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How to fail at almost everything and still win big book review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vweYn0u4ZDM&feature=share

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How a Systems-Thinking President Can Settle the Climate Science Debate

This idea in today’s Wall Street Journal talks about creating a “Red Team” to dig into the climate science debate and come up with a conclusion for the public. I call that a good system.

Systems are better than goals. A goal, in this case, might be to “Convince the public that climate change is a big problem.” That’s a clear goal, but what if it isn’t the best outcome? That’s where a system (such as forming a Red Team) comes in handy. The system will solve for credibility while informing the public of whatever comes out of the exercise.

You can’t govern better than that. Period.

Keep reading

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We are all just Moist Robots. We respond to commands based on our programming. Program yourself to succeed. 

Where is my Mind. -Ctrl Alt Design

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Be System Oriented and Achieve Great Success.

If you want to be successful in anything, you need a System. This is part 2 in a series based on Scott Adams’ book How to Fail at Almost Anything and Still Win Big. Click here for part 1 where I describe why Goals are for Losers and Systems are for Winners.

Here are 10 Tips to be a Winner

1. Apply a systems mindset instead of a goal mindset to everything you want to accomplish. For example: Losing twenty pounds is a goal, but eating right is a system. Running a marathon in under four hours is a goal, but exercising/running daily is a system. In business, making a million dollars is a goal, but being a serial entrepreneur (creating businesses over and over until one hits big) is a system. There are endless areas to apply a systems mindset. Many of my future blog posts and videos will be more detailed about specific systems anyone can follow for these things, but I’ll quickly go over some ideas:

Relationships - 1. Be healthy and fit - workout regularly 2. Be interesting - take up some hobbies, travel 3.  Learn to flirt - Talk to lots of girls or guys and figure out what works and what doesn’t. 4. Remember your goal is not to get a date or make the first person you talk to fall in love with you (Goals are for Losers). 5. Make it a systematic way of finding someone to spend time with, so rejection isn’t a big deal.

Exercise and Health - Do something active every single day - schedule it. I do push ups and pulls first thing in the morning, and run or do some quick Interval Training right when I get off work. Check out the 1 Minute Workout. For eating healthy get a calorie app or follow a simple meal plan. Atkins is a popular eating system that does work wonders for individuals or are very over-weight.

Online Businesses (YouTube, Podcasts, Mobile apps, Social Media) - Systematically create niche content and put it out there. That’s it. Don’t worry if it sucks at first and gets zero views. Keep at it, and you will get better and better and eventually something will Click.

Real estate investing - Buy property that needs work, fix it up, then rent it out or flip it and repeat. I recommend reading some books on the topic first, and be wary of seminars and investment schemes.

Stock investing - The simplest systems are long term and involve buying and holding a portfolio of solid fundamentally sound stocks for a number of years. "Value investing," is the hallmark of Warren Buffett. Another stock investing system is William O’Neil’s CANSLIM from best selling book How to Make Money in Stocks.

Career advancement - Scott gives an example of a gentleman he met on a flight who switched jobs systematically learning new things and advancing at each stop until he became CEO.

Money saving and management -  The envelope system -  Read Dave Ramsey’s, Total Money Makeover. The basic idea is keep budgeted cash in separate envelopes for different categories of your budget. It allows you to see exactly how much money you have left in a given category by the cash that remains on hand.  

2. Just google it.  We live in an age where you can instantly find a System for anything.  

3. Copy others. Tony Robbins said,

”If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you'll achieve the same results.”

There’s no shame in copying what an already successful person did.   Two of the best channels for personal development, Fight Mediocrity and Practical Psychology inspired this channel.

4. K.I.S.S.  no not the band... Keep It Simple Stupid. Simple Systems are best. You can optimize later after some success, but Keep It Simple Stupid  is the clearest route to succeed. Optimizing might allow you to complete several urgent tasks on the way to another but optimizing is often also complicating which makes things exhausting and stress inducing. Complicated systems also have more opportunities for bugs or errors. In a computer program a bug can either create unwanted results, or completely crash the system. Complicated programs have more bugs and take longer to fix if a system crashes. Simple programs hardly if ever crash and if there is an error, it is easy to find and fix.

