The self-help book Bill Clinton used | Hacker News Reader

The self-help book Bill Clinton used

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Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who started his new autobiography, My Life, with a reference to the book:

When I was a young man just out of law school and eager to get on with my life, on a whim I briefly put aside my reading preference for fiction and history and bought one of those how-to books: How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life, by Alan Lakein. The book’s main point was the necessity of listing short-, medium-, and long-term life goals, then categorizing them in order of their importance, with the A group being the most important, the B group next, and the C the last, then listing under each goal specific activities designed to achieve them. I still have that paperback book, now almost thirty years old. And I’m sure I have that old list somewhere buried in my papers, though I can’t find it. However, I do remember the A list. I wanted to be a good man, have a good marriage and children, have good friends, make a successful political life, and write a great book.

One out of five for your bigtime life goals isn't bad.

i know you're a troll... but which one? 1. still married in spite of everything, I'm pretty sure that puts him in the good 50% of all marriages. 2. kids seem fine. (i don't remember bill's kids on robot chicken) 3. friends. no idea. i bet he's fun at parties. 4. pretty sure u.s. president is the best possible politically. 5. nyt bestseller. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/books/bestseller/0923besth...

I understand you don't like the guy, but wtf?

still married in spite of everything, I'm pretty sure that puts him in the good 50% of all marriages.

Statistical quibble: MORE than 50 percent of marriages stay together and never end in divorce.

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/d/divorce.htm

http://www.divorcereform.org/rates.html

http://www.divorcereform.org/nyt05.html

But, yes, your specific point is correct that former President Clinton is still married to the only wife he has ever had.

Just because you've stayed married that doesn't mean you have a good marriage.

his own assessment:

Whether I’m a good man is, of course, for God to judge. I know that I am not as good as my strongest supporters believe or as I hope to become, nor as bad as my harshest critics assert. I have been graced beyond measure by my family life with Hillary and Chelsea. Like all families’ lives, ours is not perfect, but it has been wonderful. Its flaws, as all the world knows, are mostly mine, and its continuing promise is grounded in their love. No person I know ever had more or better friends. Indeed, a strong case can be made that I rose to the presidency on the shoulders of my personal friends, the now legendary FOBs.

This humbly reverent stance is a deeply Christian sentiment. Within the Christian modality, it is recognizing the basic flaw of the individual as an unworthy and sinful creature only blessed by the grace of God. Here, Mr. President is eschewing Pride for an admission of fallibility and attributing his success to an external locus of control. This sentiment is what made him so very appealing to a wide selection of voters. Contrast it with the tone of Gore's self-talk, which was overshadowed by a shame of his fortunate upbringing -- he was disproportionately self-concious of having lucky pedigree that it backfired, further alienating him from the common voter and making him seem "elitist." As further evidence, post-election Gore further embraced populist iconography by growing a beard and focusing exclusively on common concerns.

I like Clinton, but let me play devil's advocate & defend jdminhbg's answer anyway:

"Good man" -> adulterer & impeached POTUS "Good marriage & children" -> adulterer, but we have no real idea of the health of his marriage. It could be healed, or it could be a facade to preserve political and professional careers. "Good friends" -> Can't argue here, except maybe for the dead or imprisoned ones (Whitewater) "Successful political life" -> Impeached POTUS "Write a great book" -> Being on the NYT BS list doesn't qualify it as a "great book" to me. When I hear great, I think Hemingway and such, books that people will care to read decades from now.

It's all a matter of perceptions and viewpoints.

His book was a new york times best-seller. Does that necessarily imply that it is a good book? Also, are we sure it wasn't ghost written?

Maybe he was just trying to make a quip.

I wanted to be a good man

He's a rapist and a murderer. Deal with it.

have a good marriage and children

Hillary stayed with him for her own political reasons. No shit.

have good friends

No clue, but if he's like most successful men, his friends are in it for the money.

make a successful political life

Yep.

and write a great book

Well, he didn't use a ghostwriter, so that's something. But most of the non-starfucker reviews were mediocre. So, "great" if not "okay", is probably out.

"just out of law school": following, that is, graduation from Georgetown University, a Rhodes scholarship, and graduation from Yale Law School. There is an old gibe that a Rhodes Scholar is a young man with a great future behind him, but I suspect that most persons with those credentials do pretty well. Achieving the presidency of the US has so many chance factors in it--would we have heard of GWB had Ronald Reagan picked (say) Richard Lugar to run with him in 1980?--that it makes a tricky argument for political acuity.

7 bucks, 2 hour read, helped someone go from a poor, rural, single parent upbringing to the top of his field. Sounds like a no-brainer. Ordered it.

> helped someone go... to the top of his field

Did it really? I seriously doubt it. Bill might be mistaken. To me it looks like just one of the cognitive biases: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

Unfortunately we cannot conduct an experiment of having two identical Bill Clinton, one of them read this book while another did not, then see they results.

But among more than 3 million of book readers, how many of them have something as close to Bill Clinton's achievements?

Politics is one of those fields where being a little better at it makes you better at a lot of things (e.g. making friends, making compromises, making deals). That's unlike being, e.g., a slightly better programmer (if you're not a programmer already) or being a slightly better lock-picker.

Marginal increases in political aptitude yield benefits crossing many domains in life, unlike most skills.

I have goals sorted out like this but my A-goals just don't seem do-able...it just seems, though, that they're not obtainable.

Have you broken out more achievable goals in the mid and short term? Have you outlined actions to achieve these stepping stones? If you do that, maybe those long term goals aren't unobtainable anymore.

I have a couple of questions.

1. I couldn't find biography of Alan Lakein, the author of the book. Did he achieve something as extraordinary as Bill Clinton did?

2. Could Bill Clinton achieve the same life goals without help from this book?

According to Wikipedia[1], he "sold over 3 million copies" of the book. That is certainly an achievement, whether or not it was one of his primary life goals.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Lakein

> he "sold over 3 million copies" of the book

Then we have 3 million of Bills Clinton?

There's a big difference between knowledge, and knowledge applied.

No kindle version? You're killing me!

I've been looking for a good self-help book -- particularly one for public speaking / conversing with people. Anybody have a good one (besides this)?

Dale Carnegie's "How to win friends and influence people"

It's a classic for helping you to converse and connect better with people (its contents are much more sincere and wholesome than the semi-cheesy title suggests)

Will it help me get fellatio?

Only thieves, crooks, and whores (political and otherwise) would want to emulate Bill Clinton.

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