Summary
One Sentence Summary
Allow luck to find you through systems.
One paragraph Summary
See Introduction below.
Introduction
Adams introduces himself as a professional simplifier–a person who strips out the noise to get down to the absurd, yet truth, core of a matter.
Adams mentions how develops systems where luck can find him through a conscious strategy of managing opportunities; in spite of his many failures, Adams ended up failing into success.
Here’s an overview of the book’s key lessons from Adams’s perspective:
- Goals are for losers (use systems instead)
- People’s minds (especially your own) are moist computers that can be programmed
- Tracking and managing personal energy is the vital
- Every skill you acquire, independent of mastery, doubles your odds of success
- Happiness is health plus freedom
- Luck can be managed through systems
- Conquer shyness through acting, until the act itself becomes so habitual, it becomes part of you
- Fitness is the lever that moves the world
- Simplicity transforms ordinary into amazing
Methods of seeking truth
Recall that adams is a professional simplifier, meaning that he seeks the underlying truth behind certain phenomenons.
To minimizing the feeling of absurdity that comes with navigating such a complex world, and ultimately this thing we call life, Adams provides us with six filters for sorting truth from fiction.
- Ideally: Start by asking a smart friend
- Personal experience
- Flaw: human perfections are not always accurate
- Experience of other people
- Flaw: experience of others may be less accurate
- Experts
- Flaw: experts may have financial motives to sponsor a misleading truth
- Scientific studies
- Flaw: studies indicate correlation, which is does not imply causation
- Common sense
- Flaw: common scene is paradoxically not that common
- Pattern recognition
- Flaw: patterns, coincidences, and personal bias all look alike
It would be foolish to rely on any one filter, since each filter comes with its own blind spot. Instead, Adams suggests that we seek at least two filters when making a judgement call on truth. Having multiple filters confirmed indicates consistency; Adams claims that the nearest truth we can get is consistency.
The nearest we can get to truth is consistency
For example, if a study tells you that eating chocolate will slim you down, but your personal experience has said otherwise, and your friend’s experience has said otherwise as well, that’s an inconsistent truth because, although it’s confirmed in studies, it fails to hold up in the practical truth filter of personal experience and experience of other people.
Consistency is the bedrock of the scientific method; scientists discover truth through controlled experiments that yield consistent results.
While we may have a harder time controlling variables in the outside world, we can still use consistency we observe in life to get a close approximation to the truth.
Outside of the 6 truth filters, Adam highly advises to always first speak to a smart friend before starting your analysis. Discussing with someone who is level-headed can save your time and energy.
Chapter 1: The time I went Crazy
Adams starts the chapter by describing his voice condition. Long story short, he loses his ability to speak.
Here’s an interesting quote from the chapter that illustrates the issues with the inability to speak:
I learned that loneliness isn’t fixed by listening to other people talk. You can cure your loneliness only by doing the talking yourself and—most important—being heard.
Adams’ obsession with his condition is what led him to start seeking patterns.
Chapter 2: The day of the talk
Despite losing his voice, Adams accepts a speaking invitation to talk about his Dilbert comic. This brings up an interesting question: what kind of person would risk humiliation on this scale?
The answer is quite simple: Adams has cultivated an open relationship with failure; he invites it, he survives it, and he appreciates it.
You want to be steeped to your eyebrows in failure. It’s a good place to be because failure is where success likes to hide in plain sight.
Adams views failure as a resource to be managed, rather than a liability to be minimized.
Why? Because from Adams’ experience, failure always brings something valuable with it (or as Napoleon Hill’s book “Outwitting the Devil” would say: “it brings a seed of equal equivalence for success).
The most evident example of failure resulting in success for Adams was his own career as a cartoonist. The success of Dilbert was a direct result of Adams’ failure in the corporate world.
Aside from Adams’ view on failure, I love how this guy thinks. When he starts observing the patterns of when his voice would work, he asks himself, “why does context matter?”. The chapter went on to show how Adams would think just like a scientist, and start deeply examining the patterns of when his voice would work.
