WE MAY sneer at the hordes of ?chicken soup for the soul? books, which, incidentally, are bestsellers, but who doesn?t want to read a story about someone who admits that he failed at almost everything, but still became hugely successful and is willing to share it? In How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, Scott Adams explains how he turned his many failures into one huge success?creating the popular comic strip, Dilbert, about an office-bound engineer who works for a difficult boss. And though he writes halfway into the book that ?nothing in this book should be seen as advice?, he shares some pretty interesting insights on everything, from career choices, behavioural patterns, exercise
routines, happiness quotient to diet issues.
He lists some of his spectacular failures, including computer games, meditation guide, videos on Internet in the pre-YouTube days, a folder for floppy discs and job interviews gone wrong, among others. But he points out that he learnt lessons from each and tucked them away for use in future. For example, he was interviewing for a sales job with Xerox and he told the recruiter he had no experience, but loved to argue. The failure, he writes, taught him to look for opportunities in which he had some natural advantage. ?When I later decided to try cartooning, it was because I knew there weren?t many people in the world who could draw funny pictures and also write in a witty fashion.? The Dilbert strips he uses in this book are delightful.
To put it bluntly, he writes goals are for losers, people who use systems do better. ?A system is something you do on a regular basis that increases your odds of happiness in the long run. If you do something every day, it?s a system. If you?re waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it?s a goal,? says Adams. His ?system? began when he was six years old and became hooked to Charles Schultz?s Peanuts cartoon. He practised and practised, he writes in that self-deprecating manner he has made his own, ?I never became good? I didn?t give up though.?
As for the luck factor, Adams writes that people who seem to have good luck are often the people who have a system that allows luck to find them. ?And always remember that failure is your friend. It is the raw material of success. Invite it in. Learn from it. And don?t let it leave until you pick its pocket?, is his parting shot.
Sudipta Datta is a freelancer