How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life by Alan Lakein

Lakein, Alan. How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life. 1973. New York: Signet, 1974.

How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life is a short, direct guide to practical time management. The essence of Alan Lakein’s approach is setting priorities and planning.

The early chapters of the book present techniques for identifying and setting your priorities. It addresses both big goals and manageable tasks.

I put one of these prioritizing techniques, related to my to-do list, to immediate use. This has helped me spend more time on things that are important to me. It also helped me to feel less guilty about dropping low-priority things off my to-do list. If something is unimportant, I shouldn’t waste my time on it or let it clutter my to-do list.

Lakein isn’t judgmental about priorities. He doesn’t tell you what you should be doing. The book is about helping you accomplish what is important to you.

Planning goes hand-in-hand with setting priorities. Lakein says, “Control starts with planning.” Planning is simply making decisions about what you want to do, when you want to do it, and sometimes how you want to do it. I’ve seen complicated planning systems, but Lakein keeps is simple: make a list and set priorities.



Lakein also recommends scheduling. Life is full of routine and needful things that can take over our days. Making time for the things that are important means setting aside time to do them and not doing other stuff, especially less important stuff, during that time.

The latter chapters of the book present several techniques for staying on track with your priorities. Whether you need to carve out time, get started, break down overwhelming tasks, overcome fear or get back on track when you backslide (it’s bound to happen), Lakein has helpful suggestions for overcoming these and other obstacles.

I’m surprised I hadn’t heard of Lakein earlier, especially in this time-obsessed age. Maybe it’s because his book predates fancy, leather-bound planning binders, personal digital assitants and smart phones. This may be why his methods seem simpler than some other programs. His methods are compatible with today’s popular tools for time management, though they were developed when the tools were paper lists and calendars.

Lakein’s focus is practical and he doesn’t give much attention to deep theories. His tone is often like the conversational, no-nonsense, blunt self-help books of earlier decades. This makes the book readable and useful and maybe you, like me, will find something in it you can use right away.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
The Richest Man Who Ever Lived by Steven K. Scott

James

James.  The Holy Bible.  New King James Version.  Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

James wrote to Jewish Christians.  His letter is full of practical wisdom for all Christians.

*

Several related themes run through James.  These are trials, self-control, practical faith, and humility.

James begins his letter with a discussion of trials.  We all have troubles.  Disconcertingly, sometimes our worst problems arise from doing the right thing.  Though it may seem like God has abandoned us in such times, God is at work.  Facing trials with patience and faith builds our character.

Part of a godly character is self-control.  A mature Christian will discipline himself.  In particular, he will watch what he says.  It is hard to control what we say, refraining from idle and harmful words.  It is hard to speak convincingly about the love, grace, and faithfulness of God when you just spewed a lot of gossip, lies, and nonsense.

James writes of faith in very practical and active terms.  Sermons, exultations, and moral sayings are hollow and useless if they are not coupled with service, aid and upright living.  If we really believe the Gospel and have call to be followers of Christ, we will act like Christ who humbled Himself to labor with men, heal the sick, feed the hungry, and care for the needy.

Emulating the humility or Christ is a theme of the letter in itself.  James extols believers to act with humility and treat everyone fairly.  Wealth and position are temporary, but in our eternal relation to God we’re all the same:  each Christian is a sinful person saved by the grace of God.  Pride is a source of strife, people in conflict as they all try to get their own way, but humble people trust God and can let go of strife.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Deuteronomy

Exodus

Genesis

The Gospels

Hebrews

Leviticus

The Most Effective Organization in the U.S. by Robert A. Watson & Ben Brown

The Pauline Letters

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150 Book Reviews Posted on Keenan’s Book Reviews

We’ve posted reviews of 150 books on this blog so far. The most recent 50 are listed below in alphabetical order by title.

