By: Scott Adams
1) What was the general theme or argument of the book?
Scott has made a lot of great points in his book and he’s given the readers his formula to success, but he doesn’t want everyone to blindly follow it. As he explained in the book, its important to examine the ways of people who have become successful and try to learn some of their tricks and strategies that could work for you. Success doesn’t come easily to everyone and it takes time and effort. But before we get to that stage its important to look after yourself first by eating healthy, exercising and staying positive, then look after your economics and then the world. The next important thing he talks about is not setting goals but instead establishing a proper system to work towards achieving that success. The problem with goals is that our vision becomes focused and limited to that one single thing and we aren’t able to see other opportunities. When we think about establishing a system he tells us to prioritize things that we should get right in order for those to thrive. A lot of us believe that passion leads us to pursue things and that’s what makes us successful. But Scott believes that passionate people will take big risks for goals that may have no outcome or return which could result in failure instead of success. According to him, we feel passion when things work out well for us. But a combination of mediocre skills, new learning experiences, optimization are all what makes us more valuable.
2) How did the book, in your opinion, connect with and enhance what you are learning in ENT 3003?
In this class, one thing I have learnt is pursuing opportunities that are important for us and tasks that we are skilled at or at least have the knowledge of how to go about that particular task. In class, even though we are focused on establishing a goal or a plan for a single startup ideas, Scott encourages us to have multiple startup ides because if one idea fails, you still have other ideas to fall back on. Most importantly failure isn’t a bad thing. It becomes bad when we fail and decide to give up on everything, but Scotts story and success is living proof that failures doesn’t mean the end of ones career instead, it’s a main reason behind ones success.
3) If you had to design an exercise for this class, based on the book you read, what would that exercise involve?
My exercise would first involve students in looking after themselves by eating healthy, exercising, staying fit and positive. With the right attitude, its easier to deal with failures. I would definitely assign this book to all students and ask them to reflect on some of their recent failures, what impact did that have o them, how did they overcome it and what did they learn from it. Also instead of asking students to focus on one startup idea I would give them the chance of changing their idea because this way they are more aware of their surrounding and opportunities around them.
4) What was your biggest surprise or 'aha' moment when reading the book? In other words, what did you learn that differed most from your expectations?
The biggest aha moment for me was not have a goal-oriented approach, but instead having a more systematic approach to sort “truth from rubbish” as Scott would out it. Instead of going after things youre good at, its important to try out new experiences. Scott Adams was a lot of thing before he decided to be a cartoonist. To ensure you are happy, you need to learn how to manage and control your schedule.
Hi Maha,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your review of the book, How to Almost Fail at Everything and Still Win Big. Your review was well thought out and truly shows that you picked up some important knowledge from the assigned reading. What I particularly liked about your review of the novel was how you tied it to what we are learning in this class.