27A – Reading Reflection No. 3

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

1) The general theme of this book I would say is that of creating alternative ways to think about solving a problem or dealing with a dilemma. Adams described his process by likening it to creating a 'system' around the problem, rather than creating a 'goal' to complete. His reasoning was that to accomplish a goal, all that was necessary was the end result. For a system to work however, it must be able to perform well and efficiently. If you consider how you look at your work, much of it is in a goal-oriented mindset. With a system-oriented mindset, you consider what will work best rather than what get its done. 2) I think this book has helped enhance my learning in this class significantly. When I look at a lot of our assignments, it would have been beneficial to have read and learned about the concepts and methods that are taught in this book. 3) I think one exercise that I would try to create for this class to do, based on this book, is creating a more efficient method to finish a task. It could be something like operating a cash register, or even improving how a restaurant operates. 4) The biggest surprise I had reading this book is the importance of taking risks. Many influential, wealthy, and successful individuals today are where they are because of the risks that they had undertaken to achieve their success. This taught me that failures are not the end result, the lack of improvement and learning is.