## How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big ### How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big  #### Metadata * Author: [[Scott Adams]] * Full Title: How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big * Category: #books #### Highlights * It was a confounding, maddening problem. I could sing fluently, albeit hideously, which was entirely normal for me. And I could recite memorized pieces without much of a hitch. But I couldn't produce a normal, intelligible sentence in the context of a conversation. (Location 216) * waited for the applause to stop. And when it did, I waited a little longer, as I had learned. When you stand in front of an audience, your sensation of time is distorted. That's why inexperienced presenters speak too rapidly. (Location 266) * It's a fair question. The answer is a long one. It will take this entire book to answer it right. The short answer is that over the years I have cultivated a unique relationship with failure. I invite it. I survive it. I appreciate it. And then I mug the shit out of it. Failure always brings something valuable with it. I don't let it leave until I extract that value. I have a long history of profiting from failure. My cartooning career, for example, is a direct result of failing to succeed in the corporate environment. (Location 271) * You often hear advice from successful people that you should "follow your passion." That sounds perfectly reasonable the first time you hear it. Passion will presumably give you high energy, high resistance to rejection, and high determination. Passionate people are more persuasive, too. Those are all good things, right? (Location 288) * My boss, who had been a commercial lender for over thirty years, said the best loan customer is one who has no passion whatsoever, just a desire to work hard at something that looks good on a spreadsheet. Maybe the loan customer wants to start a dry-cleaning store or invest in a fast-food franchise—boring stuff. That's the person you bet on. You want the grinder, not the guy who loves his job. (Location 294) * On the other hand, Dilbert started out as just one of many get-rich schemes I was willing to try. When it started to look as if it might be a success, my passion for cartooning increased because I realized it could be my golden ticket. In hindsight, it looks as if the projects I was most passionate about were also the ones that worked. But objectively, my passion level moved with my success. Success caused passion more than passion caused success. (Location 312) * Passion can also be a simple marker for talent. We humans tend to enjoy doing things we are good at, while not enjoying things we suck at. We're also fairly good at predicting what we might be good at before we try. I was passionate about tennis the first day I picked up a racket, and I've played all my life. But I also knew in an instant that it was the type of thing I could be good at, unlike basketball or football. So sometimes passion is simply a by-product of knowing you will be good at something. (Location 315) * So forget about passion when you're planning your path to success. In the coming chapters I'll describe some methods for boosting personal energy that have worked for me. You already know that when your energy is right you perform better at everything you do, including school, work, sports, and even your personal life. Energy is good. Passion is bullshit. (Location 323) * Calendar Patent: I had an idea for embedding ads in electronic calendars in a clever way that people would find useful. The idea was for a program to read your calendar entries and match your plans with vendor offers that made sense for the activities predicted by the calendar. For example, if you planned to go car shopping for a minivan next month, you would just put that entry on your calendar and vendors would populate the entry with local deals and offers. You would see the offers only if you clicked on them. The ads would be managed through a third party (in the "cloud," as we might say today), so vendors would never directly see any user's calendar information. The patent was rejected because a patent that was totally unrelated—meaning it had nothing to do with calendars at all—allegedly included the process I described. My reading of the existing patent was that it had nothing to do with my idea, but I consulted with my patent attorney and let it drop. Interestingly, the owner of the existing patent probably doesn't know he's sitting on a gold mine. (Location 459) * I sold off the assets and got out of the restaurant business. I have to say the richness of the whole restaurant experience was totally worth the money. I was in a position to afford the losses without altering my lifestyle, so I don't regret any of it. Eating dinner at a restaurant you own can be an extraordinarily good time. It sure beats cooking at home and washing the dishes. Of all my failures, I enjoyed the restaurants the most. (Location 500) * I was seated next to a businessman who was probably in his early sixties. I suppose I looked like an odd duck with my serious demeanor, bad haircut, and cheap suit, clearly out of my element. He asked what my story was and I filled him in. I asked what he did for a living and he told me he was CEO of a company that made screws. Then he offered me some career advice. He said that every time he got a new job, he immediately started looking for a better one. For him, job seeking was not something one did when necessary. It was an ongoing process. This makes perfect sense if you do the math. Chances are the best job for you won't become available at precisely the time you declare yourself ready. Your best bet, he explained, was to always be looking for the better deal. The better deal has its own schedule. I believe the way he explained it is that your job is not your job; your job is to find a better job. (Location 563) * To put it bluntly, goals are for losers. That's literally true most of the time. For example, if your goal is to lose ten pounds, you will spend every moment until you reach the goal—if you reach it at all—feeling as if you were short of your goal. In other words, goal-oriented people exist in a state of nearly continuous failure that they hope will be temporary. That feeling wears on you. In time, it becomes heavy and uncomfortable. It might even drive you out of the game. (Location 582) * millionaire through some other start-up or just by (Location 616) * My plan wasn't the one and only practical path to success. Another perfectly good plan might involve becoming a salesperson who works on commission in an industry that handles extraordinarily expensive items such as rare art, airplanes, or office buildings. It might take years to get into one of those positions, but no one said success would be fast or easy. I don't have the salesperson gene, so selling expensive items wasn't a good plan for me. I figured my competitive edge was creativity. I would try one thing after another until something creative struck a chord with the public. Then I would reproduce it like crazy. In the near term it would mean one failure after another. In the long term I was creating a situation that would allow luck to find me. (Location 720) * My banking career ended when my boss called me into her office and informed me that the order had come down to stop promoting white males. The press had noticed that senior management was composed almost entirely of white males, and the company needed to work harder to achieve something called diversity. (Location 760) * About 60 percent of my job at Pacific Bell involved trying to look busy. I was in charge of budgeting, and the actual work was far from challenging, even for me. Most of my budget spreadsheets had formula errors, but that didn't matter because all of the inputs from the various departments were complete lies and bullshit. If anything, my errors probably smoothed out some of the bullshit and made it closer to truth. It was a truly absurd existence. (Location 772) * I decided to revive a long-lost interest and try my hand at cartooning. But it was an unlikely dream, given my complete lack of artistic talent and the rarity of success stories in that business. So I decided to try something