Simplification frees up energy, making everything else you do a little bit easier. You are more likely to do something that is simple, and more likely to put off or never do something that is complicated.

5. "Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success." Scott Adams discusses the idea of a "Talent Stack" often is his blog. You don’t have to master everything to get a benefit, often a working knowledge by reading a book, or watching a YouTube video is all you need.

Here are some skills that apply to everyone. How to Fail... goes into more detail for each one, so I’ll just mention them here.

Public speaking

Proper voice technique

Psychology

Persuasion

Business writing

Accounting

Conversation

A Second language

Golf

Technology

Design

If you become merely good in most of these areas, there’s a good chance you will be successful.

6.  "The More You Know, the More You Can Know". That is Scott Adams’ Knowledge Formula. The more concepts you understand, the easier it is to learn new ones.  Think of learning as a system in which you continually expose yourself to new topics, primarily the ones you find interesting.

7. Don’t confuse the benefits of persistence with the actual odds of succeeding. The Dilbert Guy says,

The minimum requirement of a system is that a reasonable person expects it to work more often than not. Buying lottery tickets no matter how regularly you do it is not a system.

The odds of hitting the jackpot are too high to be worth it.   Odds and luck, however, are important ideas that we’ll discuss another time.  

8. Passion Is (mostly) Bullshit. We hear all the time that Passion in what you do is key to succeed. But

"It’s easy to be passionate about things that are working out. That distorts our impression of the importance of passion. Passion fades as a venture you were initially passionate about Fails."

But the excitement and passion increase for the ventures that succeed. We also enjoy things we’re good at. And tend NOT to enjoy the things we suck at. For instance, Now that I am fairly good at solving the Rubik’s cube I really enjoy doing it. I mix it up and resolve it a couple times a day now. People who can’t solve one often say I hate those things.

"A great strategy for success in life is to become good at something, anything, and let that feeling propel you to new and better victories."

Success can be habit-forming.  Cal Newport's best selling book So Good They Can't Ignore You, also maintains that passion is overrated.

9. Energy is more important than passion

Personal energy is anything that gives you a positive lift, either mentally or physically.

Our personal supply of energy is limited so we need to manage that energy carefully. Being healthy and fit and happy is key to having energy. Success takes energy. Energy to overcome obstacles, energy to continue trying when we fail. Without being healthy and fit it’s nearly impossible to get the positive mental and physical lifts we need to succeed. That makes Good health a baseline requirement for success.

The concept of Qi (ch’i) found throughout Asian cultures translates as "material energy", "life force", or "energy flow". It is the central underlying principle in traditional Chinese medicine and martial arts. This is the symbol for Qi

氣

 Fun fact - I got that tattooed on my arm when I was 19. Qi is said to permeate everything and links our surroundings together. It is the flow of energy around and through the body, forming a cohesive and functioning unit. Qi is necessary to activity and it can be controlled by a well-integrated willpower. When properly nurtured, Qi is capable of extending beyond the human body to reach throughout the universe. When it accumulates there is life. When it dissipates there is death... It can be strengthened through meditation, practicing martial arts, yoga, exercise and eating right. Acupuncture is used to treat many ailments, its purpose is to fix the flow of Qi through the body.  I’m not super spiritual but the idea of an energy force that I control is useful. Obviously Qi isn’t a scientific concept and most medical professionals will tell you that chinese medicine and acupuncture are bullshit. Some people might think it’s stupid, and that’s ok. None of that matters when it comes to your personal energy. If an idea works to help you feel more energetic, gives you a positive lift, either mentally or physically, and helps you be successful, than why not go with it. Some people get energy from listening to music or singing, some from a massage, some people get energy from church or meditation. Whatever it is you get energy from who am I to judge? Except Drugs. Drugs are Bad Kids. Don’t Do Drugs. Seriously.

