Chris Barlow

Put The Book Down: Lessons From A Self-Help Addict

For the first time in seven years, I voluntarily cracked opened a fictional book. The last story I read that wasn’t set in reality was Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons. The book I’m reading now is…fine, albeit a little cheesy. But it’s been nice to get back on the horse, and I’m already looking to add a few options to my reading list.

This fairytale hiatus can be attributed to two things: 1) I got lazy around the age of 17 and substituted reading for Netflix and weed. 2) I got back into reading four years later, only my re-initiation was in the form of a self-help book, and I was hooked.

Self-help books are empowering. A good one can leave you with a rush, ready to seize the day, and overpower any and all obstacles that happen to fall in your path. There have been self-help books that have completely changed my perspective on life. However, immersing yourself too deeply in self-help books can be counterintuitive. It becomes easy to convince yourself that this leisurely activity has become a necessity.

Before we get into them, let me clarify what I consider to be “self-help.” Self-help books cover a considerably broad spectrum. Tony Robbin’s Awaken The Giant Within obviously falls under this category because it centers around taking control of your life and being the best you can be. But so does Walter Isaacson’s Ben Franklin, as we can all learn from the biography of one of the greatest minds in history. If it’s non-fiction that can teach you something new about life, I like to file it under “self-help.”

Here are the some of the biggest traps of the self-help rabbit hole.

Reading A Book On Productivity Does Not Make You Productive

It’s very easy to skim through the pages of The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People and feel the infectious energy of the people in this book. Unfortunately, this feeling can linger, while the call to action that comes with it does not. Sure, maybe you made your bed every morning for the first three days, or you spent the first week not answering emails in the morning (both suggestions you’ll find in every other self-help book you read). But these trends rarely hold place, while the belief that we’re actually being productive does. This in turn creates an internal pass to be lazy. It’s like the person who goes to the gym for the first time, then comes home and happily scarfs down a cake as a reward. That slice of cake can become particularly addictive, because all of a sudden you’re pursuing that feeling of productivity over actually productivity.

Regurgitating What You Read Does Not Make You Smart

Remember, you bought this book to improve on yourself, not to impress others. It’s so easy to quote Robert Greene’s description of Ben Franklin’s social intelligence, but no one cares, yourself included. Finish the book, let the facts that stuck with you sink in, and add your own opinion to them. Anyone can repeat a sentence they read in a book, but the point of self-improvement is to supplement your thoughts, not create them.

You’re Chasing The Dragon, Not Your Dreams

When you first delved into self-help, you did it to better yourself and eventually achieve the future of your dreams. There’s no get-rich-quick scheme. As all of these books have showed you, it’s about hard work and a pragmatic approach. But you start to wonder, what if there’s something else? That last book made such a good point about money management, what if the next one tells you exactly how to run your at-home business? Maybe the one after that will give you the perfect morning routine that will then give you a head start on the competition. All of a sudden, you don’t want to take action, because you think there’s more information out there that you might be missing. What was initially a form of motivation has now become a roadblock between you and your goals.

You Are Not Malcolm Gladwell

The most obvious statement in this article actually hit home the hardest for me. Malcolm Gladwell stated that he believes everyone should have a small breakfast. For him specifically, he has half of a croissant and a quarter cup of oatmeal. I tried a rough version of this for about two weeks and was very confused as to why I hated everyone and everything by 11 a.m. Malcolm Gladwell is 5’8”, 150 pounds, meanwhile I’m 5’10” and 185 pounds of PURE MUSCLE, BABY. To assume that I should emulate someone’s diet just because they used to write for The New Yorker is ridiculous. More important, it made me realize that everything I read is not one-size-fits-all.

Everyone Is Different

Just because Jocko Willink gets up at 4:30 a.m. to work out doesn’t mean you need to. Tim Ferriss goes on airplane mode after dinner and doesn’t turn if off until the next morning. Let’s be honest, that sounds awful. Tony Robbins jumps into 57-degree water every single morning. No thank you. Casey Neistat sleeps three to four hours a night. That’s a stroke waiting to happen.

