Scott Adams Quotes
Goals are for losers.
Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success.
Happiness is health plus freedom.
Conquer shyness by being a huge phony (in a good way).
Simplicity transforms ordinary into amazing.
A hammer is good only if you stop pounding after the nail is all the way in. Keep pounding and you break the wood.
When you stand in front of an audience, your sensation of time is distorted. That’s why inexperienced presenters speak too rapidly.
Failure always brings something valuable with it. I don’t let it leave until I extract that value.
Never make a loan to someone who is following his passion. He’s in business for the wrong reason. The best loan customer is one who has no passion whatsoever, just a desire to work hard at something that looks good on a spreadsheet.
Have a system instead of a goal. Systems-driven people have found a way to look at the familiar in new and more useful ways.
Running a marathon in under four hours is a goal, but exercising daily is a system.
Buying lottery tickets is not a system no matter how regularly you do it.
The world offers so many alternatives that you need a quick filter to eliminate some options and pay attention to others. Whatever your plan, focus is always important.
When it comes to generosity, there are three kinds of people in the world:
- Selfish
- Stupid
- Burden on others That’s the entire list. Your best option is to be selfish, because being stupid or a burden on society won’t help anyone. Society hopes you will handle your selfishness with some grace and compassion. If you do selfishness right, you automatically become a net benefit to society. Successful people generally don’t burden the world. Corporate raiders, overpaid CEOs, and tyrannical dictators are the exceptions.
Optimizing is often the strategy of people who have specific goals and feel the need to do everything in their power to achieve them. Simplifying is generally the strategy of people who view the world in terms of systems. The best systems are simple, and for good reason.
Simple systems are probably the best way to achieve success. Once you have success, optimizing begins to have more value. Successful people and successful businesses have the luxury of being able to optimize toward perfection over time. Start-ups often do better by slapping together something that is 80 percent good and seeing how the public responds. There’s time to improve things later if the market cares about the product.
Another big advantage of simplification is that it frees up time, and time is one of your most valuable resources in the world.
My so-called talent was little more than the result of insane hours of practice.
Watch what customers do about your idea or product, not what they say. People tend to say what they think you want to hear. What people do is far more honest.
If the first commercial version of your work excites no one to action, it’s time to move on to something different. Don’t be fooled by the opinions of friends and family.
If you’re not a natural “practicer,” don’t waste time pursuing a strategy that requires it.
Another huge advantage of learning as much as you can in different fields is that the more concepts you understand, the easier it is to learn new ones.
“If you play a slot machine long enough, eventually you will…” The class yelled out in unison “WIN!” As most adults know, that is exactly the wrong answer. Slot machines are engineered to make everyone but the casino a loser in the long run. They confused the benefits of persistence with the actual odds of succeeding.
Children are accustomed to a continual stream of criticisms and praise, but adults can go weeks without a compliment while enduring criticism both at work and at home. Adults are starved for a kind word.
Few things are as destructive and limiting as a worldview that assumes people are mostly rational.
People who appear outgoing are usually employing a learned social skill that you think is somehow natural. It probably isn’t,
In most groups the craziest person is in control. It starts because no one wants the problems that come from pissing off a crazy person. It’s just smarter and easier sometimes to let the crazy person have his or her way. Crazy people also take more risks and act more confidently than the facts would warrant.
Cults are a good example of insanity being viewed as leadership.
In any kind of negotiation, the worst thing you can do is act reasonable. Reasonable people generally cave in to irrational people because it seems like the path of least resistance.
The way fake insanity works in a negotiation is that you assign a greater value to some element of a deal than an objective observer would consider reasonable. For example, you might demand that a deal be closed before the holidays so you can announce it to your family as a holiday present. When you bring in an emotional dimension, people know they can’t talk you out of it. Emotions don’t bend to reason.
Pessimism is often a failure of imagination. If you can’t even imagine an improved future, you won’t be happy no matter how well your life is going right now.