called affirmations, which I will describe in more detail later in the book. I bought some art supplies, practiced drawing every morning before work, and wrote my affirmation fifteen times a day: "I, Scott Adams, will be a famous cartoonist." (Location 801) ^5dd408 * I'm sure there are plenty of selfish turds who make billions and spend it all on helicopters and mansions with never a thought given to the well-being of others. I meet a lot of super successful people in my line of work, especially living in the San Francisco Bay Area, and my observation is that it's rare to find a selfish successful person. I assume some or even most successful people started out selfishly, but success changes you. It's not a coincidence that Brad Pitt is helping to build homes after the Hurricane Katrina disaster or that Bill Gates is one of the most important philanthropists of all time. Success does that. (Location 866) * You might be familiar with a television show that was called The Dog Whisperer. On the show, Cesar Millan, a dog-training expert, helped people get their seemingly insane dogs under control. Cesar's main trick involved training the humans to control their own emotional states, because dogs can pick up crazy vibes from their owners. When the owners learned to control themselves, the dogs calmed down too. I think this same method applies to humans interacting with other humans. You've seen for yourself that when a sad person enters a room, the mood in the room drops. And when you talk to a cheerful person who is full of energy, you automatically feel (Location 885) * If the cost of failure is high, simple tasks are the best because they are easier to manage and control. Missing a dinner reservation isn't the end of the world, so doing some optimizing in that case is defensible. But if you are driving to an important business meeting, you don't want to pile on some errands that are "on the way," because that introduces unwanted stress and uncertainty. (Location 1000) * No one reads Dilbert comics for the artwork. I have the luxury of being able to do simple drawings directly on the computer using a Wacom Cintiq device (a computer screen on which you can draw). I type the dialogue using a special font I created of my handwriting. Over the years I have streamlined the system to the point where I can bang out a comic in about an hour if I need to, although I usually take longer. Dilbert was designed from the start to be simple to create, and I continue to streamline the process. That simplicity has paid off big-time because it frees me to blog, write books, do interesting side projects, and still enjoy life. (Location 1006) * Another big advantage of simplification is that it frees up time, and time is one of your most valuable resources in the world. If you give an ant infinite time, it can move a mountain all by itself. In my case, I can run the equivalent of three separate careers (cartoonist, author, entrepreneur) in the same forty-hour week that would normally accommodate one (Location 1017) * As I mentioned earlier, we don't always have the option of choosing simplicity, especially if we have a thousand things to complete in a day, as Shelly often does. But it's a good idea to have an overarching plan to move toward simple systems as opportunities allow. You can chip away at the complexity of your life over time. Simplicity is a worthy long-term goal. That's how you will free your personal energy so you can concentrate it where you need it. (Location 1023) * Tidiness is a personal preference, but it also has an impact on your energy. Every second you look at a messy room and think about fixing it is a distraction from your more important thoughts. I realize that clutter and messiness don't affect everyone the same way. Some people need to have things just right and others don't seem to mind living in chaos. (Location 1042) * And so it has been with about 90 percent of the topics that have intimidated me throughout my career. When you start asking questions, you often discover that there's a simple solution, a Web site that handles it, or a professional who takes care of it for a reasonable fee. Keep in mind that every time you wonder how to do something, a few hundred million people have probably wondered the same thing. And that usually means the information has already been packaged and simplified, and in some cases sold. But it's usually free for the asking. (Location 1062) * Asshole behaviors: Changing the subject to him/herself Dominating conversation Bragging Cheating, lying Disagreeing with any suggestion, no matter how trivial Using honesty as a justification for cruelty Withholding simple favors out of some warped sense of social justice Abandoning the rules of civil behavior, such as saying hello or making eye contact (Location 1083) * It's useful to think of your priorities in terms of concentric circles, like an archery target. In the center is your highest priority: you. If you ruin yourself, you won't be able to work on any other priorities. So taking care of your own health is job one. The next ring—and your second-biggest priority—is economics. That includes your job, your investments, and even your house. You might wince at the fact that I put economics ahead of your family, your friends, and the rest of the world, but there's a reason. If you don't get your personal financial engine working right, you place a burden on everyone from your family to the country. (Location 1094) * Once you are both healthy and financially sound, it's time for the third ring: family, friends, and lovers. Good health and sufficient money are necessary for a base level of happiness, but you need to be right with your family, friends, and romantic partners to truly enjoy life. The next rings are your local community, your country, and the world, in that order. Don't bother trying to fix the world until you get the inner circles of your priorities under control. (Location 1099) * This is the same reasoning for why you should avoid exposure to too much news of the depressing type and why it's a good idea to avoid music, books, and movies that are downers. Show me someone who you think is always in a good mood and I'll show you a person who (probably) avoids overexposure to sad forms of entertainment. The easiest way to manage your attitude is to consume as much feel-good entertainment as you can. (Location 1138) * A great strategy for success in life is to become good at something, anything, and let that feeling propel you to new and better victories. Success can be habit-forming. (Location 1211) * Physicists tell us that reality seems to depend on the observer. If you and I were to move through an empty and infinitely large universe at the same speed and in the same direction, we would feel as if we weren't moving at all. (Location 1226) * For over a decade I've been semifamous for creating Dilbert, but I'm still generally unrecognized in public. When I meet people for the first time without the benefit of a full introduction, I'm treated like any other stranger. But if the topic of my job comes up, people immediately become friendlier, as if we had been friends forever. The underlying reality doesn't change, but the way people think of me does, and that changes how they act. (Location 1237) * The most striking example of this effect happened to me. My cartooning skills improved dramatically within a week of United Media's offering to syndicate Dilbert. The simple knowledge that I had become an official professional cartoonist had a profound effect on unlocking whatever talent I had. (Location 1273) * In my corporate career I often marveled at how people changed as soon as they got promoted from worker bees to management. I saw one of my coworkers transform from a hesitant and unimpressive personality to confidence and power within two months of his promotion. Obviously there was some acting involved, but we are designed to become in reality however we act. We fake it until it becomes real. Our core personality doesn't change, but we quickly adopt the mannerisms and skills associated with our new status and position. (Location 1275) * Pause for a moment to reflect on that. There were over six billion people in the world, and one of the most published