Assignment 27A Reading Reflection No. 3

Assignment 27A Reading Reflection No. 3

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big 
Kind of the Story of My Life, author Scott Adams

1) What was the general theme or argument of the book?

• I believe the general theme of this book is about overcoming failure and how we, as human beings, should (although is difficult) invite failure in order to succeed. He claims that was not exceptional at any one thing but he was "pretty good" at a number of things. He also discusses how luck plays a role in success. He makes the assertion that acquiring a number of skills including psychology, basic accounting, public speaking, learning a second language, just to name a few, may create more opportunities for luck to happen and he includes that timing is also a form of luck.  Adams also says that for every skill one learns the odds of success doubles. With regard to success, he thinks an individual's energy has much to do with motivation and so health and fitness thus play an important role in one's success. Ultimately, he thinks happiness is really the only useful life goal.  He begins his book by saying, "goals are for losers and he thinks that systems are the key element to one's success. 

2) How did the book, in your opinion, connect with and enhance what you are learning in ENT 3003?

• There were a lot of correlations to what I have learned in ENT 3003.  Adams wrote about all of the social capital resources that helped him in his ventures.  He also weaves stories about those skills at which he is "pretty good and that is the very definition of human capital. We had a few assignments where we were asked to talk our our own human and social capital. When Adams talks about psychology, he discusses the many biases we have which we also discussed in this class. Most importantly, he talks about entrepreneurship and his many endeavors and failures.  He says we need to invite failure and we learned through lectures about the failures of many successful entrepreneurs. 

3) If you had to design an exercise for this class, based on the book you read, what would that exercise involve?

• I think it would be interesting to develop an exercise to determine who in the class are simplifiers and who would be optimizers.  Simplifiers would be somewhat of a minimalist in that they want to figure out the easiest way to complete a task.  Conversely, an optimizer will seek the best possible plan to complete a task, often organizing and creating complex plans to accomplish tasks.  this could be a great extra credit point exercise. Assign students with instructions to describe a time when they had to accomplish a difficult task and to provide a step-by-step detail of how they completed it.  I think based on the responses there would be a good indication as to which students are simplifiers and those who are optimizers.

4) What was your biggest surprise or 'aha' moment when reading the book? In other words, what did you learn that differed most from your expectations? 

• I was truly surprised and intrigued at the beginning of the book when Adams outlines the list he will cover as a sort of teaser for the reader when he asserts, "Goals are for losers."  It was not until later in the book when he defines what he meant by that statement that his statement made more sense to me.  His writing style has a little shock value for entertainment, but I understand the message he is trying to convey to his readers.  Goals are simply not enough.  He says, systems are better because just setting a goal leaves one either succeeding or not succeeding in meeting the goal and goes further to suggest goal oriented people are in a pre-success failure.  Systems people are those who have a system (which can include a goal) but they are succeeding every time they use their system. He somewhat tosses out a dare to the reader to look at any successful person and you will find that more important than a goal, you will find they have a great system.