How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big is Scott Adams' (creator of Dilbert) funny memoir about his many failures and what they taught him about success.

I enjoyed this entertaining page-tuner. There are many useful lessons in this book, just a couple:

- Have a system instead of goals. A goal is something specific you achieve or not, systems however refer to things you do on a regular basis that increase your odds of happiness. Systems for me are: diet + exercise, reading, writing, parenting, and coding.

- To find out where your talent lies, remember what you were doing obsessively by the age of ten. In my case it was painting and building stuff with Lego. This explains my interest in designing websites and building software.

- Don't fear failure, embrace it. As you read through Scott's many failures you discover how much he learned and how it all contributed to later successes.

scott adams
- Try a lot of different things (sampling), bail out if you don't see results. The more you try, the greater the odds you stumble upon a successful idea. Scott reveals his Success Formula: Every Skill You Acquire Doubles Your Odds of Success. The more concepts you understand, the easier you learn new stuff.

- Achievers see success as a skill that can be learned. That means they figure out what they need and they go and get it.

- Learn essential skills like writing, psychology (cognitive biases), conversation, persuasion and technology.

- Don’t assume you know how much potential you have. Sometimes the only way to know what you can do is to test yourself.

- The biggest component of luck is timing. Samuel Goldwyn said "The harder I work, the luckier I get."

- Proper eating and exercise form the corner stone for further success.

- Books change us automatically, just as any experience does.


Bob Belderbos

Software Developer, Pythonista, Data Geek, Student of Life. About me