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

by Scott Adams, Joshua Lisec (Editor)

Overview

The World's Most Influential Book on Personal Success

The bestselling classic that made Systems Over Goals, Talent Stacking, and Passion Is Overrated universal success advice has been reborn.

Once in a generation, a book revolutionizes its category and becomes the preeminent reference that all subsequent books on the topic must pay homage to, in name or in spirit.

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, is such a book for the field of personal success.

A contrarian pundit and persuasion expert in a class of his own, Adams has reached hundreds of millions directly and indirectly through the 2013 first edition's straightforward yet counterintuitive advice-to invite failure in, embrace it, then pick its pocket.

The second edition of How to Fail is a tighter, updated version, by popular demand. Yet new and returning readers alike will find the same candor, humor, and timeless wisdom on productivity, career growth, health and fitness, and entrepreneurial success as the original classic.

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, Second Edition is the essential read (or re-read) for anyone who wants to find a unique path to personal victory-and make luck find you in whatever you do.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798988534952
Publisher:	Scott Adams, Inc.
Publication date:	08/17/2023
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	250
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

Scott Adams is best known as the creator of the Dilbert comic strip that ran in newspapers and later on websites around the world from 1989 until 2023. In recent years, Adams is better known as the author of the most influential book in the field of personal success-How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. Adams is a trained hypnotist and the host of Coffee with Scott Adams, a daily livestream analyzing news events and politics through a persuasion lens. The show is available at 10:00 AM Eastern every day on YouTube and scottadams.locals.com (for subscribers) live. Recorded episodes are also on Rumble and on most podcast apps.

Joshua Lisec is considered the world's best ghostwriter because people don't get rich selling books. With more than 80 books written for CEOs, celebrities, and entrepreneurs, Joshua has built an unstoppable results business for his clients. These authors have made so much more money through their authority-establishing books that many feel bad about how much they paid Joshua. And this despite him being one of the most expensive ghostwriters in America. Joshua is the only Certified Ghostwriter and Certified Hypnotist in the world and has a proven process for any aspiring author who has done the hard work of being the best at what they do. He takes great pride in his craft, delivering experts the authority book they've already earned. Learn more at www.LisecGhostwriting.com.

Hometown:

Danville, California

Date of Birth:

June 8, 1957

Place of Birth:

Catskill, New York

Education:

B.A., Hartwick College, 1979; M.B.A., University of California, Berkeley, 1986

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Excerpted from "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big"
by .
Copyright © 2014 Scott Adams.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 The Time I Was Crazy 7

Chapter 2 The Day of the Talk 10

Chapter 3 Passion Is Bullshit 13

Chapter 4 Some of My Many Failures in Summary Form 16

Chapter 5 My Absolute Favorite Spectacular Failure 28

Chapter 6 Goals Versus Systems 30

Chapter 7 My System 35

Chapter 8 My Corporate Career Fizzled 41

Chapter 9 Deciding Versus Wanting 46

Chapter 10 The Selfishness Illusion 47

Chapter 11 The Energy Metric 51

Chapter 12 Managing Your Attitude 65

Chapter 13 It's Already Working 74

Chapter 14 My Pinkie Goes Nuts 76

Chapter 15 My Speaking Career 80

Chapter 16 My Voice Problem Gets a Name 82

Chapter 17 The Voice Solution That Didn't Work 84

Chapter 18 Recognizing Your Talents and Knowing When to Quit 86

Chapter 19 Is Practice Your Thing? 92

Chapter 20 Managing Your Odds for Success 95

Chapter 21 The Math of Success 101

Chapter 22 Pattern Recognition 145

Chapter 23 Humor 149

Chapter 24 Affirmations 154

Chapter 25 Timing Is Luck Too 158

Chapter 26 A Few Times Affirmations Worked 161

Chapter 27 Voice Update 163

Chapter 28 Experts 165

Chapter 29 Association Programming 167

Chapter 30 Happiness 171

Chapter 31 Diet 180

Chapter 32 Fitness 204

Chapter 33 Voice Update 215

Chapter 34 Luck 218

Chapter 35 CalendarTree Start-up 220

Chapter 36 Voice Update 3 222

Chapter 37 A Final Note About Affirmations 225

Chapter 38 Summary 230

Acknowledgments 233

Notes 235

Index 246

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Adams has a funny, refreshingly considered set of ideas about how to find success—and what that success will look like when one gets there.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Scott Adams has drawn nearly 9,000 Dilbert cartoons since the strip began, in 1989, and his cynical take on management ideas, the effectiveness of bosses, and cubicle life has affected the worldview of millions. But he built his successful career mainly through trial and error—a whole lot of error, to be exact.
—Harvard Business Review

Editorial Reviews

Adams has a funny, refreshingly considered set of ideas about how to find success—and what that success will look like when one gets there.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Scott Adams has drawn nearly 9,000 Dilbert cartoons since the strip began, in 1989, and his cynical take on management ideas, the effectiveness of bosses, and cubicle life has affected the worldview of millions. But he built his successful career mainly through trial and error—a whole lot of error, to be exact.
—Harvard Business Review

From the Publisher

2013-09-15
Failing and succeeding, the sarcastic comic-strip–artist way. Dilbert creator Adams has failed where others have succeeded, and he has a chapter to prove it: a 10-page list of mistakes, misfires and entrepreneurial blunders that humbled him time and again. Not every business venture crashed and burned, of course; the massive success of Dilbert is proof enough of that. As the title of the book suggests, Adams' path to cartooning fame and fortune was uneven, fraught with missteps and largely unrelated to cartooning. Fans of Dilbert will find the author's less-than-orthodox approach to a "win big" guide to be in keeping with the tone of the comic strip. Some of the themes of the book include "goals are for losers," "conquer shyness by being a huge phony (in a good way)," and "simplicity transforms ordinary into amazing." Adams has extensive experience in data-driven office environments, and the long-form writing gives him a chance to examine the many approaches he's tried to making positive changes in his life and career. Many of the themes are common to this type of book--e.g., the importance of a healthy diet and exercise, the benefits of having a "system" to follow over a long period of time instead of passions or goals that leave you feeling empty as soon as you achieve them. Adams has a funny, refreshingly considered set of ideas about how to find success--and what that success will look like when one gets there. While Adams implores readers not to consider this book's suggestions as advice ("It's never a good idea to take advice from cartoonists"), he does turn the many lemons of his work history into something akin to a helpful guide for young adults stumbling through the early career years.

Kirkus Reviews