10. A flawed system is ok as long as you’re moving in the right direction. Nobody starts out with a perfect plan or system. If the system doesn’t seem to be moving you in the right direction, change one part of the system. If you change multiple parts at once you won’t know which worked or which caused the catastrophic failure. I realize the “right direction” is vague and you won’t always know which direction you are headed and whether to stay the course or not. Scott Adams says

“One predictor for success is that customers clamor for the bad versions of a product before the good versions are even invented. Consider the iPhone. The first version was a mess, yet it was greeted with an almost feverish enthusiasm. That enthusiasm, and the enormous sales that followed, funded improvements until the product became superb. The smartest way to discern your best path to success is to try lots of different things. For entrepreneurial ventures it might mean quickly bailing out if things don’t come together quickly.”

For some endeavors I think the best path comes down to gut feeling and your tolerance for risk. For other endeavors, there is no wrong direction or path as long as you’re moving.  

If you enjoyed this or got a little bit of value out of it, it would be awesome if you hit that Like button.

And if you want to see more please subscribe. In the next one... The next Key to Succeed - Failure is actually a good thing.

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You don’t learn ANY lessons if you don’t try ANY thing. Just start doing things. 

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I love this illustration of goals vs systems. My recent blog post Think Like a Billionaire discusses Scott Adams’ idea of systems thinking in depth.

The Systems President

Was President Trump’s first attempt at getting a healthcare bill a failure?

Your answer to that question probably depends on whether you are a goals-thinker or a systems-thinker.

If you see the world in terms of goals, you would say the healthcare bill did not get enough votes on the first try, and therefore it is clearly a Trump/Ryan failure. 

But if you see the world in terms of systems, things look a lot better. I talk about the advantages of systems over goals in my book. The quick summary is that a system is something you do on a regular basis that improves your odds of success in a non-specific way. Systems-thinkers choose paths that allow them to come out ahead in the long run even if they appear to be “failing” along the way.

Keep reading

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Never Quit. Never Fail.

Everything you’ve failed at, you only failed when you quit.

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How To Think Like A Billionaire

Billionaires never think... Why are some people rich and successful while others work hard but struggle just to get by? Why does it seem so easy for other people to get laid? How did some of these jokers on YouTube get so big? Why can’t I ever keep my new year’s resolutions of getting fit and being healthy? Or, how do people afford nice cars or a nice house, let alone Lamborghini's and a baller mansion?

That’s how losers think.

Be it in Money, Sports, Fitness, School, or Sex…we all want to succeed in something. It’d be nice to be filthy rich, right? So why haven’t you achieved your dreams? Maybe you never got motivated, or you’ve given it a shot but quickly got discouraged and flamed out.

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It’s not just you… most people don’t KNOW THE WAY to achieve success. They have no idea how to get what they want in life.

But this guy does.

Scott Adams is the creator of the comic strip Dilbert, and author of How to Fail at Almost Anything and Still Win Big. Packed with ideas, tips, and strategies for success, How to Fail… is an easy, fast, and entertaining read. In it Adams details his many failures and how he went from hapless office worker to creating one of the most popular and widely read comic strips ever. Along the way Adams teaches the thought processes and mindset that propelled him to success… the secrets to why successful people win and unsuccessful people lose…

So, why should we listen to a fucking cartoonist for advice? Well, for starters he’s rich from his comic and books. If that’s not enough he is also quite insightful. In his popular blog, he brilliantly writes about many topics, and predicted that Donald Trump would be president of the United States before anyone else. And at 60 years old his girlfriend is Instagram star Kristina Basham.

Get it on Amazon:

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life

Get FREE Audio Book Here!

Scott is also a trained hypnotist and master persuader, so there’s a chance just reading the book will mind fuck you into being rich or… getting hot chics. So, why not read it? And check out Scott’s blog here http://blog.dilbert.com/

We’ll get to Scott’s life changing ideas in a minute, but one of the biggest problems most of us have with success is How. To. Start. The greatest journey begins with a single step, right?… unfortunately, the first step is always the hardest.

Key #1

The 1st key to success in anything is this:

Do not wait until you are confident or feel you are qualified to get started. Because, you will never feel confident enough, and you will never be qualified enough. All you need is a little courage. Basically, just don’t be a bitch.

