Blasting clichéd career advice, the contrarian pundit and creator of
Dilbert recounts the humorous ups and downs of his career, revealing
the outsized role of luck in our lives and how best to play the
system.
Scott Adams has likely failed at more things than anyone you've ever met
or anyone you've even heard of. So how did he go from hapless office
worker and serial failure to the creator of Dilbert, one of the
world's most famous syndicated comic strips, in just a few years? In
How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, Adams shares the
game plan he's followed since he was a teen: invite failure in, embrace
it, then pick its pocket.
No career guide can offer advice that works for everyone. As Adams
explains, your best bet is to study the ways of others who made it big
and try to glean some tricks and strategies that make sense for you.
Adams pulls back the covers on his own unusual life and shares how he
turned one failure after another--including his corporate career, his
inventions, his investments, and his two restaurants--into something
good and lasting. There's a lot to learn from his personal story, and a
lot of entertainment along the way. Adams discovered some unlikely
truths that helped to propel him forward. For instance:
- Goals are for losers. Systems are for winners.
- "Passion" is bull. What you need is personal energy.
- A combination of mediocre skills can make you surprisingly valuable.
- You can manage your odds in a way that makes you look lucky to others.
Adams hopes you can laugh at his failures while discovering some unique
and helpful ideas on your own path to personal victory. As he writes:
"This is a story of one person's unlikely success within the context of
scores of embarrassing failures. Was my eventual success primarily a
result of talent, luck, hard work, or an accidental just-right balance
of each? All I know for sure is that I pursued a conscious strategy of
managing my opportunities in a way that would make it easier for luck to
find me."
