Below is my review of ScottAdams' How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life as submitted to the editor and appeared in the December 2015 issue of the Sturbridge Times Magazine.
Worked
for Him
How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life
By Scott Adams
Penguin Group, 2013
Hardcover, 231 pages
ISBN-13:
978-1591846918
ISBN:
10-1591846919
List:
$27.95 Amazon: $17.10
Book
review by Richard Morchoe
If you don't know
who Scott Adams is, you may have heard of Dilbert. Dilbert is the
non-hero of the comic strip that bears that name. It may or may not
be today's most popular strip, but it's hard to think of another as
well known since Gary Larson stopped doing The Far Side.
Dilbert chronicles
a bunch of cynical cubicle slaves as they deal with corporate
America. Adams, drawing on his life in that milieu has become hugely
successful. How he got there is the subject of his book, How to
Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My
Life.
A book with “How
to” in the title sounds like a self-help tome. Adams claims it is
not. On Page 180 he writes, “This is a good time to remind you
that nothing in this book should be seen as advice. It's never a
good idea to take advice from cartoonists, and that's a hundred times
more important if the topic is health related. I don't know how many
people have died from following the health advice of cartoonists, but
the number probably isn't zero.”
One might guess the
lawyers told him to put that in as he makes a heck of a lot of
suggestions and if someone passed away after acting on one, the
author could be spending more than a little of his fortune on legal
proceedings.
His speculation
that at least one person has shuffled off the mortal coil due to
following the guidance of cartoonists is dubious. Certainly, more
folks have left us because of the advice of the medical
establishment. Are carbs okay this week?
Though Adams’
comic strip has a cynical tone, How
to Fail is nothing
like that. There is a lot of self-deprecation that one would expect
from the author of Dilbert. He knows he is not a great artist, but
is proud of being an accomplished cartoonist.
As part of his
advice to readers, he tells us we should not have goals. The author
writes,, “To put it bluntly, goals are for losers.” This seems
to go against the reigning success culture. Adams reasons that, “If
you achieve your goal, you celebrate and feel terrific, but only
until you realize you just lost the thing that gave you purpose and
direction. Your options are to feel empty and useless, perhaps
enjoying the spoils of your success until they bore you, or set new
goals and reenter the cycle of permanent presuccess [sic]
failure.”
Instead of goals,
Adams believes in systems. He came to that conclusion sitting next
to a businessman on a flight to California, when he was succeeding in
the “goal” of escaping snowy upstate New York. The fellow told
him his “system was to continually look for better options.”
This meant he started searching for a new job as soon as he began
one.
Dilbert’s creator
more or less followed his seatmate's advice over the next several
years, in the process no doubt garnering fodder for the comic. He
recounts failing at every position yet moving up a rung each time.
Eventually, he was told he could go no higher, but not because his
incompetence had been discerned. Rather, they were no longer
promoting Caucasian ineptness. They were now affirmatively advancing
groups that had not been represented in high management. After all,
it’s not like we cannot find equal inability among people of other
races.
It is worth noting
that the two large organizations he mentions most were bureaucracies
with many positions that were little more than sinecures. One of
them, Pacific Bell, no longer exists, having been swallowed up with
much of the busywork being eliminated. The other, Crocker National
was also taken over with deadweight being shed. It is unlikely the
author could have pulled off what he did at a high tech startup.
Was his experience
with continuously moving up from job to job a system or sequential
goals? He should get the benefit of the doubt on that one, and it
leads us to the subject of “affirmations” that he addresses.
According to Adams,
“Affirmations are simply the practice of repeating to yourself what
you want to achieve while imagining the outcome you want.” As he
explained it, it’s not as new agey as it sounds. He used this form
to great effect, “I Scott Adams, will be a famous cartoonist.”
Of course that sounds like a goal and your man is no loser.
There is a lot more
to How to Fail
than systems versus goals and affirmations. Much of it may or may
not be great career or life advice. Scott Adams is a good writer
with a great sense of humor, but we already knew that from Dilbert.
If you get it in your stocking, enjoy it. Don’t mourn if
you don’t. The verdict is similar to Samuel Johnson on the Giant’s
Causeway, “Worth seeing, but not worth going to see.”
