This actually reminds me of a saying: "People will retreat to their strengths". Most of the time using what your good at is the fastest way to overcome a problem. It's a heuristic that works well for 95% of everyday problems but can sabotage you when confronted with especially hard or novel situations.
It seems like the important skill that this post alludes to is knowing when to apply your current skills to a problem vs. going out and putting in the hard work to acquire a new skill.
A very interesting technique, I especially like the examples of what reviews will say about each type of book.
Lets see if I can create a few example lists from my library:
Experiencing Flow
What Book: Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
How Book: Joy on Demand: The Art of Discovering the Happiness Within Book by Chade-Meng Tan
Why Book: Trying Not to Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity by Edward Slingerland
Having low conflict romantic relationships
What Book: The Usual Error by Kyeli Smith and Pace Smith
How Book: It's Not You, It's the Dishes by Paula Szuchman and Jenny Anderson
Why Book: Loving in Flow: How the Happiest Couples Get and Stay That Way by Susan K. Perry
Rest/Recovery days is a wonderful framework, one that will replace my current system of designated “autonomy days” and “obligation days”. For me I categorized days around agency, how much control did I have to choose tasks and which order I did them in. Which worked wonderfully when I chose wholesome tasks, but would go poorly when I chose too many insubstantial activities.