The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss
8 Minutes in the Morning for Extra-Easy Weight Loss by Jorge Cruise
Acres of Diamonds by Russel H. Conwell
Attitude is Everything by Jeff Keller
The Beethoven Factor by Paul Pearsall
Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
Changing for Good by James O. Prochaska et al
The Christian’s Secret to a Happy Life by Hannah Whitall Smith
The Club of Queer Trades by G. K. Chesterton

The Complete Verse and Other Nonsense by Edward Lear
Copernicus’ Secret by Jack Repcheck
The Dangerous Duty of Delight by John Piper
The Dain Curse by Dashiell Hammett
Descarte’s Secret Notebook by Amir D. Aczel
The Difference Maker by John C. Maxwell
The Elements of Technical Writing by Gary Blake and Robert W. Bly
The Emotional Energy Factor by Mira Kirshenbaum
Fathered by God by John Eldredge
Follow Your Heart by Andrew Matthews

Genesis
The Golden Age of DC Comics by Les Daniels et al
Henry Huggins by Beverly Cleary
The Hunter adapted by Darwyn Cook
Idea Mapping by Jamie Nast
The Innocence of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton
Instant Self-Hypnosis by Forbes Robbins Blair
The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson
Keeping a Journal You Love by Sheila Bender
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

Language and the Pursuit of Happiness by Chalmers Brothers
The Man Who Loved Books too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett
Mastering Fiction Writing by Kit Reed
Maus by Art Spiegelman
The Mindful Way through Depression by Mark Williams et al
The Numbers behind NUMB3RS by Keith Devlin & Gary Lorden
The Numbers Game by Michael Blastland & Andrew Dilnot
The Once and Future King by T. H. White
Peace of Mind through Possibility Thinking by Robert H. Schuller
The Private Investigator’s Handbook by Chuck Chambers

Ramona the Brave by Beverly Cleary
The Richest Man Who Ever Lived by Steven K. Scott
The Secret of the Ages by Robert Collier
Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck
Triumvirate by Bruce Chadwick
Water by Marq de Villiers
The Way of the Wild Heart by John Eldredge
When the Rivers Run Dry by Fred Pearce
You Can Write a Column by Monica McCabe Cardoza
Your Intelligence Makeover by Edward F. Droge, Jr.

Additional or expanded reviews have been posted on these books:
The Amazing Adventure of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
The Big Necessity by Rose George
Blink by Macolm Gladwell
The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont
The Emotional Energy Factory by Mira Kirshenbaum
Epic by John Eldredge
The Ghost Map by Stephen Johnson
God Wants You to be Rich by Paul Zane Pilzer
The Gospel of Luke
Gratitude by Melody Beattie
The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis
His Excellency by Joseph J. Ellis
How to Write Mysteries by Shannon OCork
The Joy of Supernatural Thinking by Bill Bright
Mastering Fiction Writing by Kit Reed
No More Christian Nice Guy by Paul Coughlin (see comments)
The Numbers Behind NUMB3RS by Keith Devlin & Gary Lorden
One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer
The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization by Anthony Esolen
Proverbs
Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson with Miriam Z. Klipper
The Spirit by Darwyn Cooke
Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose
The Unfinished Game by Keith Devlin
Walking with God by John Eldredge
The Water Room by Christopher Fowler
Why Good Things Happen to Good People by Stephen Post & Jill Neimark
Wisdom from the Batcave by Cory A. Friedman

Additional reviews:
First 25 Reviews
Reviews 26-50
Reviews 51-75
Reviews 76-100

Interesting Stuff

70+ Water Twitters
Does Mysterious Math Law Really Predict The Size Of Our Cities?
End the University as We Know It
Interesting Stuff May 1, 2009
Introducing: America’s 10 Biggest Highway Builders
Green Kenue ™ Hydrologic Modeling Software from National Research Council Canada
Millionth English Word Or Just "Nonsense?"
The Mysterious Math of Cities
New Airport Screening Bares All
New Laws For Safer Streets? Hawaii Gets It Right, Missouri Gets It Wrong
Outside the Lines: Tesla's Lab for Sale
Scientists: We've Cloned Glowing Dogs
What’s Your Water IQ?
The World’s 5 Most Ambitious Megaprojects

Naked Statistics by Charles Wheelan

Statistics provides of us with a power set of tools for describing things in our world and making inferences about them. They can also rely on math and logic that seems counterintuitive and they are subject to other pitfalls. Economist Charles Wheelan provides and accessible introduction into how we can use, misuse and abuse statistics in Naked Statistics.

Data is everywhere. In my life time, the falling prices and increased interconnectivity of computers have massively increased the collection of data. It can be overwhelming. At the same time, my experience as an engineer and government employee have left me frustrated with lack of data on some issue and wonder what inferences I might draw and how much I can rely on them.  Statistics provides us tools for dealing with these issues.

