21A - Reading Reflection No. 2

1. I chose to read How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, by Scott Adams because I thought it had the most interesting title of all of our options. The general theme of the book is to reevaluate your overall perspective of life by disregarding social biases in order to look upon your failures as learning experiences rather than embarrassments. In other words, failure is perfectly okay in the long run.
2. The main point that I associated to lessons in our class was that failure is actually necessary for success in entrepreneurship. Adams contributes tons of evidence that failure is often times a crucial step in an entrepreneur's journey to success. Furthermore, he wants readers to think in a rather unorthodox way; he states that we should be more open-minded and unbiased in regards to our individual values as well as societal norms. I think this lesson is also underlying in this class, since we are urged to think freely and do what makes us happy in the entrepreneurial world.
3. If I had to design an exercise based on the book, I would have students pick the 10 values they prioritize most from a list on at least one hundred. Then, I would have them read a controversial entrepreneurial story asking them what they would do in this specific situation. We could discuss as a class how they might have had to break their values to become successful or how they accepted defeat because of their values. We would then look at the controversy from a perspective that epitomizes Adams' beliefs of making a learning experience out of it.
4. I think Scott Adams' most surprising topic of conversation was his discussion on the benefits of being selfish. I personally make a point to be as considerate and polite as possible to family, friends, roommates, and even most strangers. However if I were to look at his discussion from an unbiased point of view (like he would want me to), I'd have to agree that selfishness can be useful, to an extent.