experts in the field worked within walking distance of my home. Never assume you understand the odds of things. I met with the doctor and he diagnosed me in minutes. I had something called a focal dystonia, common to people who do repetitive tasks with their hands, primarily musicians, draftsmen, and that sort of job. It wasn't carpal tunnel. This was different. (Location 1289) * I lost the ability to write simple notes using pen on paper, which was obviously inconvenient at my day job. Oddly, the pinkie spasms happened only during the specific motions involved in writing or drawing. Otherwise my hand was 100 percent normal. Weirder still, when I drew with my left hand, the pinkie on my right hand would spasm, so obviously the wiring in my brain was the problem, not the architecture of my hand. My experience was consistent with the doctor's research. None of the people who have focal dystonias seem to have anything abnormal in the structure of their hands. It seems to be some sort of short circuit in the brain. (Location 1311) * Over the next several weeks I noticed I could hold my pen to paper for a full second before feeling the onset of a pinkie spasm. Eventually it was two seconds, then five. One day, after I trained myself to hold pen to paper for several seconds without a spasm, my brain suddenly and unexpectedly rewired itself and removed the dystonia altogether. Apparently I broke the spasm cycle and reinforced the nonspasm association. And so I was the first person in the world to cure a focal dystonia, at least as far as I know. It's entirely possible that I'm wrong about that, since I can't know what everyone else is doing or what worked for them. Still, it was an unlikely result. (Location 1320) * He said, "Ask for five thousand dollars. If they say no, you avoid a trip to Canada." I laughed at his suggestion, knowing that I wasn't worth that kind of money. But I had my plan. I practiced saying "five thousand dollars" until I thought I could say it without laughing. I called back my Canadian contact. That conversation went like this: Canadian: "Did you come up with a price?" Me: "Yes … five thousand dollars." Canadian: "Okay, and we'll also pay for your first-class travel and hotel." I flew to Canada and gave a speech. (Location 1353) * But how could I find the name for a condition that was unfamiliar to two ear-nose-throat doctors, two voice specialists, a psychologist, a neurologist, and my general practitioner? (Location 1372) * I opened a Google search box and tried a variety of voice-related key words. I found nothing useful. My searches were too broad. And then something interesting happened. It's a phenomenon that people in creative jobs experience often, but it might be unfamiliar to the rest of you. Suddenly, out of nowhere, two totally unrelated thoughts—separated by topic, time, and distance—came together in my head. (Location 1374) * To illustrate my point, consider the history of cell phones. Early cell phones had bad reception all the time. They dropped calls. They had few features. They were expensive. They didn't fit in your pocket. Yet cell phones were successful, at least in terms of demand, on day one. Despite the many flaws of cell phones—flaws that lasted decades—demand started brisk and stayed strong. The poor quality of the product made no difference. Cell phones started as a small success and grew. (Location 1457) * Recapping my skill set: I have poor art skills, mediocre business skills, good but not great writing talent, and an early knowledge of the Internet. And I have a good but not great sense of humor. I'm like one big mediocre soup. None of my skills are world-class, but when my mediocre skills are combined, they become a powerful market force. (Location 1610) * My sixteen years in corporate America added half a dozen other useful skills to the mix as well. I managed people, did contract negotiations, made commercial loans, wrote business plans, designed software, managed projects, developed systems to track performance, contributed to technology strategies, and more. I took company-paid classes in public speaking, time management, managing difficult people, listening, business writing, and lots of other useful topics. During my corporate career I finished my MBA classes in the evening while working full time. I was a learning machine. If I thought something might someday be useful, I tried to grasp at least the basics. In my cartooning career I've used almost every skill I learned in the business world. (Location 1613) * Several years ago I gave a talk to a fifth-grade class. I started by asking them to finish my sentence. The sentence was "If you play a slot machine long enough, eventually you will …" The class yelled out in unison "WIN!" As most adults know, that is exactly the wrong answer. Slot machines are engineered to make everyone but the casino a loser in the long run. (Location 1645) * There are several things to learn from that story. The most important is the transformative power of praise versus the corrosive impact of criticism. I've had a number of occasions since then to test the powers of praise, and I find it an amazing force, especially for adults. Children are accustomed to a continual stream of criticisms and praise, but adults can go weeks without a compliment while enduring criticism both at work and at home. Adults are starved for a kind word. When you understand the power of honest praise (as opposed to bullshitting, flattery, and sucking up), you realize that withholding it borders on immoral. If you see something that impresses you, a decent respect to humanity insists you voice your praise. "Wow. That was brave," is the best and cleanest example I've seen in which looking at something in a different way changes everything. When the instructor switched our focus from the student's poor speaking performance to her bravery, everything changed. Positivity is far more than a mental preference. It changes your brain, literally, and it changes the people around you. It's the nearest thing we have to magic. Another thing I learned from my Dale Carnegie experience is that we don't always have an accurate view of our own potential. (Location 1747) * The self-assessed underdressed customer would turn and leave. I saw that scenario repeat itself over and over. None of the women who rejected themselves from the restaurant looked underdressed to me. The restaurant wasn't that upscale. It was still a neighborhood restaurant in a suburban strip mall. But compared with other restaurants in the area it was a step up in design. It made people feel uncomfortable. To make matters worse, our food quality wasn't up to the level people expected for a place with that type of decor. The restaurant's appearance caused us to be compared with the very best of fine-dining restaurants. Our business model assumed people would prefer eating upscale comfort food in an unusually attractive setting. It was a bad idea. Customers were confused. Was the restaurant supposed to be casual or upscale? (Location 1801) * Some of the things on the list are common sense, and you might know them by other names. I include the comprehensive list just to give you a feel for how deep the field is. And I would go so far as to say that anything on the list that you don't understand might cost you money in the future. You've heard the old saying that knowledge is power. But knowledge of psychology is the purest form of that power. (Location 1838) * When politicians tell lies, they know the press will call them out. They also know it doesn't matter. Politicians understand that reason will never have much of a role in voting decisions. A lie that makes a voter feel good is more effective than a hundred rational arguments. (Location 1871) * Business writing also teaches that brains are wired to better understand concepts that are presented in a certain order. For example, your brain processes "The boy hit the ball" more easily than "The ball was hit by the boy." In editors' jargon, the first sentence is direct writing and the second is passive. It's a tiny difference, but over the course of an entire document, passive writing adds up and causes reader fatigue. (Location 1918) * Tags: [[favorite]] * For example, landscape designers