Chapter 3: Passion is bullshit
The same way I believed that action precedes inspiration, Adams claims that success causes passion more than passion causes success.
Often, passion is simply a by-product of knowing you will be good at something. This is exactly the same idea that Mark Cuban mentioned when he first got into sales. At first, everyone hates their job because they are not good at it. However, as we start getting good through effort, practice, and time (Mindset by Carol Dewick), then the passion flows.
Chapter 4: Some of my failures in summary form
Here’s the main take away from this chapter: Adams took MASSIVE action, and failed multiple times. Some of the failures were innocuous, and some were just plain stupid. Independent of the magnitude of humiliation, Adams always gained something valuable from each experience that served him in future endeavors.
Fail more often. Trust.
Chapter 5: My absolute favorite spectacular failure
Long story short: Adams nearly died from a harsh winter storm. His failure was so pressing that he promised himself that he would move to California.
This was the best action he took as a result of failing in because his experience in California led to amazing growth.
Chapter 6: Goals versus Systems
Adams’ describes an interaction he had with a bank CEO while on a plane.
your job is not your job; your job is to find a better job
The new job simply has to be better than the previous one, and permit learning of something new and valuable for the next hop.
The businessman didn’t invent capitalism, and he didn’t create its rules. He simply played within the rules
The CEO offered him a job based on how well dressed he was. This further indicates that appearances do matter.
Goal-oriented people exist in a state of nearly continuous failure that they hope will be temporary, which can be demoralizing overtime (recall that managing personal energy is vital for success, and this includes attitude and enthusiasm).
On the other hand, systems people succeed every time they apply their systems. While the goals people are fighting discouragement at every turn, the systems people cultivate positive attitude each time they apply their systems.
Whereas a goal is a specific objective to meet, a system is a habit we choose to develop that will increase our odds of happiness in the long run.
If you do something everyday, it’s a system. If you’re waiting in hopes of a achieving something better in the future, it’s a goal. Systems have no deadlines.
Obviously this is more of a semantic difference, but the reality is that the narratives we habitually tell ourselves matter tremendously.
Chapter 7: My system
I didn’t wish to stay in school; I decided.
The above quote illustrates Adams’ determination. He ended up being a month ahead of his class.
This chapter introduces the determination and planning that went into Adams’ wish of one day owning his own successful business.
“I wanted to create, invent, write, or otherwise concoct something widely desired that would be easy to reproduce…I would try one thing after another until something creative struck a chord with the public. Then I would reproduce it like crazy. In the near term it would mean one failure after another. In the long term I was creating a situation that would allow luck to find me”
My system of creating something the public wants and reproducing it in large quantities nearly guaranteed a string of failures
Chapter 8: My Corporate Career Fizzled
This chapter describes some of the initial experiences and setbacks Adams’ encountered during his corporate career. My main take away from this is that Adams had a likable personality that allowed him to grow in spite of the setbacks.
Chapter 9: Deciding Versus Wanting
If you want success, figure out the price, then pay it.
When you decide to be successful in a big way, it means you acknowledge the price and you’re willing to pay it. Successful people don’t wish for success; they decide to pursue it. If you pick the right system, the price will be a lot nearer what you’re willing to pay.
Chapter 10: The Selfishness Illusion
TLDR: Be selfish
There are three kinds of people in this world:
- Selfish
- Stupid
- Burden to others
Your best option is to be selfish.
Selfish successful people can be fun company if they’ve squirreled away all they need and have no complaints to voice. When they know they’ve done a good days’ work, they’re actually likable.
Being selfish means spending time on your fitness, eating right, pursuing your career, and still spending quality time with your family and friends.
The problem with generosity is that it causes people to think in the short term. We skip exercise to spend an extra hour helping at home. We buy fast food to save time to help a coworker with a problem. At every turn, we cheat our own future to appear generous today.
