Book Notes: How to Fail at Almost Everything by Scott Adams

How to fail by Scott AdamsI’ve written about Scott Adams before [1, 2].

He just seems like an awesome guy: funny, opinionated, someone who succeeded through hard work and cleverness and a determination to live on his own terms.

In particular I like his recommendation to build systems [3] instead of chasing goals, and I couldn’t agree more when he says “passion is bullshit”.

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How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big [Kindle]

If you read nothing else:

Recapping the happiness formula: Eat right. Exercise. Get enough sleep. Imagine an incredible future (even if you don’t believe it). Work toward a flexible schedule. Do things you can steadily improve at. Help others (if you’ve already helped yourself). Reduce daily decisions to routine.

(all of the below are quotes)

On life: Always be improving

  • There’s one step you will always do first if it’s available to you: You’ll ask a smart friend how he or she tackled the same problem. A smart friend can save you loads of time and effort.
  • It’s a good idea to make psychology your lifelong study.
  • If your gut feeling (intuition) disagrees with the experts, take that seriously. You might be experiencing some pattern recognition that you can’t yet verbalize.
  • The directional nature of happiness is one reason it’s a good idea to have a sport or hobby that leaves you plenty of room to improve every year. Tennis and golf are two perfect examples.

On career: What were you obsessively doing at ten years old?

  • I’ve been involved in several dozen business ventures over the course of my life, and each one made me excited at the start. You might even call it passion. The ones that didn’t work out—and that would be most of them—slowly drained my passion as they failed.
  • I believe the way he explained it is that your job is not your job; your job is to find a better job. This was my first exposure to the idea that one should have a system instead of a goal.
  • If you want success, figure out the price, then pay it. (one of my favorite quotes!)
  • In my career I’ve always felt that my knack for simplicity was a sort of superpower. For example, when I draw Dilbert I include little or no background art in most panels, and when I do, it’s usually simple.
  • My cartooning skills improved dramatically within a week of United Media’s offering to syndicate Dilbert. The simple knowledge that I had become an official professional cartoonist had a profound effect on unlocking whatever talent I had.
  • One helpful rule of thumb for knowing where you might have a little extra talent is to consider what you were obsessively doing before you were ten years old.
  • There have been times I stuck with bad ideas for far too long out of a misguided sense that persistence is a virtue. The pattern I noticed was this: Things that will someday work out well start out well. Things that will never work start out bad and stay that way.
  • The Success Formula: Every Skill You Acquire Doubles Your Odds of Success

On health: Do stuff that gives you energy

  • The main reason I blog is because it energizes me. I could rationalize my blogging by telling you it increases traffic on Dilbert.com by 10 percent or that it keeps my mind sharp or that I think the world is a better place when there are more ideas in it. But the main truth is that blogging charges me up. It gets me going. I don’t need another reason.
  • Energy is good. Passion is bullshit.
  • Tidiness is a personal preference, but it also has an impact on your energy. Every second you look at a messy room and think about fixing it is a distraction from your more important thoughts.
  • When you see a successful person who lacks a college education, you’re usually looking at someone with an unusual lack of fear. The next pattern I’ve noticed is exercise. Good health is a baseline requirement for success.
  • The main thing I learned is that nutrition presents itself as science but is perhaps 60 percent bullshit, guessing, bad assumptions, and marketing.

On relationships: Smile!

  • Research shows that loneliness damages the body in much the same way as aging.
  • As a bonus, smiling makes you more attractive to others. When you’re more attractive, people respond to you with more respect and consideration, more smiles, and sometimes even lust.
  • A lie that makes a voter feel good is more effective than a hundred rational arguments.
  • It’s a good idea to always have a backlog of stories you can pull out at a moment’s notice. And you’ll want to continually update your internal story database with new material.
  • Your story isn’t a story unless something unexpected or unusual happens. That’s the plot twist. If you don’t have a twist, it’s not a story. It’s just a regurgitation of your day.
  • The reality is that everyone is a basket case on the inside. Some people just hide it better. Find me a normal person and I’ll show you someone you don’t know that well.
  • Another good persuasion sentence is “I don’t do that.” It’s not a reason and barely tries to be. But it sounds like a hard-and-fast rule.
  • Crazy + confident probably kills more people than any other combination of personality traits, but when it works just right, it’s a recipe for extraordinary persuasion. Cults are a good example of insanity being viewed as leadership.
  • Studies show a commanding voice is highly correlated with success. Other studies suggest that both men and women with attractive voices find partners more quickly than those with less attractive voices.
  • For in-person humor, quality isn’t as important as you might think. Your attitude and effort count for a lot.

