The Pragmatist's Guide to Life

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

By: Malcolm Collins, Simone Collins

Narrated by: Rene Rodriguez

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

Excellent; craft a purpose for a life worth living

A spectacular book! Truly the best book for crafting and/or refining your life purpose. (Or as they call it, your Objective Function.)

I’m a very firm confessional Christian, so I’ve already thought A Lot about life purpose and goals, yet this book still managed to heavily shift my perspective to make me better at my goals!

Pro tip: they slightly revise their book every year or so, adding additional info based on reader feedback. The paper book is updated, but this audible recording is static. So you will find a few extra tidbits if you buy the paper book.

Good audiobook, but suggest pairing it with book

I have listened through and intend on following the recommendations. However it’s probably best to have the actual book handy as you’re going through. Perhaps the authors could provide a summary of the guide on their website. Overall I appreciate the spirit this was written in and intend on sharing it with friends to try to examine and craft our own lives more intentionally.

DIY Philosophy to find your “meaning of life”

Pragmatist’s guide to life is the most useful book on philosophy/science I have ever read. It is thorough, unbiased, clear and motivational. It puts every philosophy into question with fascinating thought experiments. It outlines research on how society and biology lead us to self sabotaging habits. It offers practical suggestions for how to analyze your value system to create your own better self. This should be mandatory reading for ALL PSYCHOLOGISTS and anyone involved with “self improvement”.

Thought provoking! Beyond self-improvement.

PGTL goes beyond self-improvement to something in the realm of “life value optimization.” No matter what your life’s “objective purpose” may be (this book helps you figure that out!)— you’ll question your current beliefs and what truly matters. For anyone with an interest in self-improvement, psychology, philosophy, or with an open mind.

A great start

An excellent resource that let me figure out for myself what is important to me

Original thinking!

thorough explanation of various philosophies for life. also excellent analysis and breakdown of cognitive biases and methods for navigating through them.

These ideas need to be popularized

Full of interesting, informationally dense ideas. That for sure; changed my behavior/ perspective. Immediately restarted listening a second time through, might do a third and revisit.

Dry and not engaging

I heard Malcolm Collins on a podcast recently and he was very engaging. So much so that I immediately downloaded this audiobook and dove in. I’ve listened to 40 minutes and I’m done. It’s dry, academic, and offering very little substance.

Guess how great your life is because of money?

They are talking about accomplishing goals and going to college and getting EVERYTHING they want like being rich and white is a lifehack. I puked.