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How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big Summary
About How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big Book
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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The Six Filters for Truth
- Personal experience
- Experience of people you know
- Experts
- Scientific studies
- Common sense
- Pattern recognition.
When seeking truth, your best bet is to look for confirmation on at least two of these dimensions.
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"Making comics is a process by which you strip out the unnecessary noise from a situation until all that is left is the absurd-yet-true core. A cartoonist has to accomplish that feat with as few as four short sentences."
SCOTT ADAMS
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"Failure always brings something valuable with it. I don’t let it leave until I extract that value."
SCOTT ADAMS
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A compilation of key areas to focus on in order to increase your chances of success in life ✨️
This is a story of one person's unlikely success within the context of scores of embarassing 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 strategy of managing my opportunities in a way that would make it easier for luck to find me.
SCOTT ADAMS
376
Goals V Systems
The systems model can be applied to most human endeavors:
- In the world of dieting - losing twenty pounds is a goal, but eating right is a system.
- In the exercise/fitness realm - running a marathon in under four hours is a goal, but exercising daily is a system.
- In business - making a million pounds is a goal, but being a serial entrepreneur is a system.
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A goal Is a specific objective that you either achieve or don't some time in the future.
If you are waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it's a goal.
A system is something you do regularly which increases your odds of happiness in the long run.
If you do something regularly, it's a system.
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How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big is a guide to succeed despite your failures. Adams admits he has failed at more things than anyone he has ever met. But, he managed to transition from working in an office to being the creator of a world-famous comic strip within a few years. The key to this success were fundamental principles that he picked up along the way. This book outlines these principles and how they will benefit you more than what society suggests is best for you and your future.
1. Goals Have Two Major Problems
Self-help gurus have a knack for encouraging people to create and stick to goals. But Adam believes goals are for losers. According to him, the reality is that even the clearest goals have two problems that will always persist:
Goals are future-oriented
Goals can become overly-specific
Firstly, there is the issue that goals are placed in the future, but we have to work in the present to achieve them. This means you are unlikely to see any results from your actions until much further down the line. Most people would find this reality frustrating and discouraging.
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The specific nature of goals can also lead to similar frustrations. For example, people often feel like failures if they don’t accomplish exactly what they set out to do. They may still be highly successful, but not meeting their goals leaves them feeling they haven’t accomplished anything. An example of this would be losing weight by a specific date. This goal prevents you from feeling successful during the journey of losing weight and will leave you feeling like a failure if you fall even one pound short by that date.
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2. The Effectiveness of Systems
Adams believes that systems are more effective than goals. Systems are firmly grounded in the present. This means they can be grounded in your life right now, and you will get daily pleasure from successfully operating them. Adams describes the time he first learned of the power of systems. He sat on a flight next to a man who explained to Adams how systems had transformed him from an employee to a CEO.
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"Cultivate a unique relationship with failure. Invite it, survive it, and appreciate it."
SCOTT ADAMS
34
Success Caused Passion More Than Passion Caused Success
Sometimes passions stems from the confidence the we are good at doing something. Over time it wears out when we encounter setbacks. This is when hardwork kicks in. We should value working hard on something rather than being passionate about it.
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"Failure is where success likes to hide in plain sight"
SCOTT ADAMS
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How to Fail at almost everything and still Win Big
1. GOALS HAVE TWO MAJOR PROBLEMS
- Self-help gurus have a knack for encouraging people to create and stick to goals. But the author Adam believes goals are for losers. According to him, the reality is that even the clearest goals have two problems that will always persist:
- Goals are future - oriented
- Goals can become overly-specific.
2
- Firstly, there is the issue that the goals are placed in the future, but we have to work in the present to achieve them. This means you are unlikely to see any results from your actions until much further down the line. Most people would find this reality frustrating and discouraging. The specific nature of goals can also lead to similar frustrations. For example, people often feel like failures if they don't accomplish exactly what they set out to do. They may still be highly successful, but not meeting their goals leaves them feeling they haven't accomplished anything.
2
2. THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SYSTEMS
- The author believes that systems are more effective than goals. Systems are firmly grounded in the present. This means they can be grounded in your life right now, and you will get daily pleasure from successfully operating them. Author describes the time he first learned of the power of systems. He sat on a flight next to a man who explained how systems had transformed him from an employee to a CEO. The CEO said he became successful by always looking for a better job. You see most people wait until they need a job to start looking for one. When they reach their goal of finding a job they stop
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Really makes yous act , what if you fail , failure happens all the time . People don't even try
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