenty of small nuggets of wisdom in here. It also does a great job arguing the importance of thinking about external presentation.

My main criticism is that the book is too short and not quite actionable enough. I would have liked to see an appendix with maybe 5 very in-depth reader case studies. I personally found the transition difficult from deciding the terms of my objective function to actually having something coherent to maximize. Similar with objective functions to ideologies. The examples given were too simple to be useful. I know the authors very much want to encourage people to think things through themselves, but given how different people's objective functions are I think more in-depth examples wouldn't have posed a huge risk.

Despite this small criticism, the book is almost certainly worth the read for you.

A good exercise

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