The Best Book On Self-Improvement

How To Fail At Almost Everything and Still Win Big

By Scott Adams

Rating: 10/10

Best line #1: Goals are for losers.

Best line #2: My optimism is like an old cat that likes to disappear for days, but I always expect it to return.

Here is one of the most important lines I’ve ever read in nonfiction: goals are for losers. It’s a beautiful four-word sentence that immediately switched my thinking while also affirming everything my experience had been telling me. Goals are for losers. What could that possibly mean?

For one thing, goals lead to a strange sense of letdown once they’re achieved. Wednesday’s post talked about “post achievement depression.” The best description of this effect is found in Scott Adams’ book:

If you achieve your goal, you celebrate and feel terrific, but only until you realize you just lost the thing that gave you purpose and direction.

Goals are like matches. They can start a fire. And that’s great but the fire burns out eventually and you have to find another match. It’s akin to the standard motivational cycle. You hype yourself up to do something, get it done, and then have to hype yourself up again. And what about those times that you don’t achieve your goals? I’ve had this happen to…