How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life Author: Scott Adams | Language: English | ISBN:
B00COOFBA4 | Format: PDF
How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life Description
Everything you want out of life is in that bubbling vat of failure. The trick is to get the good stuff out. 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 strategy he has used since he was a teen to 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 into something good
and lasting.
Adams reveals that he’s failed at just about everything he’s tried, including his corporate career, his inventions, his investments, and his two restaurants. But there’s a lot to learn from his personal story, and a lot of humor 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.”
- File Size: 4756 KB
- Print Length: 257 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1591846919
- Publisher: Portfolio (October 22, 2013)
- Sold by: Penguin Group (USA) LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00COOFBA4
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,649 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #4
in Books > Arts & photography > Drawing > Cartooning - #5
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > business & Money > Job Hunting & Careers > Career Guides - #10
in Books > Humor & entertainment > Humor > Self-Help & Psychology
- #4
in Books > Arts & Photography > Drawing > Cartooning - #5
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Job Hunting & Careers > Career Guides - #10
in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Humor > Self-Help & Psychology
I had this pre-ordered after reading the WSJ article. It came yesterday around noon and I finished it at 4:00 AM this morning, with few breaks within that time frame. It wasn't the plan for my day, but I don't regret changing my day around to read this book.
I would say any book that holds my interest like that deserves a 5-start rating, though there are a few things that I'd tweak to get it closer to perfection. My official score, being a tough grader, is a 4.6/5.0 and I wouldn't resell it for twice what I paid ... especially now that it's fully highlighted and sticky-noted throughout (which makes the book more valuable to me now because I've identified the portions that spoke directly to me and my own experiences).
I really enjoyed Scott's independent thinking and challenges of conventional wisdom throughout this book, especially as it contrasts with other self-help, goal-setting or business advice books. For instance, choosing an opportunity for which one has some sort of inherent advantage rather than blindly prescribing "you can do whatever you want" appeals to my pragmatic mind. I have wrestled with this exact conclusion within the past year as I work through my own list of new ideas and opportunities, so I enjoyed that perspective as it resonates with my own thinking.
I really enjoyed the thinking on pg. 40, which is fully highlighted, less perhaps a couple sentences. This is where Scott talks about his mental model of not wanting to sell his time due to limited upside and finding a product that is infinitely scalable. I appreciated this candidness, which allows the reader to better understand the later "luck" and apparent rapid success of Dilbert.
Scott Adams's How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life is almost a success. In it Adams tells us about he succeeded and offers his readers his advice on how to be both successful and happy.
Adams is at his best when he writes about figuring out how things work and what is important. Readers of his popular blog will recognize such topics as the moist robot, the single most important metric to measure, the five most important factors for happiness, how to thrive without using freewill, and other such topics.
One of his key principles is to distinguish goals from systems. Generally, it's better to pursue a system to get what you want rather than to pursue a goal. Goals are generally bad things as they focus you on what you have not accomplished and therefore feel negative. Unfortunately his discussion of the difference between goals and systems is confused and unclear. He seems to be saying that the reader's goal should be to come with a system that works.
I do appreciate that Adams consistently urges the reader to experiment, to be open minded, and not to follow the advice of cartoonists. The focus should be on what works for you. His humility is a welcome relief from much of the Success literature.
Some parts of the book, especially in the middle chapters, read like annotated lists constructed quickly from Internet searches. Other parts of the book are much better and many of Adams's insights are interesting, captivating, and even brilliant.
How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life Preview
Link
Please Wait...