21A – Reading Reflection No. 2

I did my second reading reflection on the book "How To Fail At Almost Everything And Still Win Big" by Scott Adams.

This book was generally about how one should first learn to take care of themselves, and then take loss after loss, until they eventually end up winning big. He explains how important it is for a self imposed routine of physical exercise, eating healthy (enough,) and good sleep in order to be successful. Once you get into a system of taking care of your own body, then it becomes easier to increase your potential.

After you physical health is in balance, he went over three basic lessons that explained how he got to be the successful cartoonist he is today: 1. Build your life around systems rather than goals, 2. Look into jobs/careers that you would be most comfortable taking risks in, in order to find the best one, and 3. Use space and time to manage your energy.


This book really connected with me on the health portion of it, as well as steps 1 and 2. I really think everything becomes clearer once you have a good routine in place, full of exercise and sleep. Then with systems, he explains how systems give you room to not lose hope, as goals have an unknown end date that can last seemingly forever and they can be too specific, which can lead to disappointment. Systems allow for you to develop a way of doing things in order to increase your chances of making it big passively over time, rather than waiting day after day for a specific goal that you might not reach. With systems, you can reach potential big wins you'd have never thought of just by using goals.

An exercise I would design for this class would be to as the students to assign themselves a better weekly routine with 7+ hours of sleep, healthier eating, and some moderate exercise a few times a week, and then have them make a blog post about their before and after experience.

What I learned that differed from my expectations the most was how he explained that it didn't matter if you went to bed early and woke up early. Some people wake up early and get productive in the beginning of the day, but other people are better at really getting into gear a bit later in the day. Whatever works best for you, is what you should pursue.