A lot of people in these self-help books do things that seem inhuman, and probably have played a large part in creating the people they are today. That doesn’t mean that they are better than you, nor does it mean that it will work for you. I used to wake up at 5:30 every morning to do yoga before work. You know what that made me? Tired. After several months of waiting for my body to “get used to it,” I realized that I performed much better with the extra hour of sleep and just did yoga when I got home for the day.

Self-help books are full of suggestions, not facts. If something catches your interest, give it a try, but don’t be dismayed if it doesn’t work out. These books aren’t meant to create a whole new person, just help find pieces to the puzzle that is you.

Tim Ferriss.jpg — Photo via CreativeLive

Despite the treachery that can come with them, self-help books are incredible. While I plan on cutting back on them and mixing in a little fiction every now and then, they will still remain an integral part of me. Since I first cracked one open, my life has taken an immense turn for the better. Yeah, I live with my parents, but I’m super entrepreneurial about it. No, I’m not employed, but I’m going to be SO successful when I am. Okay, I also haven’t received my degree, but like, whatever. Fuck, what am I doing with my life?

In all seriousness, self-help books have made me a much better person. I’m in the best shape of my life, much more grounded than I would have been without them, and all around, I’m simply happier.

Go read some self-help books. Below are some of my favorites. If you have any suggestions, I’d love to read them in the comments section or you can always tweet me.

Psycho-Cybernetics, Maxwell Maltz
- There really is nothing like your first time. My first self-help book is near and dear to my heart. Psycho-Cybernetics is all about developing the ability to “steer” your mind toward your goals, and showed me just how much the average mind is capable of.

Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
- This book taught me to question every initial thought I have, and has strengthened my bullshit detector tenfold.

Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson
- It was a beautiful thing to gaze into the mind of a man who shaped the world we live in today. Wow, what an asshole, though.

Tools of Titans, Tim Ferriss
- Basically a transcript of approximately 200 interviews with some of the most successful people on Earth, divided by “Health,” “Wealth,” and “Wisdom.” There is something in this book for everyone and it’s the one I would recommend if you had to choose one.

The Four-Hour Body, Tim Ferriss
- This book still impacts me to this day with all it taught me about diet and nutrition. Most of my love for this book stems from its intense diet, The Slow Carb Diet.

How To Win Friends And Influence People, Dale Carnegie
- The mother of all self-help books, many of the lessons on human interaction still hold true today, despite being over 80 years old. Warren Buffett’s favorite book, if that means anything.

Making Sense of Andy Reid’s Legacy In An Age Of Extremes

Politics. Music. Especially sports. Nowadays, if you’re not on one side of the spectrum with any of these, you’re on the other. Gone are the days of “okay;” you’re either “trash” or “fucking lit.” You’re with Trump or you’re against him. J-Cole went platinum without any features, or he once said “….you feel like you the shit, but boy you can’t out-fart me.” There’s no in-between anymore.

Not many people are tougher to evaluate from this method of criticism than 2017’s early candidate for Coach of the Year, Andy Reid. I say “early candidate,” because any chance of that fell apart as the Chiefs lost six of seven after starting the season 5-0. This all led Reid’s Chiefs to be a one-and-done against the far inferior Tennessee Titans in the Wild Card Round. The only thing that may encapsulate Reid’s career better than this season is this picture below.

What do you see? Because that also probably tells you exactly what you think of Andy Reid and his tenure as a coach. And that’s how you make sense of Andy Reid’s legacy.

Okay, maybe it’s not that simple. The truth is, it’s not easy to make a clear-cut decision on Reid. But no one wants to hear someone be broken down as “A really good coach who’s had a few shortcomings when it mattered most.” Nowadays every take – especially sports – is a binary one. So I snooped through the years of Andy Reid’s career as a head coach to find out if he really is bad, or if he deserves a little more respect.

Bad Andy

Pretty much all of Reid’s shortcomings can be traced back to head scratching in-game decisions. Very few people are better from Tuesday-Saturday, but when game-time rolls around, Reid leads the NFL in brain farts per minute (BFPM).

