How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big
Books | Art / Techniques / Cartooning
4
(515)
Scott Adams
Blasting clichéd career advice, the contrarian pundit and creator of Dilbert recounts the humorous ups and downs of his career, revealing the outsized role of luck in our lives and how best to play the system. Scott Adams has likely failed at more things than anyone you've ever met or anyone you've even heard of. So how did he go from hapless office worker and serial failure to the creator of Dilbert, one of the world's most famous syndicated comic strips, in just a few years? In How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, Adams shares the game plan he's followed since he was a teen: invite failure in, embrace it, then pick its pocket. No career guide can offer advice that works for everyone. As Adams explains, your best bet is to study the ways of others who made it big and try to glean some tricks and strategies that make sense for you. Adams pulls back the covers on his own unusual life and shares how he turned one failure after another--including his corporate career, his inventions, his investments, and his two restaurants--into something good and lasting. There's a lot to learn from his personal story, and a lot of entertainment along the way. Adams discovered some unlikely truths that helped to propel him forward. For instance: * Goals are for losers. Systems are for winners. * "Passion" is bull. What you need is personal energy. * A combination of mediocre skills can make you surprisingly valuable. * You can manage your odds in a way that makes you look lucky to others. Adams hopes you can laugh at his failures while discovering some unique and helpful ideas on your own path to personal victory. As he writes: "This is a story of one person's unlikely success within the context of scores of embarrassing failures. Was my eventual success primarily a result of talent, luck, hard work, or an accidental just-right balance of each? All I know for sure is that I pursued a conscious strategy of managing my opportunities in a way that would make it easier for luck to find me."
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More Details:
Author
Scott Adams
Pages
248
Publisher
Portfolio/Penguin
Published Date
2013
ISBN
1591846919 9781591846918
Ratings
Google: 5
Community ReviewsSee all
"Some parts of the book, especially talking about his early career, is quite annoying. He says he is skill-free, but gets promoted and finally fired as he hit the diversity ceiling. I will leave them there.<br/><br/>Two things, I liked from the book:<br/><br/>Goals vs Systems: I understand, a goal, for example means, “reduce 10 kgs in the next six months” but a system will be, “eat healthy food and be strong and fit”. I really liked this concept, as you are living under a constant pressure of failure in a goal based approach, but in a systems based approach you keep learning what are all the healthy foods that you can eat, make the best out of the existing situation and keep improving. The journey to reach your destination in goal based approach can be filled with guilt and near failure, which sucks.<br/><br/>Affirmations: Say to yourself, repeatedly (at least 15 times), everyday on what you want to be and you will become that. This sounds like Alchemist-voodoo crap. Scott is also aware of this. He has mentioned a several disclaimers in his book about this. I find it curious and amusing because, this is what religion does to people in the name of prayers. Psychologists say that this is positive thinking and positive visualization. But it is a nice mechanism to stay optimistic."
Santhosh Guru
"#1 favorite business and personal development book "
Zoe Zupancic
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