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

by Scott Adams

Luck won’t give you a strategy or a system—you have to do that part yourself.

My observation and best guess is that experts are right about 98 percent of the time on the easy stuff but only right 50 percent of the time on anything that is unusually complicated, mysterious, or even new.

Simply find the people who most represent what you would like to become and spend as much time with them as you can without trespassing, kidnapping, or stalking. Their good habits and good energy will rub off on you.

the single biggest trick for manipulating your happiness chemistry is being able to do what you want, when you want.

Happiness has more to do with where you’re heading than where you are.

Don’t let reality control your imagination. Let your imagination be the user interface to steer your reality.

Happiness is the natural state for most people whenever they feel healthy, have flexible schedules, and expect the future to be good.

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.

Exercise has two very different benefits that are hard to untangle. The exercise itself releases natural pain-relieving substances, endorphins,3 and that gives you a direct feeling of well-being. But exercise is also a mental escape from whatever was stressing you before you laced your athletic shoes.

take care of yourself first and use that success as leverage to get everything else you need.

Generally speaking, when it comes to diet, you want to stay consistent with science but also look for confirmation in your personal experience.

If for several months you give yourself permission to eat as much as you want of the foods that don’t include addictive simple carbs, you’ll discover several things. For starters, you’ll have more energy without the simple carbs. And that will translate into keeping you more active, which in turn burns calories.

coffee in moderation gets high marks from science for promoting good health.

The trick to eating right is to keep willpower out of the equation for your diet. Laziness can make you choose healthy foods if you are clever enough to make those foods the most convenient in your house.

You’ll be surprised at how often a bad night of sleep leads to nonstop eating.

Think of healthy eating as a system in which you continually experiment with different seasonings and sauces until you know exactly what works for you.

Once you start on a vegetarian diet, the inconvenience is more than paid for by the way your body feels after a meal and the holier-than-thou sensation that comes with doing something that looks hard to others. Bottom line, becoming a vegetarian looks a lot harder than it is. I’ve never once considered it a burden.

Eating right depends a great deal on your nonfood alternatives. If you get your entire life in order, it will be much easier to have an ideal weight.

The only way to succeed in the long run is by using a system that bypasses your need for willpower.

Or worse, some other part of your life will suffer as you focus your limited stockpile of willpower on fitness.

What you want is for your daily exercise to give you a reward every time. Light exercise does just that; it reduces your stress and boosts your energy. Over time, as you become fitter, you will naturally increase your exercise level, but by then your body will be equipped to handle