Think about when you were first learning to ride a bike (without training wheels). No doubt you weren’t very confident and you weren't qualified (in a sense) to ride it since you’ve never done it before. How did you get started? Some help and encouragement from someone, but also I guarantee it took some courage. Here’s an interesting question...Did you actually think to yourself, my goal is to ride this bike? Did you set goals when you were 4 or 5 years old. I’m pretty sure I didn’t. I thought, well, that kid can do it and it looks fun, I’m gonna do it too even though i’m a little scared….Billionaire Richard Branson says, 

“Those who achieve great things are the ones willing to be scared but not scared off.”

Key #2

The next key to success. The keys to your Lambo! The reason you’re not rich:

Scott Adams says — Goals... Are for Losers

That sounds ridiculous at first. I was always told to create S.M.A.R.T. goals to achieve them (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound). We always hear, the most successful people in the world set lofty goals. “Tom Brady sets a goal every year to win the Super Bowl and he’s won 5! The CEO of blah blah blah’s life goal was to become a CEO. Even self help guru Tony Robbins says,

“Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.”

Ok, Goals aren’t bad per se, but I agree with Scott Adams that they are a terrible way to think about success.

When you got on that bike did you pick your feet up and expect it to move? No. But that’s how most goal oriented people live life. They set a goal and hope or wish to achieve it. They hope for things to happen and get depressed when they don’t. Goal-thinkers are fighting feelings of discouragement when things aren’t working out.

Scott Adams explains it like this,

”if your goal is to lose ten pounds, you will spend every moment until you reach that goal—if you reach it at all—feeling as if you were short of your goal (he calls that feeling pre-success failure). Goal-oriented people exist in a state of nearly continuous failure that they hope will only be temporary. That feeling wears on you and in time it becomes heavy and uncomfortable."

In other words… Goals make you feel like shit.

"If you actually achieve your goal, you celebrate and feel terrific for a time, but only until you realize you lost the one thing that gave you purpose and direction. Then what do you do? Set a new goal and re-enter the cycle of pre-success failure?"

So, if you achieve your goal, you lose your purpose. And on the way to that goal, you’re constantly feeling like a loser because you’re not there yet. If you don’t achieve your goal, you are a loser, both in your mind and the mind of others.

“Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous pre-success failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out.”

So you are a damn loser whether you achieve the goal or not.

How many times did that bike fall over when you first attempted to ride it as a kid? I know I crashed a lot, but I don’t think it made me feel like a failure? Why was that? I’d just get back on and try again. Goal-thinkers feel like failures and then usually give up when they crash and can’t go anywhere.

So if goals are for losers, what’s the alternative? What’s the SECRET?

Scott Adams uses Olympic Athletes as an example in How to fail… But since I brought it up earlier, Let’s use Tom Brady.

Whether you like him or not the guy’s been to 7 superbowls, most ever, and won 5, again most ever. He also has or will have a slew of other records by the time he retires including most wins ever by a QB. And he’s uber rich and has a super model wife. I’m not a Tom Brady or a Patriots fan myself, I just have to recognize the fact that he’s very successful. 

All NFL Quarterbacks set a goal to win the Superbowl every year. But what separates the “Elites” specifically Brady from every other NFL QB? We can argue over things like athletic talent, his team, his coach, his leadership, his IQ, or even his luck, all of which I don’t think are better than any others.

Key #3

The Keys to your Balla’ Mansion - The SECRET to Success - A SYSTEM is The Way

What I think separates Tom “Golden Boy” Brady from most other QBs is the idea of Systems. He is systematic in everything he does from eating to practice. He follows a repeated regimen of workouts, preparation, game film study, and working on his game “Every Single Day - No Matter What” that makes him the G.O.A.T. On top of that Golden Boy is in a Systems Driven organization with a head coach that is also very systems driven. At the core of the New England Patriots system, is the simple mantra of “Just Do Your Job”.  

Another famous Systems thinker from sports is  Major League Baseball executive Theo Epstein.  Using a systems driven, data analytics approach (often referred to as moneyball or sabermetrics) to building baseball team rosters, he ended the 2 longest championship droughts in sports history. 1st In Boston, where he was the youngest general manager ever at 28 years old, he ended an 86 year drought.  Then in Chicago where the Cubs had not won a World Series since 1908. After 5 years of running his system in Chicago, the Cubs won the world series in 2016. 108 years between world series championships! He literally used systems-thinking to break 2 curses! Curse of the Bambino in Boston and Curse of the Billy Goat in Chicago.

