It's kinda cliched, but Tony Robbins' stuff always helps me.

I'd try Awaken The Giant Within and/or Unlimited Power. Another good motivational book is Relentless by Tim S. Grover. There's also Unleash The Warrior Within by Richard Machowicz.

I'm not sure if this is non-fiction enough for you but, Tony Robbins, "Awaken the Giant Within" is one of my favorites. It is a good self help type book. It comes in Kindle too. http://www.amazon.com/Awaken-Giant-Within-Immediate-Emotiona...

Even within a single language the words that we chose to use shape our mental and emotional states. Tony Robbins talks about this in his book Awaken the Giant Within (highly recommend)

2010 - Outliers, Malcom Gladwell

2011 - In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan

2012 - Born to Run, Christopher McDougall

2013 - Four Hour Work Week, Tim Ferriss

2014 - Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon

2015 - Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins

2016 - Black Swan, Nicolas Taleb

2017 - Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman, Richard Feynman

2018 - The Prophet, Khalil Gibran

2019 - Three Body Problem (series), Liu Cixin

These aren’t publishing years, just the year these books transformed me.

If earning money is your sole criteria, then you'd be better off doing what you already have qualifications for.

You can learn about assembly, compilers, etc by reading a couple of good text books. There are some excellent video CS courses out there if you prefer that sort of tuition.

Yes, there will be a period while you are learning and not earning. But that's how it was with your original degree - wasn't it? If you have a keen desire, then you will accomplish your goals. Read some Anthony Robbins, e.g. Awaken the Giant Within. Everything is possible, and you have to work for it, which means you really have to want it.

Also about the pain vs. pleasure response.

Ultimately, we as humans, are always trying to either obtain more pleasure or avoid some level of pain. This is true for every task and decision we make in life.

If we take the task of going to the gym for instance, some people associate going to the gym with "pain". I.e. I don't want to run because I"m tired. Whereas others associate going to the gym with "I want to feel good and have more energy".

The trick is being able to combine the power of habit (cue) with pain and pleasure.

All of this can be read in Awaken the Giant Within by T. Robbins. Oldie but a goodie classic on this stuff.

You should read the article I linked to! Sadly it was a bit too long to paste the whole thing.

When I was younger, my father gave me a thick and nauseating compendium labelled The University of Success, filled with extracts from vacuous books of the kind Chesterton talks about. I guess he thought I wasn't 'successful', and it would teach me how! By then I'd already read and got a lot from some of the useful books in the field - Awaken the Giant Within, Life 101, How to Win Friends and Influence People, The New Guide to Rational Living, Effortless Mastery, The Art of Possibility etc. For the kind of success I value most, I've been inspired for decades by, and owe the most to, writers such as Robert Fulghum, SARK, and most of all, Emerson.

Closest book I've found on the "no speed limit" approach was Tony Robbins' “Awaken the Giant Within”. It could have just been the timing of when I read it. Tim Ferriss told me the book that changed the way he saw the world was “Maximum Achievement” by Brian Tracy, but when I read it, it seemed like conventional wisdom. So maybe it's just timing.

What I liked about Tony Robbins' message was this:

* - Change happens in an instant. People act like change takes years, but really it's almost always a key moment, an instant where you change the way you think about something, or make a promise to yourself to change the way you act (even though it feels strange at first). It may have taken years of procrastination to get to that pain point, but the change itself is instant.

* - You can change the way you think, so you can change the way you feel. People say, "I can't help the way I feel." or "This is just who I am." But you were an almost-blank slate when born, and most of what you think was just taught into you by someone, so you can un-do it, and replace it with any beliefs or even emotions that support your goal. He gives a great example of funerals in New Orleans: how they play sad music for a few minutes, then break into celebration. We think that death is universally sad, right? But this shows there's another way to think about it. So you can choose to feel happy about each person that rejects you ("one step closer!"), or choose to feel disgusted by the thought of procrastinating ("it's my mortal enemy!"), or whatever you choose to feel.

Actually there were probably 100 other things like this that changed the way I think, but just seem commonplace to me now because I've been thinking them so long.

Grab any of those classic self-help books like "Think and Grow Rich" or "Maximum Achievement" or "Awaken the Giant Within". When read at the right time in your life, it can really change everything.

(( Oh, just noticed you asked about harmony. All the stuff he taught be was very basic jazz harmony that almost any book on the subject will teach. The key was how fast he taught it. ))

I'm almost half way through it, I love most of the technical details he has described so far. Interesting on the whole, but I somehow lose interest and switch to another book for a couple of days before coming back to it.

I am also reading "Awaken the Giant within" by Anthony Robbins, the first third seemed to be pretty solid, though I am not sure the NAC stuff works as well as he says.

I'm bracing for a serious downvote... I have to admit that Anthony Robbins had a big influence on my thinking, particularly with "Awaken the Giant Within." The message was - you can control how you feel.

Nearly twenty years later, I can see the limitations of his ideas - the danger of creating an arbitrary belief system for yourself and the selfishness of simply deciding what you want and rigging everything in your existence to get it. I also came to believe it's OK to not be happy all the time. But I will always respect Robbins' direct explanations of human motivation and how it can be nudged.

That and 'Single Variable Calculus; Early Transcendentals'; the universe is about change and math can model nearly all of it.