will tell you that it's better to put three of the same kind of bush in your yard, not two and not four. Odd numbers just look better in that context. (Location 1943) * When you design a PowerPoint slide or a Web page, it's the same idea. You leave one quadrant less busy than the rest. Skim through any well-designed magazine and you'll see the L design in 80 percent of the art and photography. The other 20 percent will be some special cases that I won't go into here. I'm only trying to convince you of the importance of design and the ease with which you can pick up the main idea. Learn just a few design tricks and people will think you're smarter without knowing exactly why. (Location 1953) * I'll paraphrase the Dale Carnegie question stack as best I remember it. It goes something like this: What's your name? Where do you live? Do you have a family? What do you do for a living? Do you have any hobbies/sports? Do you have any travel plans? (Location 1977) * You should also try to figure out which people are thing people and which ones are people people. Thing people enjoy hearing about new technology and other clever tools and possessions. They also enjoy discussions of processes and systems, including politics. People people enjoy only conversations that involve humans doing interesting things. They get bored in a second when the conversation turns to things. Once you know whether you are dealing with a thing person or a people person, you can craft your conversation to his or her (Location 2079) * It's an old cliché that business gets done on the golf course. I'm new to the game, but as far as I can tell, no one ever talks business on a golf course. The thing that golf does well is that it allows males, especially, to bond. (Location 2107) * Men bond with other men through common activities. And for adult men, golf is as close as you can get to a universal activity. After a certain age it's probably the most common sportlike activity for men. (Location 2108) * If I Were … When you talk about the hypothetical future, use "were" instead of "was." Don't say, "If I was to go with you, I would enjoy myself." Say, "If I were to go with you, I would enjoy myself." This rule of grammar is a big one. If you get "were"/"was" grammar wrong, it's a red flag to people who know the difference. (Location 2124) * If the science is accurate, an effective way to ask for money might look something like this: "May I borrow a hundred dollars, because I don't get paid until next week?" That's not much of a justification for borrowing money; no real reason is given. The person asking for money hasn't even said why he needs it. It just feels as if a reason had been offered because of "because." (Location 2179) * "Would you mind …" tends to be well received. My best guess is that asking a person if he minds is signaling that you have a reasonable request that might be inconvenient. It's hard to be a jerk and say no to any request that starts with "Would you mind." The question comes across as honest, while also showing concern for the other person. It's a powerful combination. (Location 2184) * I've found that the most effective way to stop people from trying to persuade me is to say, "I'm not interested." You should try it. Don't offer a reason why you aren't interested. No one can say why a thing holds interest for some and not for others. There's no argument against a lack of interest. Repeat your claim of disinterest as often as it takes to end the conversation. You might be surprised how effective this method is. I've been using it for years. It's a total conversation killer. (Location 2191) * I Just Wanted to Clarify … Sometimes you hear statements that are so mind-numbingly stupid, evil, or mean that you know a direct frontal assault would only start a fight. People tend to double down when challenged, no matter how wrong they are. A more effective way to approach a dangerous social or business situation is sideways, by asking a question that starts with "I just wanted to clarify …" That approach might look like this: "I just wanted to clarify: Are you saying you're okay with an 80 percent chance of going to jail, or did I hear your plan wrong?" (Location 2203) * Thank-you notes sent by snail mail are always appreciated and still a must for the bigger occasions. But a well-written e-mail is now socially acceptable for most common situations. No matter how you deliver a thank-you, make sure it includes a little detail of what makes you thankful. Was it the surprise, the thoughtfulness, or how helpful the favor or gift was? Be specific. For example, "Thank you so much for the ride. I was worried all day about how I would get everything done while my car is in the shop. You really saved me." Compare that with a simple "Thank you for the ride." Any thank-you is better than none, but you're missing an opportunity if you do a poor job of it. It's the sort of thing people remember when they decide whom they want to work with, pick for a team, or invite to a party. It seems like a small thing, but it isn't. (Location 2229) * I managed people, I spoke in a way that I thought sounded authoritarian and reasonable. In meetings with higher-ups I lowered my tone and spoke with the sort of self-assurance that only the insane come by honestly. I'm reasonably sure that my fake voice, with its low notes and artificial confidence, made me appear more capable than I was, and that wasn't difficult because I was largely incompetent at every corporate job I held. Despite my obvious lack of ability, nearly every boss I had—and there were many—identified me as a future corporate executive. (Location 2297) * Humor also makes you more creative, at least in the short run.3 I think it has something to do with the fact that humor is a violation of straight-line thinking. Humor temporarily shuts down the commonsense program in your moist robot brain and boots the random idea generator. At least it feels that way to me, figuratively speaking. Perhaps all that is happening is that humor makes one feel energized and relaxed at the same time and that is bound to help creativity. (Location 2433) * I took some practice tests at home and never scored much better than my original seventy-seventh percentile. I decided to put my affirmations to the test. I wanted to visualize a specific result, so I picked the ninety-fourth percentile because I thought that would be high enough to win the bet. I visualized opening the mail and seeing the "94" on my test-result form. On test day I felt I did no better than I had on my practice tests, but I kept up my affirmations on the ninety-fourth percentile and waited for the results in the mail. A few weeks later the results arrived. I opened the letter and looked in the box with my overall score. It said 94. Perhaps (Location 2521) * "sexy." I had even more luck when Berke Breathed retired his popular comic strip Bloom County and opened up hundreds of spaces in newspapers. Later, Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, retired and opened up even more space. It was unprecedented for cartoonists at the top of their game, and so young, to retire. And the timing coincided with the growing spotlight on Dilbert, making it the most obvious replacement choice. Newspapers snapped it up like candy. (Location 2572) * Incurable health problems often attract quack cures. I tried most of the ones that weren't dangerous. Drinking a certain brand of cough syrup didn't work. Acupuncture didn't work. Mineral supplements didn't work. Stutter cures didn't work. Three different approaches to voice therapy didn't work. The Alexander Technique* didn't work. Iron supplements didn't work. Changing my diet didn't work. (Location 2624) * The next important thing to remember about happiness is that it's not a mystery of the mind and it's not magic. Happiness is the natural state for most people whenever they feel healthy, have flexible schedules, and expect the future to be good. (Location 2798) * Recapping the happiness formula: Eat right. Exercise. Get enough sleep. Imagine an incredible future (even if you don't believe it). (Location 2854) ^15568b * Work toward a flexible schedule. Do things you can steadily improve at. Help others (if you've already helped yourself). Reduce