Andy Reid has a wont to not give the ball to his best players during the weirdest of times. The instance that comes to mind can be traced to his most recent loss; NFL leading rusher Kareem Hunt received six carries in the first quarter, and only five in the remaining three. This is a game in which the Chiefs stumbled and lost after entering the second half with a 21-3 lead at home. The Chief’s were nine point favorites who only needed to kick a field goal and milk the clock, and they failed to do both.

Even at the peak of his peaks, Andy Reid is not good when it comes to using his timeouts properly. In week one of the 2010 season, Andy Reid had used up all of his timeouts while trailing by seven during the following marks: 5:25, 5:17, and 5:11. No, that is not a typo. Reid went on to lose that game 27-20.

I could find plenty more instances of Andy Reid burning timeouts like a 16-year-old with a fresh bag of weed, but we already know that side of Reid. This has been the real downfall of Reid: Andy can treat the two-minute drill like it’s The Drive.

Let’s wind the clock back (after Andy uses a timeout to decide whether or not to punt) to roughly a year ago, when the Chiefs hosted the Steelers in the Divisional Round. The Chiefs defense kept the Steelers – who averaged just short of three touchdowns per game on the season – out of the end-zone all day. Reid was in true in-game form by wasting two timeouts early in the second half by not having a play call ready. But the timeouts weren’t Reid’s kryptonite that day; instead, the sword Andy fell on was a lack of urgency.

With the Chiefs (who scored a total of 10 points in three and a half quarters to that point) down eight, Reid elected to have his offense construct a SEVEN MINUTE DRIVE. This would make sense if your offense was clicking and you didn’t have faith in your defense that day, but the scenario was completely flipped. The stagnant Chiefs were able to score, but had to go for a two-point conversion to tie it up.

You probably remember what happened next. James Harrison exploded off the line and Eric Fisher had to hold onto him for dear life to prevent Alex Smith from turning into Supreme Leader Snoke. Smith hit Demetrius Harris in the back of the endzone, but for nothing. The penalty deprived the Chiefs of a two-point conversion and the Steelers got the ball back with 2:43 left and no timeouts for Kansas City. Game over, Chiefs out of the playoffs.

Good Andy

Kansas City Chiefs v Philadelphia Eagles — Photo © Huffington Post

Andy Reid has won…a lot. Since his first stint as a head coach in 1999, Andy Reid has had three losing seasons. Future Hall of Famer Sean Payton had three in a row prior to this season.

After his first season with the Eagles, where he went 5-11 with none other than Doug Pederson as his quarterback, Reid went on to make the playoffs 9 out of 11 times. These teams included three byes, four wildcard wins, five divisional round victories, five conference championship appearances, and one that fell just short of the winning it all in 2004.

It’s not like Andy Reid fell off after all of those years with the Eagles. Kansas City had a 30% winning percentage in the six years leading up to Andy Reid’s hiring in 2013. Since then? It’s more than doubled to a near-Belichick-ian 66%. In a larger extreme with a smaller sample size, the Chiefs were 2-14 the year before hiring Reid, only to go 11-5 his first year with them.

So how does Andy Reid stay so consistently good, even with his weird shortcomings? Even after over 35 years as a coach, he refuses to stop learning. As The Ringer’s Kevin Clark wrote in early January, Reid has always believed that college football is five years ahead of the NFL in terms of play calling. This belief was actualized in 2017, as the Chiefs offense took the league by storm for the first half of the season, averaging a would-be league-leading 29.5 points per game. This was done with jet sweep packages featuring speed demon Tyreek Hill, option plays using multifaceted Kareem Hunt, bubbles to after-the-catch monster Travis Kelce, and most deadly of all, a combination of all three.

Other teams quickly took note of this. The Rams ran a jet sweep package against the Cowboys later that year. The Patriots openly admitted to stealing plays from the Chiefs that beat them in week one. More teams will only continue to borrow from these types of plays, and others that Reid brings to the NFL.