Billionaire Mindset

Think for a moment about the most successful individuals on the planet. Self-made billionaires like Bill Gates, Richard Branson, and Elon Musk.

They didn’t have experience when they started, and they had many set backs and failures, but knew they would figure it out as they went along. They are all Systems Thinkers. They repeatedly try business ventures and keep doing what works while discarding or fixing what doesn’t. That way of thinking is what separates systems from goals. Scott Adams defines a System as

"something you do on a regular basis with a reasonable expectation that doing so will get you to a better place in your life."

For the majority of people, Goals, as Scott says,

“are a reach-it-and-be-done situation...."

whereas systems,

"are ongoing repeatable strategies. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do.”

Systems thinkers feel good every time they apply their system because the end goal isn’t a big deal. That’s an important point. The losers lose so often because they place too much emphasis and focus on a specific end goal or result. Systems people are constantly learning.  Each time they apply a system the better they get at whatever it is they’re doing. In a sense they can only win, they can’t lose.

"A good system is something you do every day that leads you to better outcomes, not specific objectives."

A good system also breaks seemingly impossible, or complicated tasks into smaller, manageable, chunks or steps. Take for example a Rubik’s Cube.

I have made it a “goal” many times to solve the Rubik’s Cube. I would pick it up, twist it around for awhile, and eventually get frustrated and discouraged and give up. It felt impossible to solve. Many people think it takes a genius mind to figure out. But that is a GOAL mindset. I finally stopped thinking that way.

I took a systems approach and found the CFOP method(Cross, First 2 Layers, Orient Last Layer, and Permute Last Layer). It sounds complicated but it’s not. Following CFOP it was like it solved itself! Soon I was able to solve the cube in about 120 seconds. Master speedcubers can solve it in less than 10 seconds. The world record is less than 5 seconds! Cool story bro. The point is, anyone can solve impossible problems by changing their mindset. Don’t focus on the end result — instead focus on using a repeatable strategy — a system.

When you learned to ride a bike, you systematically got on it, pedaled, crashed and repeated until something “clicked”. Each time you crash you are still succeeding in a sense because you learn something and apply it. When you ride a bike successfully you  systematically pedal, and maintain a center of gravity, to keep the bike upright and moving. But if you screw up and stick your foot in the front tire and smash your face on the pavement, it’s ok, because you have a system. And you figured out that putting your foot in the front tire does not work with that system. Get back on the bike and do what works, don’t do what makes you crash.

Simple Systems

So… you want to be rich? Don’t wish to be rich or make it a mere goal. Create or do something that is easily, cheaply, or passively reproducible and that provides something of value to the world. Make increasing amounts of money reproducing it until you are rich. Want to get laid? Don’t set a goal to make one particular person your boyfriend or girlfriend, systematically talk to and ask out lots of people — who cares if you get rejected. You will learn what works and what doesn’t and build confidence. Want to be fit and healthy? Don’t set a goal to lose 10, 20, or whatever pounds. Pick an eating healthy system and exercise systematically at the same time every single day no matter what. Want that YouTube money? Don’t set out to make a viral one shot video. Make lot’s of videos and get better and better until something clicks with you and the audience. The more you put out there, the more chances that something will catch fire.

These illustrations may seem overly simplistic, but the way of looking at life through a systems “lens” is useful and very powerful. Simplicity is also another key to success Scott Adams talks about in How to fail. The simple illustrations I give, of the bike and the Rubik’s cube and the simple systems examples, are designed to subconsciously change your brain to start looking at EVERYTHING with a systems mindset — to start THINKING like a billionaire.

Next time we’ll get more practical. We'll talk about tips, tricks and more details on being Systems Driven. If you like this idea of having a Systems Mindset, why not make subscribing part of your life system. I’ll be posting regularly about applying that mindset to just about everything.  And You will soon ditch your POS bike for that Lambo.

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