Notes: How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big

by S. Adams (the creator of Dilbert)

• Goals vs. Systems. Goals are for losers. Goal is a specific objective. A system is something you do on a regular basis that increases your odds of happiness in the long run. 
• His system: create something that had value and that was easy to reproduce in unlimited quantities. 
• Deciding vs. Wanting: If you want success, figure out the price, then pay it. Once you decide, you take action. 
• Energy metric. All about your energy. 
• Managing attitude. Have a big, world-changing project -- you almost always end up learning something valuable in the process of failing. Smarter to see your big-idea projects as part of a system to improve your energy, contacts, and skills. 
• No matter what reality delivers in the future, my imagined version of the future has great usefulness today. What's real to you is what you imagine and what you feel.
• To find out your extra talent, consider what you were obsessively doing before you were 10 years old. Where there is a tolerance for risk, there is often talent. Childhood obsession and tolerance for risk are only rough guides for talent at best. 
• Quality of a product a poor predictor of success. Customers clamoring for the bad versions of the product before the good versions were even invented, like the Simpsons and cell phones. 
• It's genuinely true that if no one is excited about your art/product/idea in the beginning, they never will be. 
• Success isn't magic; it's generally the product of picking a good system and following it until luck finds you. 
• Success Formula: Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success. 
• Knowledge Formula: The more you know, the more you can know. 
• Math of success: There's usually a pattern, but it might be subtle. 
• Skills every adult should gain a working knowledge: public speaking, psychology, business writing, accounting, design, conversation, overcoming shyness, second language, golf, proper grammar, persuasion, technology, proper voice technique. 
• Public speaking. Dale Carnegie course. Rule one - no would would ever be criticized or corrected. Only positive reinforcement would be allowed. Second Rule - every must speak at each session, but they had to volunteer to go next. 
• Psychology: knowledge is power, but knowledge of psychology  is the purest form of that power. 
• Conversation. Carnegie technique for conversation with strangers: All you do is introduce yourself and ask questions until you find a point of mutual interest. 1. What's your name? 2. Where do you live? 3. Do you have a family? 4. What do you do for a living? 5. Do you have any hobbies/sports? 6. Do you have any travel plans? 
• Keep asking questions and keep looking for something that interests you enough to wade into the topic. 
• Summary of good conversation technique: 1. Ask questions. 2. Don't complain (much). 3. Don't talk about boring experiences (TV shows, meal, dream, etc). 4. Don't dominate the conversation. 5. Don't get stuck on a topic. Keep moving. 6. Planning is useful but it isn't a conversation. 7. Keep the sad stories short, esp medical stories. 
• Basic parts of a good story: 1. Setup - keep it brief. 2. Pattern. 3. Foreshadowing. 4. Characters. 5. Relatability. 6. The Twist.
• Overcoming Shyness: Harness the power of acting interested in other people. Imagine you are acting instead of interacting. Figure out if people are thing people or people people. Thing people like new tech and tools and possessions; people people like things about people doing interesting things. 
• Persuasion. Persuasive words ... Because. Would You Mind ... ; I'm not interested. I don't do that. I have a rule ... ; I just wanted to clarify...; is there anything you can do for me? Thank you. This is just between you and me. 
• Thank you -- pay special attention to the quality of your thanks. No matter how you deliver a thank-you, make sure it includes a little detail of what makes you thankful. Surprise? the thoughtfulness, or how helpful the favor or gift? Be specific. 
• Just between you and me -- Sharing a confidence is a fast-track way to cause people to like and trust you. The trick is to reveal a secret that isn't a dangerous one. 
• Decisiveness. Deliver an image of decisiveness ... others see it as leadership. 
• Insanity. Crazy + confident. When you bring an emotional dimension, people can't talk you out of it. A little bit of irrationality is a powerful thing. 
• Learn Proper Voice Technique. Hum Happy Birthday, then speak in normal voice. When trying to convey false sense of confidence, tell yourself you're acting. Speak in a way you imagine a confident person would speak. 
• Pattern Recognition. On of his systems involves continually looking for patterns in life. 
• Humor. Check out his books, Dilbert Principle, Joy of Work, Dilbert 2.0., and Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain. 
• Affirmations. I, Scott, will become rich. Visualize. I find it helpful to see the world as a slot machine that doesn't ask you to put money in. All it asks is your time, focus, and energy to pull the handle over and over. 
• Attitude always the same: Escape from my cell, free the other inmates, shoot the warden, and burn down the prison. 
• Experts. Experts are right about 98 percent of the time on the easy stuff but only right 50 percent  of the time on anything that is unusually complicated, mysterious, or even new. 
• Association Programming. To change yourself, part of the solution might involve spending more time with the people who represent the change you seek. 
• Happiness. The single biggest trick for manipulating your happiness chemistry is being able to do what you want, when you want. You need to control the order and timing of things to be happy. Step one in your search for happiness is to continually work toward having control of your schedule. Happiness has more to do with where you're heading than where you are. 
• Next element of happiness you need to master is imagination. 
• Happiness is the natural state for most people whenever they feel healthy, have flexible schedules, and expect the future to be good. 
• Primary culprit in your bad moods is a deficit in one of the big five: flexible schedule, imagination, sleep, diet, and exercise. Good moods are highly correlated with exercise, diet, and sleep. 
• Unhappiness caused by too much success ... seek happiness in service to others. 
• Happiness Formula: Eat right. Exercise. Get enough sleep. Imagine an incredible future. Work toward a flexible schedule. Do things you can steadily improve at. Help others. Reduce daily decisions to routine. 
• Diet. I can change my food preferences by thinking of my body as a programmable robot. Food is mood connection. 
• Food is the fuel that makes exercise possible. For both diet and exercise, you want to reduce willpower. 
• First part of the system: break your addiction to simple carbs. Eat as much of the other stuff. 
• Peanuts or mixed nuts to suppress appetite. Avoid food that feels like punishment. If eating a healthy diet feels unpleasant, you're doing it wrong. 
• Fitness. Be active every day. Take willpower out of equation. Daily habit. 
• Motivation to exercise. Never exercise so much that you won't feel like being active the next day. 
• Failure is for people who have goals. 
• Summary: failure is your friend. Raw material of success. Invite it in. Learn from it. And don't let it leave until you pick its pocket. That's a system.