daily decisions to routine. (Location 2858) # How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big  ## Metadata - Author: [[Scott Adams]] - Full Title: How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big - Category: #books ## Highlights - It was a confounding, maddening problem. I could sing fluently, albeit hideously, which was entirely normal for me. And I could recite memorized pieces without much of a hitch. But I couldn’t produce a normal, intelligible sentence in the context of a conversation. (Location 216) - waited for the applause to stop. And when it did, I waited a little longer, as I had learned. When you stand in front of an audience, your sensation of time is distorted. That’s why inexperienced presenters speak too rapidly. (Location 266) - It’s a fair question. The answer is a long one. It will take this entire book to answer it right. The short answer is that over the years I have cultivated a unique relationship with failure. I invite it. I survive it. I appreciate it. And then I mug the shit out of it. Failure always brings something valuable with it. I don’t let it leave until I extract that value. I have a long history of profiting from failure. My cartooning career, for example, is a direct result of failing to succeed in the corporate environment. (Location 271) - You often hear advice from successful people that you should “follow your passion.” That sounds perfectly reasonable the first time you hear it. Passion will presumably give you high energy, high resistance to rejection, and high determination. Passionate people are more persuasive, too. Those are all good things, right? (Location 288) - My boss, who had been a commercial lender for over thirty years, said the best loan customer is one who has no passion whatsoever, just a desire to work hard at something that looks good on a spreadsheet. Maybe the loan customer wants to start a dry-cleaning store or invest in a fast-food franchise—boring stuff. That’s the person you bet on. You want the grinder, not the guy who loves his job. (Location 294) - On the other hand, Dilbert started out as just one of many get-rich schemes I was willing to try. When it started to look as if it might be a success, my passion for cartooning increased because I realized it could be my golden ticket. In hindsight, it looks as if the projects I was most passionate about were also the ones that worked. But objectively, my passion level moved with my success. Success caused passion more than passion caused success. (Location 312) - Passion can also be a simple marker for talent. We humans tend to enjoy doing things we are good at, while not enjoying things we suck at. We’re also fairly good at predicting what we might be good at before we try. I was passionate about tennis the first day I picked up a racket, and I’ve played all my life. But I also knew in an instant that it was the type of thing I could be good at, unlike basketball or football. So sometimes passion is simply a by-product of knowing you will be good at something. (Location 315) - So forget about passion when you’re planning your path to success. In the coming chapters I’ll describe some methods for boosting personal energy that have worked for me. You already know that when your energy is right you perform better at everything you do, including school, work, sports, and even your personal life. Energy is good. Passion is bullshit. (Location 323) - Calendar Patent: I had an idea for embedding ads in electronic calendars in a clever way that people would find useful. The idea was for a program to read your calendar entries and match your plans with vendor offers that made sense for the activities predicted by the calendar. For example, if you planned to go car shopping for a minivan next month, you would just put that entry on your calendar and vendors would populate the entry with local deals and offers. You would see the offers only if you clicked on them. The ads would be managed through a third party (in the “cloud,” as we might say today), so vendors would never directly see any user’s calendar information. The patent was rejected because a patent that was totally unrelated—meaning it had nothing to do with calendars at all—allegedly included the process I described. My reading of the existing patent was that it had nothing to do with my idea, but I consulted with my patent attorney and let it drop. Interestingly, the owner of the existing patent probably doesn’t know he’s sitting on a gold mine. (Location 459) - I sold off the assets and got out of the restaurant business. I have to say the richness of the whole restaurant experience was totally worth the money. I was in a position to afford the losses without altering my lifestyle, so I don’t regret any of it. Eating dinner at a restaurant you own can be an extraordinarily good time. It sure beats cooking at home and washing the dishes. Of all my failures, I enjoyed the restaurants the most. (Location 500) - I was seated next to a businessman who was probably in his early sixties. I suppose I looked like an odd duck with my serious demeanor, bad haircut, and cheap suit, clearly out of my element. He asked what my story was and I filled him in. I asked what he did for a living and he told me he was CEO of a company that made screws. Then he offered me some career advice. He said that every time he got a new job, he immediately started looking for a better one. For him, job seeking was not something one did when necessary. It was an ongoing process. This makes perfect sense if you do the math. Chances are the best job for you won’t become available at precisely the time you declare yourself ready. Your best bet, he explained, was to always be looking for the better deal. The better deal has its own schedule. I believe the way he explained it is that your job is not your job; your job is to find a better job. (Location 563) - To put it bluntly, goals are for losers. That’s literally true most of the time. For example, if your goal is to lose ten pounds, you will spend every moment until you reach the goal—if you reach it at all—feeling as if you were short of your goal. In other words, goal-oriented people exist in a state of nearly continuous failure that they hope will be temporary. That feeling wears on you. In time, it becomes heavy and uncomfortable. It might even drive you out of the game. (Location 582) - millionaire through some other start-up or just by (Location 616) - My plan wasn’t the one and only practical path to success. Another perfectly good plan might involve becoming a salesperson who works on commission in an industry that handles extraordinarily expensive items such as rare art, airplanes, or office buildings. It might take years to get into one of those positions, but no one said success would be fast or easy. I don’t have the salesperson gene, so selling expensive items wasn’t a good plan for me. I figured my competitive edge was creativity. I would try one thing after another until something creative struck a chord with the public. Then I would reproduce it like crazy. In the near term it would mean one failure after another. In the long term I was creating a situation that would allow luck to find me. (Location 720) - My banking career ended when my boss called me into her office and informed me that the order had come down to stop promoting white males. The press had noticed that senior management was composed almost entirely of white males, and the company needed to work harder to achieve something called diversity. (Location 760) - About 60 percent of my job at Pacific Bell involved trying to look busy. I was in charge of budgeting, and the actual work was far from challenging, even for me. Most of my budget spreadsheets had formula errors, but that didn’t matter because all of the inputs from the various departments were complete lies and bullshit. If anything, my errors probably smoothed out some of the bullshit and made it closer to truth. It was a truly absurd existence. (Location 772) - I decided to revive a long-lost interest and try my hand at cartooning. But it was an unlikely dream, given my complete lack of artistic talent and the rarity of success stories in that business. So I decided to try something called affirmations, which