For instance, statistics provides us a way to summarize lots of data with a simple number such as an average (many people are familiar with sports statistics that summarize a performance of a play or team over a game, season or even a whole career). Statistics can help us find trends and estimate how much various factors may be contributing toward those trends. Even in the case where there is little data, statistics can help us evaluate the reliability of your conclusions (statistics can’t prove something definitively, but it can quantify how likely you are to be wrong).

“Statistics cannot prove anything with certainty.”-Charles Wheelan, Naked Statistics

Though he doesn’t delve too deeply into the mathematics of statistics, he shows that the math is often the easy part. Getting good data, designing experiments, constructing reasonable hypotheses, and avoiding bias present many stumbling blocks that can turn statistics into nonsense.

Not only that, people can take advantage of the weaknesses of statistics to provide persuasive support for wrong conclusions. Not everyone throwing around statistics intends to deceive, but a few do. A few just make mistakes, too. Wheelan describes many of the common mistakes people make while using statistics. This can help people new (or not new to statistics) avoid them. Possibly more important, it can help users of statistics recognize possible problems in how the statistics they use are developed or interpreted.

“Statistics cannot be any smarter than the people who use them.”-Charles Wheelan, Naked Statistics

This is not a statistics textbook. Wheelan does not delve into the details, but he does provide intuitive explanations of the concepts and simple examples. A student of statistics might find this book helpful in getting over some of the conceptual hurdles that may get in the way of understanding the rest of the material.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Chance by Amir Aczel

The Drunkard’s Walk by Leonard Mlodinow

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

The Numbers Game by Michael Blastland & Andrew Dilnot

The Numerati by Stephen Baker

The Unfinished Game by Keith Devlin 

Wheelan, Charles. Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from Data. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013.

Dickhead Roboticists

It appears that the fields of computer science and robotics attract a lot of Dickheads.  By that I mean fans of science fiction author Philip K. Dick.  Psychology researcher David F. Dufty is acquainted with a few of these fans, academics, engineers, and artists, who undertook the strange challenge of building an android simulacrum of their hero.  He tells their story in How to Build an Android.

Dick is possibly the best choice for an author to imitate in robotic form.  He is well known for his story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which was the basis of the movie Blade Runner.  The essence of the story is that robots have become so sophisticated, intelligent, and lifelike that it is almost impossible to distinguish them from real humans.  They blow away a Turing test, and the latest models can only be identified through a test that detects their carefully disguised lack of empathy; Dick thought empathy was an essentially human trait that may not be copied by computers.  The hero of Do Androids Dream must track down and destroy these nearly human machines.

Throughout this story and others, Dick explored identity and the shrinking difference between human and machine.  People suspect themselves to be androids, androids are programmed to believe they are human, and both have false memories that they cannot distinguish from reality.  A realistic android that interacted with people in conversation seemed like a natural fit with Dick.

Of course, the project had practical implications.  It required a lifelike interface.  Artist and robot maker David Hanson believes the face is a natural way for people to interact with each other and potentially with technology.  He has made a succession of realistic robotic heads that can imitate human expression.  The PKD robot was backed by artificial intelligence developed by researchers at the University of Memphis, particularly Andrew Olney, that allowed it to understand speech and construct responses based on things Dick had said and written in life.

To top it off, something happened in the brief life of the android that would have been well suited for one of Dick’s stories.  They lost Dick’s head.  Presumably it is still out there.  It may be in some airline warehouse.  It may be on the mantle of some thief, or some flummoxed buyer of a lot of abandoned baggage.  If someone has it, they haven’t been talking about it.

The big question of the book is how do we interact with technology?  What will it look like in the future?  We will be increasingly able to make machines that at least seem intelligent and look human.  Hanson thinks that is the way to go.  The Memphis scientists and engineers, and many other like them, continue to work on interfaces capable of increasingly sophisticated and seamless interactions with people.  Are we on a trajectory from Siri to Jacosta to C-3PO to R. Daneel Olivaw?  Are androids just what we need to make technology what we need or are they too creepy?

Dufty doesn’t pass judgment.  The PKD was an interesting piece of technology with and interesting history that raises a lot of questions about what machines can be.  Even as advance and capable as the PKD android was, it had a lot of limitations.  It could carry on a conversation, in a quiet room with a patient partner, but it did little else and its responses varied from the seemingly real thing to nonsense.

