Assignment 21A – Reading Reflection 2

Assignment 21A – Reading Reflection 2

• What was the general theme or argument of the book?

• The general theme was how you can fail a lot on the journey, but still succeed in the end. There are many factors that influence the world around us, and luck can play a hand in helping you achieve success.  When you put yourself in a position to maximize your chances of getting lucky, eventually you will, despite any missteps along the way.
• How did the book, in your opinion, connect with and enhance what you are learning in ENT 3003?
• In this class, I learned the key concept that things are often the opposite of what you’d think.  Entrepreneurship operates in a way that least matches what everyone thinks.  Adams and the philosophies and his ways of thinking are often contrary to the societal norms.  The idea of everything being a process is also interconnected to entrepreneurship.  Success, like starting a business, comes from following a dynamic process that can change along the way.  Identifying and maximizing your available opportunities and chances of success is also a key principle of entrepreneurship.  At its core, Adams’s entire mindset throughout the book is that of an entrepreneur.
• If you had to design an exercise for this class, based on the book you read, what would that exercise involve?
• I would have an exercise to design or elaborate on your own everyday ‘systems’.  Adams considers goals to be too much in the future, believing ‘systems’ of things you do every day are more crucial to focus on.

·        I would ask students to log and later reflect on what they spent the most time on, and whether they were satisfied with it. Oftentimes, time slips away from us, and you could be spending a lot of time doing unproductive things.  Once you consciously take notice of how much time you’re wasting, you can improve and put your limited time to better use with other activities.

• What was your biggest surprise or 'aha' moment when reading the book? In other words, what did you learn that differed most from your expectations?
• The thing that most surprised me was Adams’s opinion on goals and passions. I am a person who likes to set goals to achieve, and seeing Adams’s take on it was intriguing.  Considering the title and the author’s Dilbert background, I expected a comedic book, but I found some parts were filled with a surprising amount of insight.  Particularly the concept that being selfish can sometimes be good, if it’s shown with the right things.  We need to take care of ourselves before we can shift our focus toward others.  I agree with Adams’s take on news; I only watch it to see how the economy and stocks are being affected.  A lot of the book is filled with ideas like this that seem crazy, or an out of the norm way of looking at things, but Adams presents them so they make sense.