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

one of the most important philanthropists of all time. Success does that.
    The healthiest way to look at selfishness is that it’s a necessary strategy when you’re struggling. In hard times, or even presuccess times, society and at least one cartoonist want you to take care of yourself first. If you pursue your selfish objectives, and you do it well, someday your focus will turn outward. It’s an extraordinary feeling. I hope you can experience it.



CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Energy Metric
    We humans want many things: good health, financial freedom, accomplishment, a great social life, love, sex, recreation, travel, family, career, and more. The problem with all of this wanting is that the time you spend chasing one of those desires is time you can’t spend chasing any of the others. So how do you organize your limited supply of time to get the best result?
    The way I approach the problem of multiple priorities is by focusing on just one main metric: my energy. I make choices that maximize my personal energy because that makes it easier to manage all of the other priorities.
    Maximizing my personal energy means eating right, exercising, avoiding unnecessary stress, getting enough sleep, and all of the obvious steps. But it also means having something in my life that makes me excited to wake up. When I get my personal energy right, the quality of my work is better, and I can complete it faster. That keeps my career on track. And when all of that is working, and I feel relaxed and energetic, my personal life is better too.
    You might be familiar with a television show that was called
The Dog Whisperer
. On the show, Cesar Millan, a dog-training expert, helped people get their seemingly insane dogs under control. Cesar’s main trick involved training the humans to control their own emotional states, because dogs can pick up crazy vibes from their owners. When the owners learned to control themselves, the dogs calmed down too. I think this same method applies to humans interactingwith other humans. You’ve seen for yourself that when a sad person enters a room, the mood in the room drops. And when you talk to a cheerful person who is full of energy, you automatically feel a boost. I’m suggesting that by becoming a person with good energy, you lift the people around you. That positive change will improve your social life, your love life, your family life, and your career.
    When I talk about increasing your personal energy, I don’t mean the frenetic, caffeine-fueled, bounce-off-the-walls type of energy. I’m talking about a calm, focused energy. To others it will simply appear that you are in a good mood. And you will be.
    Before I became a cartoonist, I worked in a number of awful corporate jobs. But I still enjoyed going to work, partly because I exercised most evenings and usually woke up feeling good, and partly because I always had one or two side projects going on that had the potential to set me free. Cartooning was just one of a dozen entrepreneurial ideas I tried out during my corporate days. For years, the prospect of starting “my own thing” and leaving my cubicle behind gave me an enormous amount of energy.
    The main reason I blog is because it energizes me. I could rationalize my blogging by telling you it increases traffic on Dilbert.com by 10 percent or that it keeps my mind sharp or that I think the world is a better place when there are more ideas in it. But the main truth is that blogging charges me up. It gets me going. I don’t need another reason.
    This book is another example of something that gets my energy up. I like to think that someone might read this collection of ideas and find a few thoughts that help. That possibility is tremendously motivating for me. So while writing takes me away from my friends and family for a bit, it makes me a better person when I’m with them. I’m happier and more satisfied with my life. The energy metric helps make my choices easier.
    “Energy” is a simple word