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

by Scott Adams

Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice, tells us that people become unhappy if they have too many options in life. The problem with options is that choosing any path can leave you plagued with self-doubt. You quite rationally think that one of the paths not chosen might have worked out better. That can eat at you.

Recapping the happiness formula: Eat right. Exercise. Get enough sleep. Imagine an incredible future (even if you don’t believe it). Work toward a flexible schedule. Do things you can steadily improve at. Help others (if you’ve already helped yourself). Reduce daily decisions to routine.

Science has demonstrated that humans have a limited supply of willpower.3 If you use up your supply resisting one temptation, it limits your ability to resist others. Struggling to do anything has a steep price because you don’t want to use up your willpower and energy on something as unimportant as staying away from the candy drawer. You might need your willpower later for something more substantial. What you need is a diet system that doesn’t rely on willpower. And that means reprogramming your food preferences so willpower is less necessary.

Here’s a fairly complete list of the foods that are the foundation of my weekly diet. I can eat as much as I want of the foods on this list, which I quite enjoy, and I won’t gain a pound as long as I stay active. Bananas Protein bars Peanuts Mixed nuts Cheese Whole wheat pasta Edamame (soybeans) Broccoli Cauliflower Brussels sprouts Fish Lettuce Tomatoes Apples Pears Carrots Radishes Cucumbers Quinoa Brown rice Berries The first thing you might notice about my list is that most of the foods I keep at home are convenient. I can grab a handful of mixed nuts and an apple and call it lunch.

For example, scientists know that your brain triggers the hunger sensation and hunger hormones like leptin and ghrelin when you don’t get enough sleep.6 The next time you have one of those days when you can’t eat enough to satisfy your hunger, ask yourself how much sleep you got the night before. You’ll be surprised at how often a bad night of sleep leads to nonstop eating.

When you eat for social reasons, aim for the lowest-calorie options. You don’t need to suppress your appetite if the reason you’re eating isn’t hunger.

As a public service, I’ve listed below the condiments, seasonings, and ingredients that can add flavor to most foods that would be otherwise bland. These are the taste sensations I live on while never feeling the slightest twinge of flavor deprivation. Your tastes will differ, so this is just a template to make the point about how many flavors you can enjoy in a healthy diet. Vegetarian Flavors Soy sauce Cilantro Lemon Salt Pepper Butter (or butter substitute) Garlic Onion Curry Cheese Tomato sauce Salsa Vegetable broth Honey Salad dressings Balsamic vinegar Black-bean sauce Hot sauce

My main protein sources are … Edamame (soy) Nuts Protein bars (whey protein) Pasta (whole wheat) Cheese Vegetables of all types Protein shakes after working out

If you don’t drink coffee, you should think about two to four cups a day. It can make you more alert, happier, and more productive. It might even make you live longer. Coffee can also make you more likely to exercise, and it contains beneficial antioxidants and other substances associated with decreased risk of stroke (especially in women), Parkinson’s disease, and dementia. Coffee is also associated with decreased risk of abnormal heart rhythms, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers.12, 13

Coffee costs money, takes time, gives you coffee breath, and makes you pee too often. It can also make you jittery and nervous if you have too much. But if success is your dream and operating at peak mental performance is something you want, coffee is a good bet. I highly recommend it. In fact, I recommend it so strongly that I literally feel sorry for anyone who hasn’t developed the habit.

The Healthy Eating Summary The Simple, No-Willpower Diet System Pay attention to your energy level after eating certain foods. Find your pattern. Remove unhealthy, energy-draining food from your home. Stock up on convenient healthy food (e.g., apples, nuts, bananas) and let laziness be your copilot in eating right. Stop eating foods that create feelings of addiction: white rice, white potatoes, desserts, white bread, fried foods. Eat as much healthy food as you want, whenever you want. Get enough sleep, because tiredness creates the illusion of hunger. If your hunger is caused by tiredness, try healthy foods with fat, such as nuts, avocados, protein bars, and cheese, to suppress the hungry feeling. If you’re eating for social reasons only, choose the healthiest options with low calories. Learn how to season your healthy-yet-bland foods.

Simplification done right also helps connect the important parts of exercise, diet, career, finance, and social life. If any of those things becomes too complicated, it forces you to borrow time, willpower, and resources from something else you also care about.

If you’ve read my blog, you know I’m fascinated by the possibility that we humans are nothing but holograms living in a computer simulation. It sounds ludicrous when you first hear the idea, but the math is oddly compelling. Consider what we humans would do a thousand years from now if we knew an asteroid was heading our way and there was no escape. I think we’d upload our personalities to computers, perhaps with our DNA information as part of the code, and launch the computers into space so our culture, memories, and minds could live forever. Now for the math: If you pick any point in time, there will be infinitely more time transpiring after that time than before, assuming the big bang marks the start of time. So if you believe humans will someday be on the brink of extinction for any reason, there is a vastly greater chance we are already the simulations left behind.

I’ve covered a lot of topics in this book, and I thought it would be helpful to provide a summary to wrap it all up. Keep in mind that if you skipped to the end of the book to read this section, it will seem extraordinarily unpersuasive out of context. The model for success I described here looks roughly like this: Focus on your diet first and get that right so you have enough energy to want to exercise. Exercise will further improve your energy, and that in turn will make you more productive, more creative, more positive, more socially desirable, and more able to handle life’s little bumps. Once you optimize your personal energy, all you need for success is luck. You can’t directly control luck, but you can move from strategies with bad odds to strategies with good odds. For example, learning multiple skills makes your odds of success dramatically higher than learning one skill. If you learn to control your ego, you can pick strategies that scare off the people who fear embarrassment, thus allowing you to compete against a smaller field. And if you stay in the game long enough, luck has a better chance of finding you. Avoid career traps such as pursuing jobs that require you to sell your limited supply of time while preparing you for nothing better. Happiness is the only useful goal in life. Unless you are a sociopath, your own happiness will depend on being good to others. And happiness tends to happen naturally whenever you have good health, resources, and a flexible sc...