I’m giving you permission to take care of yourself first, so you can do a better job of being generous in the long run.
In fact, doing so is a moral necessity. The world needs you at your best.
Here the order of generosity you should follow:
- Yourself
- Family
- Community
- The world
Don’t worry about ending up selfish; successful people started out selfishly, but success changes you to be more generous because of your abundance.
Chapter 11: The Energy Metric
This chapter focuses on answer the question: How do you organize your limited supply of time to get the best result?
One answer: energy management
Maximizing personal energy means:
- eating healthy
- exercising
- avoiding superfluous stress
- getting enough sleep
- having something exciting to wake up to
- certain hobbies (e.g. blogging)
- understanding the situations that drain your energy, and then using your judgement to avoid them
When your personal energy is right, it spills over to your relationships with people and your work. By becoming a person with great energy, enthusiasm, and positivity, you improve your social life and the life of people around you. You become likable.
People may see your acts as selfish. “why are you going skiing when you should be working at the homeless shelter, you selfish bastard!”. But the reality of it is that organizing your life to optimize your personal energy will add up to something incredible that is more good than bad.
Everyone will appreciate that I’m in a better mood.
Adams then devotes a section to compare and contrasts “optimizers” and “Simplifiers”. The end result is that Simple systems are probably the best way to achieve success. It is only have you have achieved a stable level of success when optimizing begins to have more value. Successful people and successful businesses have the luxury of being able to optimize toward perfection over time. A big advantage of simplification is that it frees up time, and time is one of your most valuable resources in the world.
A few other pointers for managing energy:
- Don’t work where you relax (especially for seating positions)
- avoid working on your bed
- Tidiness and a clean room frees the mind
- Be likable, people will appreciate and reciprocate in the long run
- Prioritizing tasks (refer to provided list above)
Chapter 12: Managing Your Attitude
Attitude supersedes everything. Period.
CBT.
Your body and your mind will respond automatically to whatever images you spend the most time pondering.
Smile more often, it’s part of being likable.
Superstitions probably help in some small way to bolster their confidence; use them.
The external reality doesn’t change, but your point of view does. In many cases, it’s your point of view that influences your behavior, not the universe. And you CAN control your point of view even when you can’t change the underlying reality.
Change your thoughts to change reality.
Free yourself from the shackles of an oppressive reality. What’s real to you is what you imagine and what you feel.
Chapter 13: It’s Already Working
Similar to what Earl Nightgale mentions, start acting like the person you wish to become, and one day, the act will be habitual, and you’ll find yourself actually becoming that person!
It truly works, because habits work.
Chapter 14: My Pinkie Goes Nuts
Scott describes his hand issue.
Chapter 15: My Speaking Career
Scott illustrates the benefits of having a smart friend by sharing his experience.
“You don’t need to know CEOs and billionaires. Sometimes you just need a friend who knows different things than you do”
Chapter 16: My Voice Problem Gets a Name
Updates of Adams’ voice.
Chapter 17: The Voice Solution That Didn’t Work
Updates of Adams’ voice.
Chapter 18: Recognizing Your Talents and Knowing When to Quit
Adams’ claims that each skill you acquire doubles your odds of success.
Here, Adams tries to answer the question: how do you know which of your various skills can be combined to get something useful?
There’s often a strong connection between what interests you and what you’re good at, especially from your youth.
In regard to quitting versus gritting: Things that will someday work out well tend to start out well. More often, small successes grow into bigger ones.
Chapter 19: Is Practice Your Thing?
Balancing between intentionally practicing and being curious to what to practice. Even Naval mentions that knowing what to do is more important than working hard.
Chapter 20: Managing Your Odds for Success
The Success Formula: Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success
The level of proficiency is actually less important.
Good + Good > Excellent
Adams is just a guy who combined many mediocre skills into creating something new. NONE of his skills are world class by any means.
What was important is that he was constantly leaning.