“Fundamentalism is the philosophy of the powerless, the conquered, the displaced and the dispossessed”

The artist and the fundamentalist arise from societies at differing stages of development. The artist is the advanced model. His culture possesses affluence, stability, enough excess of resource to permit the luxury of self-examination. The artist is grounded in freedom. He is not afraid of it. He is lucky. He was born in the right place. He has a core of self-confidence, of hope for the future. He believes in progress and evolution. His faith is that humankind is advancing, however haltingly and imperfectly, toward a better world. The fundamentalist entertains no such notion. In his view, humanity has fallen from a higher state. The truth is not out there awaiting revelation; it has already been revealed. The word of God has been spoken and recorded by His prophet, be he Jesus, Muhammad, or Karl Marx. Fundamentalism is the philosophy of the powerless, the conquered, the displaced and the dispossessed. Its spawning ground is the wreckage of political and military defeat, as Hebrew fundamentalism arose during the Babylonian captivity, as white Christian fundamentalism appeared in the American South during Reconstruction, as the notion of the Master Race evolved in Germany following World War I. In such desperate times, the vanquished race would perish without a doctrine that restored hope and pride. Islamic fundamentalism ascends from the same landscape of despair and possesses the same tremendous and potent appeal. – Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

This resonated with me, especially when reading about current events: the Paris attacks, school shootings, the ideas in Mass Movements, and Paulo Coelho’s quote:

Fanaticism is the only way to put an end to the doubts that constantly trouble the human soul – Paulo Coehlo

By page ten of The War of Art, I knew it was a book I’d re-read, along with books like “What Technology Wants” and “So Good They Can’t Ignore You” (here’s more).

TED talk notes: William Li on how to starve cancer, Marcel Dicke on why we should eat insects

Every week, I share notes from some of my favorite TED talks. Here’s the complete list (pardon the load time, it’s just a continuous, single page).

William Li: Can we eat to starve cancer?

  • angiogenesis is the creation or reduction of blood vessels
  • it occurs for many diseases, e.g., cancer; also injury, pregnancy (uterus and placenta)
  • otherwise, blood vessels are largely fixed from early in life
  • once angiogenesis happens, cancer is much harder to treat (the tipping point)
  • treat cancer by cutting off its blood supply, “anti-angiogenic therapy”
  • avastin is one example
  • your diet is 30-35% of the environmental causes of cancer (5-10% is genes)
  • what foods are naturally anti-angiogenic?
    • red grapes (resveratrol)
    • strawberries
    • green tea
    • men who consumed cooked tomatoes 2x/week, lower incidences of prostate cancer, cause: anti-angiogenesis
  • anti-angiogenesis may also have applications for obesity

* * * * *

Marcel Dicke: Why not eat insects?

  • 1/3 of fruit we eat is the result of insect pollination of plants
  • insects represent more biomass than humans
  • every processed food contains insects — tomato soup, peanut butter, chocolate
  • there are allowed FDA limits for insect material in foods
  • current meat supply has many problems:
    • animals cause diseases, e.g., pigs
  • insects are more efficient source of food — 10kg of feed produces 1kg of meat OR 9kg of insects
  • insects create less waste (e.g., manure for meat)
  • insects are more nutritious (me: need to research)
  • 70% of all agricultural land used for livestock
  • 80% of world already eats insects, 1000+ insect species

* * * * *

Here’s the complete list of TED notes

Dreaming of my departed wife: Su Shi – Jiang Cheng Zi (苏轼 – 江城子)

su-shi-jiang-cheng-ziHope everyone is enjoying their Thanksgiving pause :)

On my mind: Song poet-scholar Su Shi [Wikipedia] composed this poem following a dream of his deceased young wife, ten years after her passing. It’s one os his best known. This is Burton Watson’s translation [Amazon].

十年生死两茫茫，
Ten years, dead and living dim and draw apart.

不思量，
I don’t try to remember,

自难忘。
But forgetting is hard.

千里孤坟，
Lonely grave a thousand miles off,

无处话凄凉。
Cold thoughts, where can I talk them out?

纵使相逢应不识，
Even if we met, you wouldn’t know me,

尘满面，
Dust on my face,

鬓如霜。
Hair like frost.

夜来幽梦忽还乡，
In a dream last night suddenly I was home.

小轩窗，
By the window of the little room,

正梳妆。
You were combing your hair and making up.

相顾无言，
You turned and looked, not speaking,

唯有泪千行。
Only lines of tears coursing down.

料得年年断肠处，
Year after year will it break my heart?

明月夜，
The moonlit grave,

短松冈。
The stubby pines.

TED talk notes: Allan Pease on why you should speak with palms up, and Chris McDougall on humans as born runners

I love listening to TED talks, and take notes on most of them. Every week, I share notes from some of my favorites! Here’s the complete list (pardon the load time, it’s just a continuous, single page).

Allan Pease, Body language: the power is in the palm of your hands

  • in handshakes, whose hand is on top is usually dominating; to maximize appeal, go in at complete vertical and match pressure of other person
  • in a study where a speaker gave the same instructions to 3 different audiences:
    • palms up — highest retention and cooperation
    • palms down — medium
    • finger pointing — lowest
  • forming a bridge (touch your fingertips together) gives you confidence and poise

* * * * *

Christopher McDougall: Are we born to run?

  • Tarahumara — famous running tribe
  • unchanged for last 400 years
    • when the Spanish came, they hid in canyons (instead of being decimated like Aztecs and Incans)
    • they’re completely free of modern illness
  • arguably humans are DESIGNED for long-distance running, evidence:
    • women sprinters are much slower than male counterparts; gap MUCH smaller in long-distance, in ultra marathons top women are almost equal
    • also rare in long-distance running: 60-yos as fast as, if not faster than, 18-yos
    • humans are “hunting pack animal” – need women, elders to run long-distances too (so they’re not left behind)
    • we sweat really well, can run far on a hot day
    • our bodies are perfect for long distance running (long torso, short bipedal legs, head that can rotate side to side while running to watch for predators, obstacles)

* * * * *

Here’s the complete list of TED notes