Why Self-Improvement Videos Don't Work

This is the age of self-improvement. There's no shortage of self-improvement videos, yet very few of them seem to actually work.
Since I make YouTube videos myself, I've noticed a few things from the producer's side. I'd like to talk about them.

Advice That Sells Isn't Advice That Works

People consume self-improvement content hoping to become better versions of themselves. And the content that shows up in their YouTube feed is the content that gets rated well.

Effectiveness and ratings. There's a gap between the two.

The first is a gap in timing. Self-improvement content only shows results when applied over the long term. But ratings happen immediately. You hit like or subscribe after watching, or partway through. When you rate something right away, there's no time to feel its effect. Nobody follows a video's advice for a few months and then goes back to like and subscribe. You leave a like or a subscription based on the feeling you get the moment you finish watching.

That's why videos that stir up emotion are bound to rise above videos that actually work. Motivational videos are the classic example. As a result, self-improvement content leaves a lot of room for marketing. Just look at who's famous on Korean self-improvement YouTube right now. I'm not saying those people make bad content. Think instead about what kind of skill lets someone wield influence in the self-improvement world.

The second is a gap between effectiveness and hurdles. If something has a big payoff relative to its hurdle, it's a truly good method. A high-ROI method, you might say. But unfortunately, hurdles and effectiveness are in a trade-off relationship. As the saying goes, Good things take time.

For example, a video telling you to take cold showers¹ to boost your dopamine is bound to be popular. It feels like something you could try first thing tomorrow morning. But telling people to go to a psychiatrist, get brainwave or temperament tests, and get a prescription won't be popular. It's a high-hurdle method that costs money, time, and the energy to find a clinic and book an appointment. It's also boring to hear about. But it definitely works.

Content that works this well asks the viewer for a specific, big change. That kind of content is hard to follow and, being so specific, isn't fun. That hurts view-through rates, and it becomes a video that has a hard time blowing up. Among content that talks about dopamine, have you noticed that the stuff from actual psychiatrists rarely shows up in your feed? (Skincare is the same: instead of dermatologists, strange folk remedies go viral.)

Unverified Advice

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By the nature of YouTube, there's more experimental and superficial advice than proven methods. The same goes for blogs and Twitter, where the barrier to producing content is low. Usually it's advice drawn from the author's own experience, and these days it's even worse, with plenty generated by ChatGPT. It's also armed with trendy, science-sounding keywords like neuroscience.

(Actually, even after saying this, I've tried reflexology on my feet.)

It's bound to be this way because people are drawn to experimental stories rather than commonly accepted ones. It's their thirst for stimulation. You open YouTube hoping to watch something fun for once, and you can't be expected to watch something dull. Proven methods may be ones you're already using or have heard of, or they may work well but be hard to follow.

Andrew Huberman is all over YouTube feeds these days. The moment Huberman said on his podcast that looking upward with your eyes can wake you up, Korean self-improvement YouTubers frantically started splicing together clips about it. But if this were really an effective method, Starbucks sales would be dropping, online lecturers would be teaching drowsy students to roll their eyes upward to wake up, that would then show up on Jung Seung-je's superfan YouTube channels, and the government would be running a "look up for a moment" campaign to prevent drowsy driving. If a method really works, the field adopts it immediately, no question. At the very least there should be videos testifying that it works, but there aren't.

Advice That Doesn't Have to Take Responsibility

A defining feature of self-improvement is that content doesn't have to take responsibility for anything. There are terms like pseudo-medicine and pseudoscience, but there's no such thing as "pseudo-self-improvement." In medicine, wrong information can wreck people, but self-improvement has nothing like that. In self-improvement, anything that feels good is good enough. The methods on offer may do a little good if you try them. But that's exactly why it's so easy to fall into the trap. You might be better off spending that time on something else. It can also blur what's essential.

Self-improvement takes a long time to draw criticism. Even the once-hot Miracle Morning seems to be only now starting to get some pushback. Until something is proven less effective than it was hyped to be, an enormous amount of time and attention gets consumed.

Also, many self-improvement contents are made by splicing together video clips of foreign gurus, and made this way, the meaning doesn't come across. Even if you can understand the content itself, behavior only follows once you've absorbed that person's mindset, and a video or two can't cover that.
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Christians go to church every week because they want to live as the Bible says. To absorb the mindset of the masters, wouldn't you need not just a video or two but fandom-level devotion, reading their books, following the guru's Twitter, and so on? Clips built by superficially pulling out highlights rarely lead to action. You need devotion.

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Beyond the question of whether self-improvement videos work, I think feed-driven information intake is a serious poison to a knowledge worker's competitiveness. You need the ability to set your own goals and go find and dig up content yourself. It will only become a rarer ability. Even with self-improvement videos, you should seek out the skill you need and watch for that. Consuming content stuffed with marketing and abstractions to rack up likes and subscriptions won't get you anywhere. I'll close with words from Nassim Taleb, who holds a similar view.​
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Footnotes

1. Speaking of cold showers, these days I do Contrast Bathing (alternating cold and hot baths). ↩