I will describe in more detail later in the book. I bought some art supplies, practiced drawing every morning before work, and wrote my affirmation fifteen times a day: “I, Scott Adams, will be a famous cartoonist.” (Location 801) - I’m sure there are plenty of selfish turds who make billions and spend it all on helicopters and mansions with never a thought given to the well-being of others. I meet a lot of super successful people in my line of work, especially living in the San Francisco Bay Area, and my observation is that it’s rare to find a selfish successful person. I assume some or even most successful people started out selfishly, but success changes you. It’s not a coincidence that Brad Pitt is helping to build homes after the Hurricane Katrina disaster or that Bill Gates is one of the most important philanthropists of all time. Success does that. (Location 866) - You might be familiar with a television show that was called The Dog Whisperer. On the show, Cesar Millan, a dog-training expert, helped people get their seemingly insane dogs under control. Cesar’s main trick involved training the humans to control their own emotional states, because dogs can pick up crazy vibes from their owners. When the owners learned to control themselves, the dogs calmed down too. I think this same method applies to humans interacting with other humans. You’ve seen for yourself that when a sad person enters a room, the mood in the room drops. And when you talk to a cheerful person who is full of energy, you automatically feel (Location 885) - If the cost of failure is high, simple tasks are the best because they are easier to manage and control. Missing a dinner reservation isn’t the end of the world, so doing some optimizing in that case is defensible. But if you are driving to an important business meeting, you don’t want to pile on some errands that are “on the way,” because that introduces unwanted stress and uncertainty. (Location 1000) - No one reads Dilbert comics for the artwork. I have the luxury of being able to do simple drawings directly on the computer using a Wacom Cintiq device (a computer screen on which you can draw). I type the dialogue using a special font I created of my handwriting. Over the years I have streamlined the system to the point where I can bang out a comic in about an hour if I need to, although I usually take longer. Dilbert was designed from the start to be simple to create, and I continue to streamline the process. That simplicity has paid off big-time because it frees me to blog, write books, do interesting side projects, and still enjoy life. (Location 1006) - Another big advantage of simplification is that it frees up time, and time is one of your most valuable resources in the world. If you give an ant infinite time, it can move a mountain all by itself. In my case, I can run the equivalent of three separate careers (cartoonist, author, entrepreneur) in the same forty-hour week that would normally accommodate one (Location 1017) - As I mentioned earlier, we don’t always have the option of choosing simplicity, especially if we have a thousand things to complete in a day, as Shelly often does. But it’s a good idea to have an overarching plan to move toward simple systems as opportunities allow. You can chip away at the complexity of your life over time. Simplicity is a worthy long-term goal. That’s how you will free your personal energy so you can concentrate it where you need it. (Location 1023) - Tidiness is a personal preference, but it also has an impact on your energy. Every second you look at a messy room and think about fixing it is a distraction from your more important thoughts. I realize that clutter and messiness don’t affect everyone the same way. Some people need to have things just right and others don’t seem to mind living in chaos. (Location 1042) - And so it has been with about 90 percent of the topics that have intimidated me throughout my career. When you start asking questions, you often discover that there’s a simple solution, a Web site that handles it, or a professional who takes care of it for a reasonable fee. Keep in mind that every time you wonder how to do something, a few hundred million people have probably wondered the same thing. And that usually means the information has already been packaged and simplified, and in some cases sold. But it’s usually free for the asking. (Location 1062) - Asshole behaviors: Changing the subject to him/herself Dominating conversation Bragging Cheating, lying Disagreeing with any suggestion, no matter how trivial Using honesty as a justification for cruelty Withholding simple favors out of some warped sense of social justice Abandoning the rules of civil behavior, such as saying hello or making eye contact (Location 1083) - It’s useful to think of your priorities in terms of concentric circles, like an archery target. In the center is your highest priority: you. If you ruin yourself, you won’t be able to work on any other priorities. So taking care of your own health is job one. The next ring—and your second-biggest priority—is economics. That includes your job, your investments, and even your house. You might wince at the fact that I put economics ahead of your family, your friends, and the rest of the world, but there’s a reason. If you don’t get your personal financial engine working right, you place a burden on everyone from your family to the country. (Location 1094) - Once you are both healthy and financially sound, it’s time for the third ring: family, friends, and lovers. Good health and sufficient money are necessary for a base level of happiness, but you need to be right with your family, friends, and romantic partners to truly enjoy life. The next rings are your local community, your country, and the world, in that order. Don’t bother trying to fix the world until you get the inner circles of your priorities under control. (Location 1099) - This is the same reasoning for why you should avoid exposure to too much news of the depressing type and why it’s a good idea to avoid music, books, and movies that are downers. Show me someone who you think is always in a good mood and I’ll show you a person who (probably) avoids overexposure to sad forms of entertainment. The easiest way to manage your attitude is to consume as much feel-good entertainment as you can. (Location 1138) - A great strategy for success in life is to become good at something, anything, and let that feeling propel you to new and better victories. Success can be habit-forming. (Location 1211) - Physicists tell us that reality seems to depend on the observer. If you and I were to move through an empty and infinitely large universe at the same speed and in the same direction, we would feel as if we weren’t moving at all. (Location 1226) - For over a decade I’ve been semifamous for creating Dilbert, but I’m still generally unrecognized in public. When I meet people for the first time without the benefit of a full introduction, I’m treated like any other stranger. But if the topic of my job comes up, people immediately become friendlier, as if we had been friends forever. The underlying reality doesn’t change, but the way people think of me does, and that changes how they act. (Location 1237) - The most striking example of this effect happened to me. My cartooning skills improved dramatically within a week of United Media’s offering to syndicate Dilbert. The simple knowledge that I had become an official professional cartoonist had a profound effect on unlocking whatever talent I had. (Location 1273) - In my corporate career I often marveled at how people changed as soon as they got promoted from worker bees to management. I saw one of my coworkers transform from a hesitant and unimpressive personality to confidence and power within two months of his promotion. Obviously there was some acting involved, but we are designed to become in reality however we act. We fake it until it becomes real. Our core personality doesn’t change, but we quickly adopt the mannerisms and skills associated with our new status and position. (Location 1275) - Pause for a moment to reflect on that. There were over six billion people in the world, and one of the most published experts in the field worked