1. The general theme of the book is that a person's failures lead them to success. Adams gave many personal examples of how he'd failed during his life, but which led to him becoming the successful creator of Dilbert.
2. I liked that he spoke about his personal failures. Being the entire theme of the book, failure was always on my mind while reading this book. Similarly, I failed at my first business idea. When I went in to the lecture and told Dr. Pryor my idea, he took a dump all over it- and rightly so, it sucked. Now I have a better idea of how to make money, and what I was doing wrong before. That failure led to my success.
3. I would try to get people from the idea of a goal to the idea of a system. I liked how Adams wrote about making systems instead of setting goals. I would want the class to state goals they have, and change that into a system that would lead to that goal. So instead of aiming for an A in a tough class, the student would study, attend lectures, and do practice homework instead of just aiming for an A arbitrarily.
4. My biggest surprise was how many times Adams failed before making it big. I guess it really opened my eyes. It reminds me of the old saying, "the master has failed more times than the student has even tried."
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteI can totally relate to the theme of this book. It shows how willing you are to succeed and keep pushing as you fall down. Literally college. You fail a class and personally the world ends. It hurts more that you tried your best and your best not being enough. This theme is definitely a life lesson that you do not give up and eventually you will get where you want to be.