Knowledge formula: The more you know, the more you can know
“I don’t read news to find truth; I read news to broaden my exposure”
Don’t think of news as information. Think of news as a source of energy. Start by reading news that interests you.
Chapter 21: The Math of Success
This is a really great chapter that’s dense with practical insights. When I re-read this book, I’m starting from this chapter.
“If you find yourself in a state of continual failure, you might be blaming it on fate or karma, when in REALITY the answer is simple math. There’s usually a pattern, but it might be subtle. Don’t stop looking just because you don’t see the pattern in the first seven years.”
The best way to increase your odds of success—in a way that might look like luck to others—is to systematically become good, but not amazing, at the types of skills that work well together and are highly useful for just about any job.
This is another example in which viewing the world as math (adding skills together) and not magic allows you to move from a strategy with low odds of success to something better.
Here is a list of skills that Adams believes every adult should gain a working knowledge:
- Public Speaking
- Psychology
- Business writing
- Accounting
- Design (the basics)
- Conversation
- Overcoming shyness
- Second language
- Golf
- Proper Grammar
- Persuasion
- Technology (hobby level)
- Proper voice technique
In regard to public speaking, the Dale Carnegie class has been mentioned by many successful people, and perhaps this is something I should consider taking.
Psychology
When studying psychology, this is a life-long endeavor, but one that pays off tremendously. Here’s a list of cognitive biases that you can study throughout your lifetime. This is a comprehensive list, so take your time.
“I would go so far as to say that anything on the list that you don’t understand might cost you money in the future.”
knowledge of psychology is the purest form of that power.
Understand that reason is NOT the driver of most human behavior. Most people react by emotion, vibe, and “gut-feeling”. These are these you can maximize, without changing your character, if you simply understood psychology.
A lie that makes someone feel good may often times be more practically effective than hundreds of well reasoned and rational facts.
View humans as moist machines that are simply reacting to inputs with programmed outputs
No reasoning is involved beyond eliminating the most absurd options. Your reasoning can prevent you from voting for a total imbecile, but it won’t stop you from supporting a half-wit with a great haircut.
Any event laced with deep emotions can go as unintended
This is always why you should be careful with your sarcasm. If you act like a slob, jokingly, but it emits such a repelling emotional reaction, then you’re not in a good position.
Steve Jobs’s understanding that the way a product makes users feel trumps most other considerations. This is in spite of Dell’s more rational approach of providing excellent hardware at affordable prices.
Think about that.
Business writing
Clarity and persuasiveness are the hallmarks of business writing; it’s about getting to the point and leaving out all of the noise.
Business writing also teaches that brains are wired to better understand concepts that are presented in a certain order.
Clean writing makes a writer seem smarter and it makes the writer’s arguments more persuasive. It’s this approach that also makes it excellent for humor writing
Consider taking a simple 2-day course in business writing. Adams’ claimed his course was life-changing.
Accounting
The basics
Design
Design is actually rule-based! You can easily learn them.
Remember: appearances matter.
Conversation
Talk to a person about himself and he will listen for hours.
It’s really that easy.
If you must pick up another book, then read “How to Talk to anyone”.
Overcoming Shyness
Socializing is a learnable skill, just as swimming is. If you can listen in a conversation, the rest should easily follow.
Second language
Learn Spanish!!!
Golf
This is a universal activity for adult men. Business is done on the golf course. It’s also great for dating, relaxing, and a hobby that you can slowly get better at, even when you’re super old.
Proper Grammar
easy
Persuasion
No matter your calling in life, you’ll spend a great deal of time trying to persuade people to do one thing or another. Nearly every interaction involves some form of persuasion.
This is kind of related to psychology, in both practical use and importance.
It’s relatively easy to pick up as well–simply grab a book, read, apply, and iterate.
Proper voice technique
Tone matters in conversation, make sure you’re using the right one.
Another common speaking trick is to hum the first part of the “Happy birthday” song, and then speak in your normal voice right after.
