21A – Reading Reflection No. 2

Bringing In A Second Opinion

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, Scott Adams

1) The book I chose to read by Scott Adams had many general themes that eventually taught why each step of the process to being successful is important. One of main arguments within the book was how to prioritize your life responsibilities in context of one another. What this means is that, although you might not think so, your investments, job, house and health all should be prioritized and looked after before things such as your friends, family, community and world. Scott Adams reasoning behind this is that you have to make sure that your allowing yourself to not be a burden on others and not have them have to look after you. In simple terms, look after yourself before anyone else. Another main part of Adam's argument is that you have maximize your personal energy in order to make it easier on yourself to help manage your priorities. This might mean that, although you dread going to your job, pick up a 'side grind' that will raise your energy and keep you motivated to learn and grow within your personal system.  Finally, the last and most controversial step of the process to success is to stop setting goals for yourself, and instead work within a system. Adam claims that goals are for 'losers' and are a 'temporary high', while a system teaches you organization and simple business skills that will lead to wanting to learn move with your time. 

2) This book written by Scott Adams, in my opinion, helps connect what I'm learning in ENT 3003 as each step (or assignment for this class) in the process of thinking and acting like an entrepreneur teaches you a new skill. Every new skill you learn, doubles your chances of being successful and ultimately each assignment required teaches us something new about thinking like a business person. It's almost like most people teaching their route to success, who are entrepreneurs, coincidentally incorporate humor to express how simple some of the things your learning. Professor Pryor and Scott Adams both repeatedly explain, in a humorous fashion, that some of the greatest secrets to reaching success are some of the simplest things your taught in life, and this book does an excellent job in connecting why each step prepares you more to being successful. 

3) If I had to design an exercise for this class around the theme of the Scott Adam's book, I would ask my students to create a new blog post asking them to explain why they think they're completing each assignment up to now and to reflect on how each step of the process was a learning moment that helped build up where they are today. I would then ask the students to read either the whole book or a few excerpts that would help bring everything together from Scott Adam's point of view. Afterwards, I would ask the students to then go back and reread what they wrote, and additionally explain what moments put the pieces together from Adam's text and if they now understand why each assignment builds on the next.

4) This book was full of surprises and 'aha' moments as Adams simply cannot engrave in your head anymore that most of the skills that require you to be successful are so simple. I never expected that reading this book would teach me why the process of thinking like an entrepreneur is so important and how to keep interest in doing something, repeatedly, for so long. I was quickly proven wrong by a man famously known for his current event comics that relay information in very simple terms. By understand why, it really helped me piece together the reasons some people look at other successful businessmen as greedy or selfish, but in reality are simply just expressing each step of the process they followed to being where they are today.