Reading Reflection No. 2

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

1) Scott Adams, the creator of the comic Dilbert, writes about a multitude of topics all explaining how one can be successful and happy.  Adams talks about how he personally embraces failure repeatedly in order to learn about himself and ultimately succeed from it.  It all starts with energizing ones self then putting yourself out there to have the best chance of luck entering your life.

2) This book easily connects to one of the first lessons we were taught in the course. Failure is okay. Chapter after chapter Adams uses anecdotal stories to portray his ideals on certain topics that all correspond how a person can achieve success and a life full of happiness.

3) If I were to design an exercise for this class based off this book I'd ask each individual to pick four of their favorite chapters or lessons from the book and write about how they can apply that to their own life.  Each lesson or chapter is only about five pages long.  The goal would be to rank each chapter according to your own importance then discuss how you could actually incorporate that into your life now or in the future. For example, I personally liked the chapters on humor, practice, luck, and passion.  I might write about using humor at least once a day to make a serious matter more approachable.  Or perhaps I could mention how I could find a career that makes me have passion and develop within that field to give me a better chance to come into luck that allows to achieve great success.

4) While this book had many 'aha' moments, I believe the third chapter was my first and probably my favorite. 'Passion is Bullsh*t'.  Here Adams briefly discusses how passion doesn't cause success, but rather it's the other way around - success causes passion.  After reading more by Adams you'll undoubtedly understand what he means by this.