21A - Reading Reflection No. 2

21A - Reading Reflection No. 2

For this reading reflection I chose to read How To Fail At Almost Everything And Still Win Big by Scott Adams. 

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

Adams uses examples in his book from his personal life to show that failure happens to everyone, but it is not always a bad thing to fail. He explains the times in his life when he has failed, which then lead him to success when he created Dilbert, a famous comic strip. I believe the theme of this book is how to accept failure and use it to your advantage. The argument of the book is that failure should not cause you to give up, it should drive you to work harder and reach the success you desire. 

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

In my opinion, the book helped me connect and enhance what I am learning in ENT3003 because at times in this class I felt like giving up. I felt as if my business idea could not be successful and it drove me crazy for a few weeks. I had a bad start to this semester, but with the feedback and interviews I have conducted for this class I knew I couldn't give up just yet. I found better ways to make my business idea a success. I think sometimes we feel incapable of things, whether its because we feel that way about ourselves or someone else told us we would fail. This book not only opened my eyes to better further my success in this class, it gave me a new perspective on life itself. This book also connects with this class because it is about an entrepreneur who had much failure in his career but pushed through it and made himself better because of his failures. I believe this to be a key aspect of becoming an entrepreneur.

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

Based on this book being about failure and how to overcome it, I think a good exercise for this class would be implementing a blog post in the middle of the semester about how you may have failed in the beginning of this course or maybe even questioned your success in your business idea and how you overcame that fear of failure. I think this would involve looking back on all the work you've accomplished since the beginning of the course and really taking in the perspectives of your fellow classmates feedback and your interviewees feedback. 

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?

When reading this book, I thought it would be all about his failures in entrepreneurship and how he overcame them. But while reading I realized it is way more than that. It is not only about his life and ups and downs, it can be applied to life in general. Adams says instead of having goals we should implement a system or a method to how we want to live our life. We all go through times that we feel we are not enough or not capable of doing or getting what we want, but that failure is only a lesson. These lessons in life make us better, they give us insight in to knowing what we want and what we don't want, or what brings failure or what brings us the success we desire. Failure helps shape us in to who we want to be as individuals and I believe that is the most important lesson I've learned from this book. Whether you want to become and entrepreneur or not, I would recommend reading this book.