Synopses & Reviews
Everything you want out of life is in that bubbling vat of failure. The trick is to get the good stuff out. Scott Adams has likely failed at more things than anyone youve ever met or anyone youve even heard of. So how did he go from hapless office worker and serial failure to the creator of Dilbert, one of the worlds most famous syndicated comic strips, in just a few years? In How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, Adams shares the strategy he has used since he was a teen to invite failure in, embrace it, then pick its pocket.
No career guide can offer advice that works for everyone. As Adams explains, your best bet is to study the ways of others who made it big and try to glean some tricks and strategies that make sense for you. Adams pulls back the covers on his own unusual life and shares how he turned one failure after another into something good and lasting.
Adams reveals that hes failed at just about everything hes tried, including his corporate career, his inventions, his investments, and his two restaurants. But theres a lot to learn from his personal story, and a lot of humor along the way. Adams discovered some unlikely truths that helped to propel him forward. For instance:
Goals are for losers. Systems are for winners. Passion” is bull. What you need is personal energy. A combination of mediocre skills can make you surprisingly valuable. You can manage your odds in a way that makes you look lucky to others.
Adams hopes you can laugh at his failures while discovering some unique and helpful ideas on your own path to personal victory. As he writes:
This is a story of one persons unlikely success within the context of scores of embarrassing failures. Was my eventual success primarily a result of talent, luck, hard work, or an accidental just-right balance of each? All I know for sure is that I pursued a conscious strategy of managing my opportunities in a way that would make it easier for luck to find me.”
Review
"Every chapter is a welcome reminder that you are not so smart-yet you're never made to feel dumb. You Are Not So Smart is a dose of psychology research served in tasty anecdotes that will make you better understand both yourself and the rest of us. It turns out we're much more irrational than most of us think, so give yourself every advantage you can and read this book."
Review
"You Are Not So Smart is the go-to blog for understanding why we all do silly things."
Review
"You'd think from the title that it might be curmudgeonly; in fact, You Are Not So Smart is quite big-hearted."
Review
"In an Idiocracy dominated by cable TV bobbleheads, government propagandists, and corporate spinmeisters, many of us know that mass ignorance is a huge problem. Now, thanks to David McRaney's mind-blowing book, we can finally see the scientific roots of that problem. Anybody still self-aware enough to wonder why society now worships willful stupidity should read this book." -David Sirota, author of Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now
Review
"We're smarter after reading McRaney's book."
—The Charlotte Observer
Review
"Even seasoned psych lovers will learn something new."
—Psychology Today
Review
"McRaney argues, with amusing exasperation..."
—The Wall Street Journal
Synopsis
An entertaining illumination of the stupid beliefs that make us feel wise, based on the popular blog of the same name. Whether you’re deciding which smartphone to purchase or which politician to believe, you think you are a rational being whose every decision is based on cool, detached logic. But here’s the truth: You are not so smart. You’re just as deluded as the rest of us—but that’s okay, because being deluded is part of being human.
Growing out of David McRaney’s popular blog, You Are Not So Smart reveals that every decision we make, every thought we contemplate, and every emotion we feel comes with a story we tell ourselves to explain them. But often these stories aren’t true. Each short chapter—covering topics such as Learned Helplessness, Selling Out, and the Illusion of Transparency—is like a psychology course with all the boring parts taken out.
Bringing together popular science and psychology with humor and wit, You Are Not So Smart is a celebration of our irrational, thoroughly human behavior.
Synopsis
An entertaining illumination of the stupid beliefs that make us feel wise.
You believe you are a rational, logical being who sees the world as it really is, but journalist David McRaney is here to tell you that you're as deluded as the rest of us. But that's OK- delusions keep us sane. You Are Not So Smart is a celebration of self-delusion. It's like a psychology class, with all the boring parts taken out, and with no homework.
Based on the popular blog of the same name, You Are Not So Smart collects more than 46 of the lies we tell ourselves everyday, including:
Synopsis
Esquire editor and Entrepreneur etiquette columnist Ross McCammon delivers a funny and authoritative guide that provides the advice you really need to be confident and authentic at work, even when you have no idea whatand#8217;s going on. and#160;
Ten years ago, before he got a job at Esquire magazine and way before he became the etiquette columnist at Entrepreneur magazine, Ross McCammon, editor at an in-flight magazine, was staring out a second-floor window at a parking lot in suburban Dallas wondering if it was five oand#8217;clock yet. Everything changed with one phone call from Esquire. Three weeks later, he was working in New York and wondering what the hell had just happened.
and#160;
This is McCammonand#8217;s honest, funny, and entertaining journey from impostor to authority, a story that begins with periods of debilitating workplace anxiety but leads to rich insights and practical advice from a guy who and#147;made itand#8221; but who still remembers what itand#8217;s like to feel entirely ill-equipped for professional success. And for life in general, if weand#8217;re being completely honest. McCammon points out the workplace for what it is: an often absurd landscape of ego and fear guided by social rules that no one ever talks about. He offers a mix of enlightening and often self-deprecating personal stories about his experience and clear, practical advice on getting the small things rightand#151;crucial skills that often go unacknowledgedand#151;from shaking a hand to conducting a business meeting in a bar to navigating a work party.and#160;
Here is an inspirational new way of looking at your job, your career, and success itself; an accessible guide for those of us who are smart, talented, and ambitious but who arenand#8217;t well-and#147;leveragedand#8221; and donand#8217;t quite feel prepared for success . . . or know what to do once weand#8217;ve made it.and#160;
About the Author
Ross McCammon has been a senior editor at
Esquire magazine since 2005, where heand#8217;s responsible for the magazineand#8217;s coverage of pop culture, drinking, cars, and etiquette. He has edited
Esquireand#8217;s and#147;Dubious Achievement Awardsand#8221; and the long-running annual feature and#147;The Best Bars in America,and#8221; writes the monthly feature and#147;The Rules,and#8221; and is a frequent contributor to the magazineand#8217;s back-page humor section and#147;This Way Out.and#8221; For three years he has been the business etiquette columnist at
Entrepreneur magazine. His humor has been collected in
Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeneyand#8217;s Humor Category, edited by Dave Eggers. He lives in Westchester County, New York, with his wife and son.