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

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.”