Reid’s innovations don’t just end at playcalling. He’s not afraid to continue to move around pieces, and experiment with his roster. This has been evidenced by trades of quarterbacks, both starting and backup, who had yet to fully hit their decline. He traded AJ Feeley for a second-rounder, Kevin Kolb for a second-rounder and Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie, and Donovan McNabb for a second-rounder, all trades that are fair to say he won. Of course, Andy most recently moved a quarterback that could have this tale of good and bad article dedicated to him. This season, Alex Smith finished third in completion percentage, last in interception percentage, and first in adjusted yards per pass attempt, on top of adding a new weapon to his ability in an above-average deep ball. But Reid saw the ceiling to Smith and decided to move on from his playoff-caliber quarterback, a unicorn of a move in a league that typically plays not to lose. Next year he will continue to build on his innovative plays with a freak prospect in Texas Tech’s Patrick Mahomes.

Verdict

I don’t think it’s too difficult to see where I’m leaning with this. His abilities as a coach have changed the history of the teams he’s led, his revolutionary play design has changed the landscape of the NFL, and his bullish roster moves is a style that a majority of NFL teams can learn from. Andy Reid is not a good coach, not a great coach, but an all-timer. But for the love of God, Andy, hire some dude who plays Madden all day to manage your timeouts for you.

Also, in the midst of my research, I found this picture of Andy Reid as a walrus. I am not liable for your nightmares.

Dual Reviews: The Cloverfield Paradox

Low Upside’s C.J. Garrett and Chris Barlow share their conflicting opinions on Netflix’s recent release, The Cloverfield Paradox.

I watch a lot of movies. Anyone who follows me on twitter knows that. I watch a large percentage of those movies on Netflix, and about half of those movies are bad. You’ve read my column on the wonderful low upside dot com website, “This Can’t Be Good.” I will tell you right now, that column barely scratches the surface of the bad movie vault that Netflix has become.

Knowing this did not bode well for The Cloverfield Paradox.

It pleasantly surprised me.

Thank you for stopping at CJ’s Hot Take Factory. I liked a movie. Please eviscerate me on social media and buy a shirt at the gift shop.

Did it live up to the weird no-marketing-until-the-day-of-Super-Bowl-Commercial thing that they tried? No. It really didn’t. People expected a movie worthy of that kind of hype. It’s not that. But as to where it fits into the Netflix ecosystem at large? Yeah, it’s pretty good.

I think it helps that I’m not a crazy big fan of the Cloverfield Cinematic Universe. I loved 10 Cloverfield Lane because it’s a taut psychological thriller with incredible performances, not because it had Cloverfield monsters. I didn’t like the original Cloverfield because I don’t like found-footage horror. The greater Cloverfield world was no factor to me. So to me, this was just a movie. I watched movie pseudoscience used as an excuse for digestible horror and I enjoyed it for that.

I didn’t really know what to expect when I went into this, which I think is true for a lot of people based on how the film was teased and released. The turn the film takes from a sort of Chappie-esque sci-fi to light body horror may have been offputting to a general audience, especially since it comes almost out of nowhere. Not to drop too many spoilers, but the first big horror scene is unsettling in a way that is very different than 10 Cloverfield Lane. There’s something to be said for the uncomfortableness of prolonged, painful screaming.

Other than that, I think most of the movie is just fine. The acting is fine. The cinematography is fine. The directing is fine. The story is slightly better than fine, if only because of the ending. Again, minimal spoilers, but it’s an ending I should have seen coming but didn’t. I blame my lapsed mental state on the high of a non-Patriots Super Bowl victory . But to me the film works as greater than the sum of its parts. It has a synergistic x-factor that I’m buying into, and that synergy is the combination of a pretty decent movie with my extremely low expectations. This movie is entirely an excuse to show you scary, kinda gross space stuff, and it’s better than every Netflix original horror I’ve seen that’s not based off a Stephen King story.

