Scott Adams is the creator of Dilbert, one of the most popular comic strips of the past quarter century. He has been a full-time cartoonist since 1995, after 16 years as a technology worker for companies like Crocker National Bank and Pacific Bell. His many bestsellers include The Dilbert Principle and Dogbert’s Top Secret Management Handbook. He lives outside of San Francisco.

Everything you want out of life is in that bubbling vat of failure. The trick is to get the good stuff out.

Scott Adams has likely failed at more things than anyone you’ve ever met, including his corporate career, his inventions, his investments, and two restaurants. So how did he go from hapless office worker to the creator of Dilbert, one of the world’s most famous syndicated comic strips, in just a few years?

In this funny yet serious book full of personal stories, Adams shares the strategies he has used to invite failure in, embrace it, then pick its pocket. Among his contrarian lessons:

• Goals are for losers. Systems are for winners.
• 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 has a funny, refreshingly considered set of ideas about how to find success—and what that success will look like when one gets there.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Scott Adams has drawn nearly 9,000 Dilbert cartoons since the strip began, in 1989, and his cynical take on management ideas, the effectiveness of bosses, and cubicle life has affected the worldview of millions. But he built his successful career mainly through trial and error—a whole lot of error, to be exact.
—Harvard Business Review