within walking distance of my home. Never assume you understand the odds of things. I met with the doctor and he diagnosed me in minutes. I had something called a focal dystonia, common to people who do repetitive tasks with their hands, primarily musicians, draftsmen, and that sort of job. It wasn’t carpal tunnel. This was different. (Location 1289) - I lost the ability to write simple notes using pen on paper, which was obviously inconvenient at my day job. Oddly, the pinkie spasms happened only during the specific motions involved in writing or drawing. Otherwise my hand was 100 percent normal. Weirder still, when I drew with my left hand, the pinkie on my right hand would spasm, so obviously the wiring in my brain was the problem, not the architecture of my hand. My experience was consistent with the doctor’s research. None of the people who have focal dystonias seem to have anything abnormal in the structure of their hands. It seems to be some sort of short circuit in the brain. (Location 1311) - Over the next several weeks I noticed I could hold my pen to paper for a full second before feeling the onset of a pinkie spasm. Eventually it was two seconds, then five. One day, after I trained myself to hold pen to paper for several seconds without a spasm, my brain suddenly and unexpectedly rewired itself and removed the dystonia altogether. Apparently I broke the spasm cycle and reinforced the nonspasm association. And so I was the first person in the world to cure a focal dystonia, at least as far as I know. It’s entirely possible that I’m wrong about that, since I can’t know what everyone else is doing or what worked for them. Still, it was an unlikely result. (Location 1320) - He said, “Ask for five thousand dollars. If they say no, you avoid a trip to Canada.” I laughed at his suggestion, knowing that I wasn’t worth that kind of money. But I had my plan. I practiced saying “five thousand dollars” until I thought I could say it without laughing. I called back my Canadian contact. That conversation went like this: Canadian: “Did you come up with a price?” Me: “Yes … five thousand dollars.” Canadian: “Okay, and we’ll also pay for your first-class travel and hotel.” I flew to Canada and gave a speech. (Location 1353) - But how could I find the name for a condition that was unfamiliar to two ear-nose-throat doctors, two voice specialists, a psychologist, a neurologist, and my general practitioner? (Location 1372) - I opened a Google search box and tried a variety of voice-related key words. I found nothing useful. My searches were too broad. And then something interesting happened. It’s a phenomenon that people in creative jobs experience often, but it might be unfamiliar to the rest of you. Suddenly, out of nowhere, two totally unrelated thoughts—separated by topic, time, and distance—came together in my head. (Location 1374) - To illustrate my point, consider the history of cell phones. Early cell phones had bad reception all the time. They dropped calls. They had few features. They were expensive. They didn’t fit in your pocket. Yet cell phones were successful, at least in terms of demand, on day one. Despite the many flaws of cell phones—flaws that lasted decades—demand started brisk and stayed strong. The poor quality of the product made no difference. Cell phones started as a small success and grew. (Location 1457) - Recapping my skill set: I have poor art skills, mediocre business skills, good but not great writing talent, and an early knowledge of the Internet. And I have a good but not great sense of humor. I’m like one big mediocre soup. None of my skills are world-class, but when my mediocre skills are combined, they become a powerful market force. (Location 1610) - My sixteen years in corporate America added half a dozen other useful skills to the mix as well. I managed people, did contract negotiations, made commercial loans, wrote business plans, designed software, managed projects, developed systems to track performance, contributed to technology strategies, and more. I took company-paid classes in public speaking, time management, managing difficult people, listening, business writing, and lots of other useful topics. During my corporate career I finished my MBA classes in the evening while working full time. I was a learning machine. If I thought something might someday be useful, I tried to grasp at least the basics. In my cartooning career I’ve used almost every skill I learned in the business world. (Location 1613) - Several years ago I gave a talk to a fifth-grade class. I started by asking them to finish my sentence. The sentence was “If you play a slot machine long enough, eventually you will …” The class yelled out in unison “WIN!” As most adults know, that is exactly the wrong answer. Slot machines are engineered to make everyone but the casino a loser in the long run. (Location 1645) - There are several things to learn from that story. The most important is the transformative power of praise versus the corrosive impact of criticism. I’ve had a number of occasions since then to test the powers of praise, and I find it an amazing force, especially for adults. Children are accustomed to a continual stream of criticisms and praise, but adults can go weeks without a compliment while enduring criticism both at work and at home. Adults are starved for a kind word. When you understand the power of honest praise (as opposed to bullshitting, flattery, and sucking up), you realize that withholding it borders on immoral. If you see something that impresses you, a decent respect to humanity insists you voice your praise. “Wow. That was brave,” is the best and cleanest example I’ve seen in which looking at something in a different way changes everything. When the instructor switched our focus from the student’s poor speaking performance to her bravery, everything changed. Positivity is far more than a mental preference. It changes your brain, literally, and it changes the people around you. It’s the nearest thing we have to magic. Another thing I learned from my Dale Carnegie experience is that we don’t always have an accurate view of our own potential. (Location 1747) - The self-assessed underdressed customer would turn and leave. I saw that scenario repeat itself over and over. None of the women who rejected themselves from the restaurant looked underdressed to me. The restaurant wasn’t that upscale. It was still a neighborhood restaurant in a suburban strip mall. But compared with other restaurants in the area it was a step up in design. It made people feel uncomfortable. To make matters worse, our food quality wasn’t up to the level people expected for a place with that type of decor. The restaurant’s appearance caused us to be compared with the very best of fine-dining restaurants. Our business model assumed people would prefer eating upscale comfort food in an unusually attractive setting. It was a bad idea. Customers were confused. Was the restaurant supposed to be casual or upscale? (Location 1801) - Some of the things on the list are common sense, and you might know them by other names. I include the comprehensive list just to give you a feel for how deep the field is. And I would go so far as to say that anything on the list that you don’t understand might cost you money in the future. You’ve heard the old saying that knowledge is power. But knowledge of psychology is the purest form of that power. (Location 1838) - When politicians tell lies, they know the press will call them out. They also know it doesn’t matter. Politicians understand that reason will never have much of a role in voting decisions. A lie that makes a voter feel good is more effective than a hundred rational arguments. (Location 1871) - Business writing also teaches that brains are wired to better understand concepts that are presented in a certain order. For example, your brain processes “The boy hit the ball” more easily than “The ball was hit by the boy.” In editors’ jargon, the first sentence is direct writing and the second is passive. It’s a tiny difference, but over the course of an entire document, passive writing adds up and causes reader fatigue. (Location 1918) - Tags: [[favorite]] - For example, landscape designers will tell you that it’s better to