Chapter 22: Pattern Recognition
Here is the list of Adams’ personal list for success:
- Lack of fear of embarrassment
- Education
- Exercise
Chapter 23: Humor
People who enjoy humor are simply more attractive than people who don’t
Humor makes average-looking people look cute and uninteresting people seem entertaining. A good sense of humor even makes you seem smarter. Humor raises your energy, and puts life into perspective.
Humor is free and easily accessible. Start with watching Family Guy.
As with anything in life, starting with a good attitude is everything.
Chapter 24: Affirmations
Affirmations are simply the practice of repeating to yourself what you want to achieve while imagining the outcome you want.
Chapter 25: Timing Is Luck Too
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.
The machine that has rare yet certain payoffs, and asks for no money up front, is a guaranteed winner if you have what it takes to keep yanking until you get lucky.
In that environment, you can fail 99 percent of the time, while knowing success is guaranteed. All you need to do is stay in the game long enough.
Chapter 26: A Few Times Affirmations Worked
Adams’ experience
Chapter 27: Voice Update
Adams’ voice update
Chapter 28: Experts
Experts are not always right. Consider Ray Dalio’s throat cancer case.
Chapter 29: Association Programming
You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.
Chapter 30: Happiness
The only reasonable goal in life is maximizing your total lifetime experience of something called happiness
Happiness isn’t as dependent on your circumstances as you might think.
The single biggest trick for manipulating your happiness chemistry is being able to do what you want, when you want.
The first step towards happiness is working towards having control over your schedule.
Work does not feel like work when you control the timing of it. That’s what makes exercise different from manual labor.
Happiness is also more in the pursuit of the goal, rather than the actual attainment.
Here is the happiness formula:
- Eat right
- Exercise
- Get enough sleep
- Imagine an incredible future
- Work toward a flexible schedule
- Do things you can steadily improve at (like golf)
- Help others (after you’ve helped yourself)
- Reduce daily decisions to routine
That’s it!
Chapter 31: Diet
Drink coffee.
Also, Adams is a vegetarian.
Chapter 32: Fitness
Basics
Chapter 33: Voice Update 2
Adams’ voice update
Chapter 34: Luck
You don’t need to do anything as a result of reading this book. You’ve already changed. And if I’ve done my job right, you’ve changed in a way that will someday make people say you were lucky.
Chapter 35: CalendarTree Start-up
Adams’ viewed his Start-up endeavour as an opportunity to add new skills and broaden our network of contacts, which increases our market value.
Chapter 36: Voice Update 3
I ended up with a far more functional voice than ever before.
Chapter 37: A final note on Affirmations
Affirmations work.
Optimists make themselves easy target for luck to find them.
Chapter 38: Summary
Read this chapter if you want an all-in-one summary of this entire book.
Quotes/Mantras
- “The nearest we can get to truth is consistency”
- “You want to be steeped to your eyebrows in failure. It’s a good place to be because failure is where success likes to hide in plain sight.”
- “If you want success, figure out the price, then pay it”
- “Don’t worry about ending up selfish; successful people started out selfishly, but success changes you to be more generous because of your abundance”
- Study Public Speaking, Psychology, Business writing, Accounting, Design (the basics), Conversation, Overcoming shyness, Second language, Golf, Proper Grammar, Persuasion, Technology (hobby level), and Proper voice technique
- “The external reality doesn’t change, but your point of view does. In many cases, it’s your point of view that influences your behavior, not the universe. And you CAN control your point of view even when you can’t change the underlying reality.”
- “each skill you acquire doubles your odds of success”
- Adams is just a guy who combined many mediocre skills into creating something new. NONE of his skills are world class by any means.
- “If you find yourself in a state of continual failure, you might be blaming it on fate or karma, when in REALITY the answer is simple math. There’s usually a pattern, but it might be subtle. Don’t stop looking just because you don’t see the pattern in the first seven years.”
- “View humans as moist machines that are simply reacting to inputs with programmed outputs”