21A: Reading Reflection No. 2

Reading Reflection No. 2

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, Scott Adams

• General theme/argument
• In this book, Scott Adams discusses the general theme that failing is actually good for an individual. The individual can either dwell on the failure or view it in a positive way and learn from it to be better. The author encourages individuals to always focus on oneself and look after yourself first. This entails remaining a healthy diet, looking after financials and paying attention to your family, community, and others. Having a positive outlook in life will take an individual farther and will help the individual grow and shape their lives. Being successful does not happen overnight or automatically, it takes time, trial and error, and positive reflection. Scott Adams says, "every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success."
• Connect with ENT3003
• This book draws a connection with this course because, throughout the course, individuals go through failures and successes. This receives feedback that Scott Adams views it as "kind of failing", the feedback then gets doubled into positive failure that we learn from and fix on. This closely relates to this course because we are encouraged to give feedback to other students on their work, these students then go back to what they worked on and construct something new, making it a positive failure. The positive outlook on tasks helps students remain focused and eager to do better.
• Class exercise
• A class exercise that could be implemented from this book could be giving different types of feedback to students. Rather than giving feedback on things that the individual needs to fix or work on, feedback of what the student did well on and how the student is being successful could be mentioned.
• Biggest surprise
• The biggest surprise I read was reading how being selfish is a good thing. Being selfish is generally frowned upon or seen in a negative way. The author encourages individuals to always put themselves first because one should gain success with themselves before attempting to gain success with others or for other things. I agree with this because if you cannot be your best self, how can anyone expect that others will be their best self? I also admired the fact that failures should be seen as a good thing. I have always thought this because failures are what adds character and what teaches beings what not to do and what should be done.