put three of the same kind of bush in your yard, not two and not four. Odd numbers just look better in that context. (Location 1943) - When you design a PowerPoint slide or a Web page, it’s the same idea. You leave one quadrant less busy than the rest. Skim through any well-designed magazine and you’ll see the L design in 80 percent of the art and photography. The other 20 percent will be some special cases that I won’t go into here. I’m only trying to convince you of the importance of design and the ease with which you can pick up the main idea. Learn just a few design tricks and people will think you’re smarter without knowing exactly why. (Location 1953) - I’ll paraphrase the Dale Carnegie question stack as best I remember it. It goes something like this: What’s your name? Where do you live? Do you have a family? What do you do for a living? Do you have any hobbies/sports? Do you have any travel plans? (Location 1977) - You should also try to figure out which people are thing people and which ones are people people. Thing people enjoy hearing about new technology and other clever tools and possessions. They also enjoy discussions of processes and systems, including politics. People people enjoy only conversations that involve humans doing interesting things. They get bored in a second when the conversation turns to things. Once you know whether you are dealing with a thing person or a people person, you can craft your conversation to his or her (Location 2079) - It’s an old cliché that business gets done on the golf course. I’m new to the game, but as far as I can tell, no one ever talks business on a golf course. The thing that golf does well is that it allows males, especially, to bond. (Location 2107) - Men bond with other men through common activities. And for adult men, golf is as close as you can get to a universal activity. After a certain age it’s probably the most common sportlike activity for men. (Location 2108) - If I Were … When you talk about the hypothetical future, use “were” instead of “was.” Don’t say, “If I was to go with you, I would enjoy myself.” Say, “If I were to go with you, I would enjoy myself.” This rule of grammar is a big one. If you get “were”/“was” grammar wrong, it’s a red flag to people who know the difference. (Location 2124) - If the science is accurate, an effective way to ask for money might look something like this: “May I borrow a hundred dollars, because I don’t get paid until next week?” That’s not much of a justification for borrowing money; no real reason is given. The person asking for money hasn’t even said why he needs it. It just feels as if a reason had been offered because of “because.” (Location 2179) - “Would you mind …” tends to be well received. My best guess is that asking a person if he minds is signaling that you have a reasonable request that might be inconvenient. It’s hard to be a jerk and say no to any request that starts with “Would you mind.” The question comes across as honest, while also showing concern for the other person. It’s a powerful combination. (Location 2184) - I’ve found that the most effective way to stop people from trying to persuade me is to say, “I’m not interested.” You should try it. Don’t offer a reason why you aren’t interested. No one can say why a thing holds interest for some and not for others. There’s no argument against a lack of interest. Repeat your claim of disinterest as often as it takes to end the conversation. You might be surprised how effective this method is. I’ve been using it for years. It’s a total conversation killer. (Location 2191) - I Just Wanted to Clarify … Sometimes you hear statements that are so mind-numbingly stupid, evil, or mean that you know a direct frontal assault would only start a fight. People tend to double down when challenged, no matter how wrong they are. A more effective way to approach a dangerous social or business situation is sideways, by asking a question that starts with “I just wanted to clarify …” That approach might look like this: “I just wanted to clarify: Are you saying you’re okay with an 80 percent chance of going to jail, or did I hear your plan wrong?” (Location 2203) - Thank-you notes sent by snail mail are always appreciated and still a must for the bigger occasions. But a well-written e-mail is now socially acceptable for most common situations. No matter how you deliver a thank-you, make sure it includes a little detail of what makes you thankful. Was it the surprise, the thoughtfulness, or how helpful the favor or gift was? Be specific. For example, “Thank you so much for the ride. I was worried all day about how I would get everything done while my car is in the shop. You really saved me.” Compare that with a simple “Thank you for the ride.” Any thank-you is better than none, but you’re missing an opportunity if you do a poor job of it. It’s the sort of thing people remember when they decide whom they want to work with, pick for a team, or invite to a party. It seems like a small thing, but it isn’t. (Location 2229) - I managed people, I spoke in a way that I thought sounded authoritarian and reasonable. In meetings with higher-ups I lowered my tone and spoke with the sort of self-assurance that only the insane come by honestly. I’m reasonably sure that my fake voice, with its low notes and artificial confidence, made me appear more capable than I was, and that wasn’t difficult because I was largely incompetent at every corporate job I held. Despite my obvious lack of ability, nearly every boss I had—and there were many—identified me as a future corporate executive. (Location 2297) - Humor also makes you more creative, at least in the short run.3 I think it has something to do with the fact that humor is a violation of straight-line thinking. Humor temporarily shuts down the commonsense program in your moist robot brain and boots the random idea generator. At least it feels that way to me, figuratively speaking. Perhaps all that is happening is that humor makes one feel energized and relaxed at the same time and that is bound to help creativity. (Location 2433) - I took some practice tests at home and never scored much better than my original seventy-seventh percentile. I decided to put my affirmations to the test. I wanted to visualize a specific result, so I picked the ninety-fourth percentile because I thought that would be high enough to win the bet. I visualized opening the mail and seeing the “94” on my test-result form. On test day I felt I did no better than I had on my practice tests, but I kept up my affirmations on the ninety-fourth percentile and waited for the results in the mail. A few weeks later the results arrived. I opened the letter and looked in the box with my overall score. It said 94. Perhaps (Location 2521) - “sexy.” I had even more luck when Berke Breathed retired his popular comic strip Bloom County and opened up hundreds of spaces in newspapers. Later, Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, retired and opened up even more space. It was unprecedented for cartoonists at the top of their game, and so young, to retire. And the timing coincided with the growing spotlight on Dilbert, making it the most obvious replacement choice. Newspapers snapped it up like candy. (Location 2572) - Incurable health problems often attract quack cures. I tried most of the ones that weren’t dangerous. Drinking a certain brand of cough syrup didn’t work. Acupuncture didn’t work. Mineral supplements didn’t work. Stutter cures didn’t work. Three different approaches to voice therapy didn’t work. The Alexander Technique* didn’t work. Iron supplements didn’t work. Changing my diet didn’t work. (Location 2624) - The next important thing to remember about happiness is that it’s not a mystery of the mind and it’s not magic. Happiness is the natural state for most people whenever they feel healthy, have flexible schedules, and expect the future to be good. (Location 2798) - Recapping the happiness formula: Eat right. Exercise. Get enough sleep. Imagine an incredible future (even if you don’t believe it). (Location 2854) - Work toward a flexible schedule. Do things you can steadily improve at. Help others (if you’ve already helped yourself). Reduce daily decisions to routine. (Location 2858)