

The self-help book Bill Clinton used  - dimitar
http://www.amazon.com/Control-Your-Time-Life-Signet/dp/0451167724

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dimitar
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._

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

~~~
jfoutz
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...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/books/bestseller/0923besthardnonfiction.html?_r=1)

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

~~~
tokenadult
_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.

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

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julius_geezer
"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.

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edw519
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.

~~~
caustic
> 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?

~~~
byrneseyeview
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.

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

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caustic
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?

~~~
parenthesis
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>

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

Then we have 3 million of Bills Clinton?

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

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sown
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.

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rjurney
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.

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lallysingh
No kindle version? You're killing me!

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ethikal
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)?

~~~
pgbovine
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)

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WilliamLP
Will it help me get fellatio?

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