Let’s get this out of the way: I am a massive Cloverfield nerd. I did nonstop research as soon as the pre-Twitter viral trailer first teased me in theaters. I had my monster-sized expectations exceeded when I viewed it on its release date, then went home and delved even further into the mysteries left behind by the handheld-cam-led adventure. I read the weird manga tie-in series, studied the ending multiple times (tell me you don’t see that satellite at 1:42), and even poured hours into researching a fucking slushie knock off.

So when I learned of a new Cloverfield movie in the midst of Nick Foles being the greatest quarterback ever, I was conflicted. Here was a movie that claimed to answer the questions that Cloverfield protagonists Rob, Hud, and Beth could not solve, but at the same time would put an end to my decade-plus search for those answers. Did I really want to see the man behind the curtain? I decided I did…

…and I really wish I hadn’t.

The Cloverfield Paradox is set in 2028, 20 years after the movie it’s supposed to prequel. Don’t worry, it makes sense, kinda. Earth is in an energy crisis, and on the brink of World War III as a consequence. So Paradox’s protagonist, Ava Hamilton (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) leaves her husband, Michael Kiel (David Oyelowo) on Earth to join the Shepard program, an initiative that will supply Earth with an unlimited supply of energy from a particle accelerator.

When we first cut to Hamilton on the Cloverfield (like the movie!!!) space station, Paradox looks promising. The CGI is breathtaking, and the set design took away any predisposition I may have had that I was watching a straight-to-DVD B-movie. The starpower of Mbatha-Raw and Oyelowo only increased as the Cloverfield crew was introduced, including Daniel Bruhl (Rush) and Chris O’Dowd (the fun lrish cop from Bridesmaids).

Even once I got past all of the bells and whistles that came with Paradox, it still held its own for a solid 45 minutes. Insect-fueled explosions, spaceship-induced amputations, and people caught on the wrong side of teleportation all had me curious for what the hell was going on. But this is where everything fell apart. For a movie with an entire basis built on answering questions, it only provides one for everything: Shut up, it’s a different dimension.

Why did that guy blow up? It’s a different dimension. How does that detached arm have sentient thoughts and better penmanship than me? It’s a different dimension. Where did the monster come from? I’m not even sure if that one-size-fits-all answer applies here. ISN’T THAT WHY I DECIDED TO STREAM THIS??

The selling point of The Cloverfield Paradox was to answer the pressing queries left by the first installment. Yet only about 10 of the 95 minutes are dedicated to Kiel and his “encounters” with the monster on Earth. All of these moments feel hollow and are only downgraded by a been-there-done-that story of Oyelowo’s character helping a stranded girl find her parents (which he…kinda doesn’t?).

We don’t even see the monster until the very last shot of the movie, and this felt like less of an homage to dedicated fans, and more of an “oh shit, this is supposed to tie-in with Cloverfield” panic move. Also, am I supposed to believe that this thing is TALLER THAN FUCKING CLOUDS????

I could be a lot kinder to this movie, if J.J. Abrams was a little kinder to his fans. The Cloverfield Paradox is a Cloverfield movie in namesake only. Like 10 Cloverfield Lane, Abrams came onto this set in the midst of shooting and decided to add the Cloverfield touch afterward. Unlike 10 Cloverfield Lane, this time I wasn’t happy with what I was tricked into watching.

Abrams claims this is his way of creating an exciting universe (read as: easy money). But Abrams has a habit of putting a positive spin on a steaming pile of poo. He recently called the Netflix release of Paradox a “fun” idea, when in reality it was just a panic dump by Paramount CEO Jim Gianopulos to make a quick profit.

I do think the Netflix surprise release is awesome. An easily accessible medium paired with a highly anticipated release is the perfect combination; I couldn’t wait to stream Paradox and did so within 24 hours of the teaser. I just hope Paradox’s less-than-stellar feedback shows Netflix that a great marketing campaign needs a great product to go with it.

Even when I remove myself from the Cloverfield Universe, Paradox is still a hollow sci-fi movie that uses cheap plot points to get by. My biggest regret was that I didn’t write this review immediately after watching the movie, because a majority of it was so easily forgotten.

The Cloverfield Paradox showed me the man behind the curtain, and he tried to sell me a bridge.