Adams’ business book is so good that I have to share his closing statement. He sums up his strategy and I agree whole-heartedly with him. I think if you start with small changes and build solid personal systems, those systems will carry you to great things. Adams writes on the last page of his book:
Focus on your diet first and get that right so you will have enough energy to want to exercise. Exercise will further improve your energy, and that will in turn make you more productive, more creative, more positive, more socially desirable, and more able to handle life’s little bumps.
Once you optimize your personal energy, all you need for success is luck. You can’t directly control luck, but you can move from strategies with bad odds to strategies with good odds. For example, learning multiple skills makes your odds for success dramatically higher than learning one skill. If you learn to control your ego you can pick strategies that scare off the people who feel embarrassment, thus allowing you to compete against a smaller field. And if you stay in the game long enough, luck has a better chance of finding you.
Avoid career traps such as finding jobs that require you to sell your limited supply of time while preparing you for nothing better.
Happiness is the only useful goal in life, and unless you are a sociopath, your own happiness will depend on being good to others. And happiness tends to happen naturally whenever you have good health, resources, and a flexible schedule.
Get your health right first, acquire resources and new skills through hard work and look for an opportunity that gives you a flexible schedule someday.
Some skills are more important than others and you should acquire as many of those key skills as possible, including public speaking, business writing, a working understanding of the psychology of persuasion, an understanding of basic technology concepts, social skills, proper voice technique, good grammar, and basic accounting.
Develop a habit of simplifying, learn how to make small talk with strangers and how to avoid being an asshole. If you get that stuff right, and almost anyone can, you will be hard to stop.
It might help some of you to think of yourselves as moist robots and not skin bags full of magic mystery. If you control the inputs, you can control the outcomes, give or take some luck.
Eat right, exercise, think positively, learn as much as possible, stay out of jail, and good things can happen.
Look for patterns in every part of life. From diet, to exercise, and any component of success. Try to find scientific backing for your observed patterns and use yourself as a laboratory and see if the patterns hold for you.
Most important, understand that goals are for losers and systems are for winners. People who seem to have good luck are often the people who have a system that allows luck to find them.
And always remember that failure is your friend. It is the raw material of success. Invite it in, learn from it, and don’t let it leave until you pick its pocket. That’s a system.
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