How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life

by Scott Adams

grabbing failure by the throat and squeezing it until it coughs up a hairball of success.

a goal is a specific objective that you either achieve or don’t sometime in the future. A system is something you do on a regular basis that increases your odds of happiness in the long run. If you do something every day, it’s a system. If you’re waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it’s a goal.

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard goes something like this: If you want success, figure out the price, then pay it. It sounds trivial and obvious, but if you unpack the idea it has extraordinary power.

Free yourself from the shackles of an oppressive reality. What’s real to you is what you imagine and what you feel. If you manage your illusions wisely, you might get what you want, but you won’t necessarily understand why it worked.

every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success.

If you are lucky enough to have career options, and only one of them affords a path of continual improvement, choose that one, all else being equal.

I’m here to tell you that the primary culprit in your bad moods is a deficit in one of the big five: flexible schedule, imagination, sleep, diet, and exercise.

Everything is connected. That’s why I include diet and fitness in a book about success. If you get your health in order, success will come more easily. And if you get success without good health, you won’t enjoy it.