Assignment 27A - Reading Reflection No.3

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

1) What was the general theme or argument of the book?

This book was basically a memoir about the author, Scott Adams, life and how he had many failed attempts in life. He had failed startups and patents that were useless but he eventually started his Dilbert office cartoons that showed his failures to the world. In the book, he shares his personal story and what he learned through all of his failures. He writes about how he kept himself motivated and healthy as well as how he remained positive while experiencing failure after failure. 

2) How did the book, in your opinion, connect with and enhance what you are learning in ENT 3003?

This class has taught me a lot about finding what I am good at and capitalizing on it. Especially when we had to analyze what our "secret sauce" was. There was a quote from the book that I believe directly goes with that, it goes "A great strategy for success in life is to become good at something, anything, and let that feeling propel you to new and better victories. Success can be habit-forming." This quote is relatable to me and this class because once I found a topic and skill I was good at, I went with it for my business idea. 

3) If you had to design an exercise for this class, based on the book you read, what would that exercise involve?

Based off of this book, I would design an exercise that would have the students list all of the failures they have experienced in their lives, not limited to one specific area or anything. Then I would have them reflect on each of the failures specifically and have them analyze what they learned from that failure, and if it has any impact on them today. I believe that many students would realize that the failures they thought were huge back then, are insignificant now, which could serve as motivation to take more risks and to think outside the box moving forward. 

4) What was your biggest surprise or 'aha' moment when reading the book? In other words, what did you learn that differed most from your expectations?

My biggest surprise in the book was that his goals had an element of selfishness to them. he talked a lot about how you have to look after yourself first before you can try and look after anyone else. And he mentioned all aspects of life, from eating right, exercising, and getting enough sleep. This differed from my expectations of the book because going into it I just thought that it was going to be a lot of repetitive stuff about how everyone fails and that you just have to keep trying again with no real substance on how to apply it to our personal lives, but I was wrong in that regard.