21A- Reading Reflection No. 2

1)    I read Scott Adam’s How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big.  This book focused on the psychology behind being successful.  There are numerous ways to improve our productivity, but Adam’s argues that many of the best ways are the easiest.  The point that Adams tries to make- it’s even in the title- is that everyone is going to fail.  Everybody is going to hold themselves back at sometime.  No one is going to be able to be perfect.  However, the only way to combat our imperfections is to have a battle plan.  Says Adam “If you do something every day, it’s a system. If you’re waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it’s a goal”.  Living a productive life takes discipline and resilience.  These are the themes of Adam’s book.  To have a system, means having commitment and being prepared.  You should wake up in the morning and make good on the promises you made to yourself.  If you can’t be committed, you aren’t going anywhere.  Being accountable to YOUR system is the key to being successful.  If it works for you, then despite your failures, you will still be moving forward.

2)    This book pulled me in because of the psychological focus.  Throughout this course I have asked myself if I have the personality type, or skills, to be a successful entrepreneur.  It takes an immense amount of work each week to be successful, this means budgeting time well and having a plan for that week’s work.  You have to be proactive about talking with people, finding them, and then eventually drawing conclusions based on that.  While I’ve been developing my skills all semester, I think this books really brought it all together for me. It’s all about how you use the skills that you do have.  Its about always being an active participant in your own life, and knowing how what you do effects other parts of your life.  How you do things very much effects the outcomes of those things.  In order to juggle the demands of entrepreneurship, or even this class, you need to understand how to make your brain work for you.  This means knowing yourself is a big component of being successful.  I think that Adam’s advice on getting to know how your brain works will help me both in the long and short term. It’s something that I know that I need to work on, but I recognize it’s importance. I intend to practice some of his techniques in the next couple weeks and see if I notice any positive changes.

3)    My exercise would involve everyone drawing up a “system” for themselves.  They would need to take a look at their goals, and then look at their day to day.  I would ask them to describe how system oriented they already were.  I would then ask them to create a system for themselves.  It would need to be flexible enough to be followed on a daily basis, but also full enough to create success.  They would need to create time slots in their day for work on certain aspects of their goals.  I would ask them to try to follow their systems for a week, and see how their lives were changed.

4)    One of the most surprising things to me is that Adams does is work in order of his energy.  He likes to save the easy tasks until the end, because they don’t require as much energy.  In this way, he is maximizing his energy usage.  This surprised me because I hadn’t really thought of how much energy and focus you lose through the course of your work.  I almost always start with easier tasks, just to get them out of the way.  This makes me feel as if I have less on my plate before I start the bigger projects.  Using this strategy though can cause you to be tired out by the time you can to the creative thinking, which could lead to suboptimal results.