Reading Reflection No. 3

I read the book How to Fail at Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life by Scott Adams. Scott Adams details his life story and how a series of failures and mistakes somehow led him to his successful career as a cartoonist and writer. The book was written in a comical manner to help better relate to someone whose career revolves around comedy and making people laugh through text and illustrations. It is evident from his many unfortunate circumstances like having to start off as boring bank teller job then finally breaking into your desired career to find that you have lost your voice and soon the loss of his drawing hand to spasmodic dysphonia. He was able to recover, but these setbacks helped build him to the person he is today.


Think this book connects with this Entrepreneurship class because it shows us that failure is inevitable, but the way to overcome failure is how you respond to it. Everyone will face some sort of failure like Scott Adams, but if we pick ourselves back up and keep persevering we can reach our goals. If I had to create and exercise for this class from this book I would have the students write about a time they felt failure and how they felt right after the event. Then I would ask them to describe how this failure could have a positive spin and how they have grown from the experience. My biggest “aha” moment is when Scott Adams said that “goals are for losers”. This puzzled me because I have been taught my entire life to set goals and reach for them. To build plans around my goals, and Adams is directly telling me and other readers that you should not make goals. After reading this book I had some time to reflect and think on what he wrote. I started for form where he got this idea. He didn’t really have a plan for anything and he ended up as a successful cartoonist and he is extremely happy. Goal setting was not for him and it may not be for other people as well, just not me. I really enjoyed reading Scott Adams book and reading about his rise to success. This book was funny and full of surprises and I will probably read it again soon.