How Barack Obama's Perfectionist Tendencies Delayed His Memoir

In late 2020, former President Barack Obama released his memoir, "A Promised Land," which focuses on his experiences during the eight years he served in The Oval Office. While the book was an immediate success, selling 1.7 million copies in its first week alone, "A Promised Land" actually came out much later than Obama initially planned. And that was entirely his own doing.

The politician-turned-author originally imagined that he would be able to write the first volume of "A Promised Land" within a year, but it in fact took almost four years because he has a very specific process for writing that requires multiple steps in order to get his ideas from his mind into a typed manuscript. In a digital world, one might imagine that a modern man would write his first draft on a computer, but not Obama. He gets his ideas down on a legal pad first, writing each and every word by hand. 

"I think my brain just works at the same pace as my hand, and it forces me to take the time to think about what I'm trying to say," he explained to People about this process. He went on to say: "It's hard for me to just sit at a computer and start writing because everything looks so neat and tidy on the page, that I think I'm making sense. Usually, on a first draft, you're not making sense."   

While writing an entire book by hand before typing it might make the process of drafting a memoir much longer, there are some benefits to it, according to Barack Obama. "The one thing that my editors, I think, appreciated about me was that my first drafts tended to be pretty good because I'd done a lot of the editing from the time that I looked at those yellow pads [to when] I typed it in," he told People.

And writing isn't the only task that the former president approaches with his now-famous perfectionism. Back in 2012, when Obama was running for his second term in office, The New York Times labeled him a "voraciously competitive perfectionist." Citing the then-president's prowess at everything from making "a really mean chili" to winning a game of pool to doodling with "unusual skill," the publication discussed at length how Obama's drive, focus, and determination are both the inspiration for and a product of his perfectionism.  

Meanwhile, a 2009 opinion piece in the Daily News claimed that "perfectionism may be President Obama's biggest flaw," stating that Obama "does not lose his temper. He does not curse. He does not follow a pretty woman with his eyes or sneak a smoke. He does not dress sloppily. He is always calm and always good-natured," which doesn't allow people to see him as a human man who grows; there's no transformation of Barack Obama. He's perfect from the start. 

Barack Obama certainly is human with flaws that he recognizes, and he does have some tricks for overcoming perfectionism when it bumps up against his ambitions. "I am not well organized," he admitted in 2020 when speaking with journalist Eva Chen on Instagram Live. "There's some things I do well. That was not one of them." But the former president offered a few pieces of advice to listeners who also might struggle with organization. First, he suggested taking a big project or goal and tackling it bit by bit. He explained, "I am a believer in, nothing big gets done all at once, and there's no point in being anxious about trying to do everything."

He also believes in collaboration and letting your network help you out. "Most of the big things we do in life, we're not going to do alone, and learning how to have a great support system, folks who are better at doing some things than others [can help]," he said.

Obama also urges people to "have a sense of humor" and allow themselves room to make mistakes. He told Chen, "If you're too much of a type A, you need to leaven that a little bit." Obama said it's important to "[be] a little forgiving of yourself, knowing that nothing's going to be perfect." This, according to the former president, will allow you to get more accomplished rather than get stuck in striving for perfection. Who knows? You might even write a memoir.