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How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life

Blasting clichéd career advice, the contrarian pundit and creator of Dilbert recounts the humorous ups and downs of his career, revealing the outsized role of luck in our lives and how best to play the system. 

Scott Adams has likely failed at more things than anyone you’ve ever met or anyone you’ve even heard of. So how did he go from hapless office worker and serial failure to the creator of Dilbert, one of the world’s most famous syndicated comic strips, in just a few years? In How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, Adams shares the game plan he’s followed since he was a teen: 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—including his corporate career, his inventions, his investments, and his two restaurants—into something good and lasting. There’s a lot to learn from his personal story, and a lot of entertainment 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 person’s 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.”
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Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner
Freakonomics
Freakonomics

Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool?


What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common?


How much do parents really matter?


These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He studies the riddles of everyday life—from cheating and crime to parenting and sports—and reaches conclusions that turn conventional wisdom on its head. 


Freakonomics is a groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. They set out to explore the inner workings of a crack gang, the truth about real estate agents, the secrets of the Ku Klux Klan, and much more. 


Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, they show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives—how people get what they want or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing.

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Stefan Molyneux
Everyday Anarchy: The Freedom of Now
Everyday Anarchy: The Freedom of Now
The word “anarchy” evokes images of dangerous mobs, spiky-haired youths hurling garbage cans through Starbucks windows, and the chaos of the war of all against all.

However, the word “anarchy” simply means “without rulers” - and this state of affairs is something we desperately desire and defend in so many areas of our own lives. If a political ruler were to tell us who to marry, what to learn, and which job to take, we would rebel against such tyrannical intrusions on our freedoms. If the government were to tell us what to read, want to watch and what to listen to, we would justifiably cry “censorship” and lead the charge against such mind control.

How can we reconcile this contradiction? Is being “without rulers” good, or bad? How can we fear something so terribly, while at the same time treasuring it so mightily?

“Everyday Anarchy” addresses this challenge head-on, arguing that being free of rulers is not something to fear - personally or politically - but rather a goal that we must constantly strive 
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Matt Kibbe
Don't Hurt People and Don't Take Their Stuff: A Libertarian Manifesto
Don't Hurt People and Don't Take Their Stuff: A Libertarian Manifesto

In this essential manifesto of the new libertarian movement, New York Times bestselling author and president of FreedomWorks Matt Kibbe makes a stand for individual liberty and shows us what we must do to preserve our freedom.


Don't Hurt People and Don't Take Their Stuff is a rational yet passionate argument that defends the principles upon which America was founded—principles shared by citizens across the political spectrum. The Constitution grants each American the right to self-determination, to be protected from others whose actions are destructive to their lives and property. Yet as Kibbe persuasively shows, the political and corporate establishment consolidates its power by infringing upon our independence—from taxes to regulations to spying—ultimately eroding the ideals, codified in law, that have made the United States unique in history.


Kibbe offers a surefire plan for reclaiming our inalienable rights and regaining control of our lives, grounded in six simple rules:


  1.  Don’t hurt people: Free people just want to be left alone, not hassled or harmed by someone else with an agenda or designs over their life and property.
  2. Don’t take people’s stuff: America’s founders fought to ensure property rights and our individual right to the fruits of our labors.
  3. Take responsibility: Liberty takes responsibility. Don’t sit around waiting for someone else to solve your problems.
  4. Work for it: For every action there is an equal reaction. Work hard and you’ll be rewarded.
  5. Mind your own business: Free people live and let live.
  6. Fight the power: Thanks to the Internet and the decentralization of knowledge, there are more opportunities than ever to take a stand against corrupt authority.
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