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

by Scott Adams

I know from experience that trying to be creative in the midafternoon is a waste of time. By 2:00 P.M. all I can do is regurgitate the ideas I’ve seen elsewhere. At 6:00 A.M. I’m a creator, and by 2:00 P.M. I’m a copier.

If the situation involves communication with others, simplification is almost always the right answer. If the task is something you can do all by yourself, or with a partner who is on your wavelength, optimizing might be a better path if you can control most variables in the situation. And realistically, sometimes you simply have to get three hours of tasks completed in two hours, so we don’t always have the luxury of being able to choose simple paths.

If the cost of failure is high, simple tasks are the best because they are easier to manage and control.

Simplifying is generally the strategy of people who view the world in terms of systems. The best systems are simple, and for good reason.

Complicated systems have more opportunities for failure.

Start-ups often do better by slapping together something that is 80 percent good and seeing how the public responds. There’s time to improve things later if the market cares about the product.

When you are trying to decide between optimizing and simplifying, think of your entire day, not the handful of tasks in question. In other words, maximize your personal energy, not the number of tasks.

Watching a thought-provoking or emotion-grabbing television show is a bad way to relax into your evening snooze. A better approach is to use your bed for sex and sleeping and nothing else.

it’s a good idea to dedicate certain sitting positions and certain work spaces to work and other spaces to relaxation or play. That makes your physical environment a sort of user interface for your brain, and it becomes a way to manipulate your energy levels and concentration.

every time you wonder how to do something, a few hundred million people have probably wondered the same thing. And that usually means the information has already been packaged and simplified, and in some cases sold. But it’s usually free for the asking.

Asshole behaviors: Changing the subject to him/herself Dominating conversation Bragging Cheating, lying Disagreeing with any suggestion, no matter how trivial Using honesty as a justification for cruelty Withholding simple favors out of some warped sense of social justice Abandoning the rules of civil behavior, such as saying hello or making eye contact

You might wince at the fact that I put economics ahead of your family, your friends, and the rest of the world, but there’s a reason. If you don’t get your personal financial engine working right, you place a burden on everyone from your family to the country.

Priorities are the things you need to get right so the things you love can thrive.

Your attitude affects everything you do in your quest for success and happiness. A positive attitude is an important tool. It’s important to get it right.

Exercise, food, and sleep should be your first buttons to push if you’re trying to elevate your attitude and raise your energy.

Show me someone who you think is always in a good mood and I’ll show you a person who (probably) avoids overexposure to sad forms of entertainment.

Let’s say you wake up tomorrow full of energy for your exciting new project. Over the course of the day you learn a few things in the process of doing your research, and you meet some new people along the way. If you accomplish that and nothing more, you’re succeeding, no matter what happens with your project.

The true power of networking

avoid friends who are full-time downers. You want friends with whom you can share both the good and the bad, but you aren’t a therapist.

A great strategy for success in life is to become good at something, anything, and let that feeling propel you to new and better victories. Success can be habit-forming.

When you can release on your ego long enough to view your perceptions as incomplete or misleading, it gives you the freedom to imagine new and potentially more useful ways of looking at the world.

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.

One of the best ways to detect the x factor is to watch what customers do about your idea or product, not what they say.

People tend to say what they think you want to hear or what they think will cause the least pain. What people do is far more honest.

If the first commercial version of your work excites no one to action, it’s time to move on to something different. Don’t be fooled by the opinions of friends and family. They’re all liars.

If your work inspires some excitement and some action from customers, get ready to chew through some walls. You might have something worth fighting for.

There’s no denying the importance of practice. The hard part is figuring out what to practice.

Practice involves putting your consciousness in suspended animation. Practicing is not living. But when you build your skills through an ever-changing sequence of experiences, you’re alive.

Success isn’t magic; it’s generally the product of picking a good system and following it until luck finds you.

The more time you spend exposing yourself to bad news, the more it will weigh on you and sap your energy.

the transformative power of praise versus the corrosive impact of criticism.

a real-estate salesperson might show you the worst house first, knowing it will make you appreciate the better home you see later, and it might make you reach deeper in your pockets. A car salesman knows that a high sticker price will make the eventual negotiated price look better than it would have otherwise. Salespeople know they can manipulate buyers by controlling what they compare.

Anchoring

Quality is not an independent force in the universe; it depends on what you choose as your frame of reference.

If you believe people use reason for the important decisions in life, you will go through life feeling confused and frustrated that others seem to have bad reasoning skills. The reality is that reason is just one of the drivers of our decisions, and often the smallest one.

We are emotional beings above all

It is tremendously useful to know when people are using reason and when they are rationalizing the irrational. You’re wasting your time if you try to make someone see reason when reason is not influencing the decision.

Few things are as destructive and limiting as a worldview that assumes people are mostly rational.

Unnecessary words and passive writing kill the timing of humor the same way they kill the persuasiveness of your point.

No one with accounting skill would get involved with a business model that can’t work on paper.

At least n paper a business model has to be feasable

You can pay others to do your accounting and cash-flow projections, but that only works if you can check their work in a meaningful way.

Nothing is easier than talking about one’s self. I would go so far as to say that 99 percent of the general public love talking about themselves.

Everyone is interesting if you make the situation feel safe. Here’s a summary of good conversation technique. Ask questions. Don’t complain (much). Don’t talk about boring experiences (TV show, meal, dream, etc.). Don’t dominate the conversation. Let others talk. Don’t get stuck on a topic. Keep moving. Planning is useful but it isn’t conversation. Keep the sad stories short, especially medical stories.

how do you get a stranger to like you? It’s simple, actually. It starts by smiling and keeping your body language open. After that, just ask questions and listen as if you cared, all the while looking for common interests. Everyone likes to talk about his or her own life, and everyone appreciates a sympathetic listener. Eventually, if you discover some common interests, you’ll feel a connection without any effort.

The most important key to good storytelling is preparation. You don’t want to figure out your story as you tell it.

Setup There’s only one important rule for a story setup: Keep it brief.

Pattern Establish a pattern that your story will violate. For example, you could say, “Whenever I take my car for any kind of service, I’m always amazed how expensive it is.” That establishes the pattern. Now we know that what follows will be a violation of the pattern.

Foreshadowing Foreshadowing means you leave some clues about where the story is going.

All good stories are about personalities.

Relatability There is one topic that people care more about than any other: themselves. Pick story topics that your listeners will relate to.

The Twist Your story isn’t a story unless something unexpected or unusual happens. That’s the plot twist. If you don’t have a twist, it’s not a story.

Topics to Avoid It’s important to tell stories about interesting events. It’s even more important to avoid telling stories about deadly boring or downer situations.

Food: People don’t care how good your meal was unless they plan to eat at the same place soon.