Arnold Schwarzenegger: Autobiography takeaways

I am one chapter shy of finishing Arnold Schwarzenegger’s biography “Total Recall” which was written and released in 2012. It provides a vast insight into Arnie’s life in Austria, how he envisaged himself in the USA as a body builder and then as a movie star along with all the trimmings of an autobiography.

Rather than this be a book review, I wanted to record somewhere what my takeaways are before I finished: “Arnold’s Rules”. The resonating themes that I have read thus far are:

1. Networking: Arnie’s vast network in body building helped him develop his movie star career and that network helped him jump start his political career. He has been quoted as running for president if he was US born and I wouldn’t put it past him given his net worth and political connections now.

2. Setting goals: Goals are key and Arnold set them very early in his life; namely to be a successful body builder and ultimately a movie star like his idol Reg Park who did both). Furthermore those goals evolve and that you need to continuously need to review and update them.

3. Working hard: This one speaks for itself. I have written about this before using Peter Drucker’s theme of knowing thy time. With all the reading I have done, time is the recurring theme that all successful people seem to write about; in that it is limited, scarce and we cannot manipulate it. Therefore making the most of your time couples with working hard.

It will be interesting to see how the last chapter of Arnold’s autobiography unfolds and what his rules are …..