Personally, I don’t think we need, nor do I want, computers with faces.  I would be pleased if I could get my Windows 8 tiles to work.  I do think the way we interact with technology is important, especially that we are able to get feedback and other information from technology in ways that helps us understand what is going on and respond intelligently.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

The Essential Engineer by Henry Petroski

IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black

Your Intelligence Makeover by Edward F. Droge, Jr.

Dufty, David F.  How to Build an Android: The True Story of Philip K. Dick’s Robotic Resurrection.  New York: Henry Holt, 2012.

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Unfu*k Yourself by Gary John Bishop

Gary John Bishop offers straightforward, and sometimes rudely stated, advice on getting your life together in Unfu*k Yourself. If you’re drawn in by the title of the of the book, you may feel your life is screwed up. Bishop suggests it is very likely your own fault, but you have the power to do something about it.

 “You have the life your willing to put up with,” Gary John Bishop, Unfu*k Yourself

It starts in your head. Thousands of thoughts flow through your mind every day and many of them are nonsense. Instead of reacting to crazy-making thoughts and feelings, let them go. You can learn to choose the thoughts you pay attention to.

Even so, our head can get in the way. The blessing and curse of our minds is that they are really good at moving us toward what we want. Subconsciously we all want security. Unfortunately, our subconscious minds can have some messed up ideas about what security is and how to achieve it. We achieve security with great success even if it makes us miserable.

Fortunately, we can train our minds to achieve a different success. We can learn to let go of thought that drive our self-defeating behavior.

We can reinforce our changing habits of thought by taking action. Rather than getting wrapped up on our own heads a fighting thoughts and feelings that come from our imaginations, we an face reality and do things that might actually make life better. Action is both the cure for self-defeating thoughts and the way to handle real problems.

As the title of the book, it is part of the trend in self-help to use tough talk and crude language. I don’t know that I need that to get a kick in the pants. However, I appreciate writing that uses simple language and gets to the point; Bishop does that.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

How to Fail at Almost Anything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams

Language and the Pursuit of Happiness by Chalmers Brothers

Positive Imaging by Norman Vincent Peale

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

You are a Badass by Jen Sincero

You Can if You Think You Can by Norman Vincent Peale

Bishop, Gary John. Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life. New York: HarperOne, 2016.

What I Read (10)

Date: July 25, 2007
Title: Epic
Author: John Eldredge
Thoughts: “We have grown dull toward this world in which we live; we have forgotten that it is not normal or scientific in any sense of the word. It is fantastic. It is fairy tale through and through” (quote from the book).
John Eldredge also wrote Walking with God and co-wrote The Sacred Romance.

Date: August 29, 2007
Title: The Complete Verse and Other Nonsense Author: Edward Lear (Vivien Noakes, editor)
Thoughts:
“How pleasant it is to know Mr. Lear!
Who has written such volumes of stuff!
Some think him ill-tempered and queer,
But a few think him pleasant enough” (quote from the book).

Date: December 7, 2007
Title: The Numbers Behind NUMB3RS
Author: Keith Devlin & Gary Lorden
Thoughts: I enjoyed this. Not too much math. Actually, I could have stood a little more math. What I enjoyed is seeing how tools are used to solve problems as they are used to solve crimes on the show.

Date: December 14, 2007
Title: Kidnapped Author: Robert Louis Stephenson
Thoughts: A very fun adventure that I much enjoyed. I’m afraid that I would fare even worse than David Balfour on such a journey.

Date: December 21, 2007
Title: Peace of Mind Through Possibility Thinking
Author: Robert H. Shuller
Thoughts: “Never forget that you are God’s idea. And know that God thinks only great ideas” (quote from the book).
Robert H. Shuller also wrote Self-Love.

Date: December 26, 2007
Title: The Golden Age of DC Comics: 365 Days Author: Les Daniels, Chip Kid & Geoff Spear
Thoughts: Mostly pictures. I enjoyed it much.

Date: December 28, 2007
Title: Acres of Diamonds Author: Russel H. Conwell
Thoughts: “Young man, remember if you know what people need you have gotten more knowledge of a fortune than any amount of capital can give you” (quote from the book).

Date: January 25, 2008
Title: The Mindful Way through Depression Author: Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindal Segal & Joh Kabat-Zinn
Thoughts: “In many ways, subtle and not subtle, depression and low mood undermine us by robbing us of the energy to do the things that would nourish us the most. Simply engaging or reengaging in such activities can have unsuspected power” (quote from the book).

Other Parts of What I Read:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5,
Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9