How To Fail At Almost Everything And Still Win Big Summary

Instead of trying hard to listen to his side, I assumed that my thoughts about him were correct so I took a peripheral route around him to persuade. My tactic of using persuasion went well and I was not caught. In the book, “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big”, Scott Adams talks about the power of persuasion and knowing how people’s brains work.

You’ve heard the old saying that knowledge is power. But knowledge of psychology is the purest form of that power. No matter what you’re doing or how well you’re doing it, you can benefit from a deeper understanding of how the mind interprets its world using only the clues that somehow find a way into your brain through the holes in your skull. (Adams 116)

Instead of having an honest conversation I talked to my roommate about his future. I painted a picture of the future if he continued to party every night and not do well in school. My painting was

dreary and sad it involved all the imagery that I could throw at him to get him to realize how destructive his behavior was. The reason I had such a focus on using words and ideas that presented an image is attributed to Gerry Spence. He wrote in his book “How to Argue and Win Every Time” that,
Words that do not create images should be discarded. Words that have no intrinsic emotional or visual content ought to be avoided. Words that are directed to the sterile intellectual head-place should be abandoned. Use simple words, words that create pictures and attention and that generate feeling. (Spence 104)
Him being full of himself meant that he cared about himself, playing into his fear of failure and the lack of social status that comes with being a failure triggered in him a contemplation on his actions.

During his contemplation of his actions I avoided bringing up past incidents because I wanted to focus on the present conflict and not turn up his defensive mindset. Also bringing up past conflicts can overwhelm the person, Malcom Gladwell explains this in his book “The Tipping Point”, he says “we can only handle so much information at once. Once we pass a certain boundary, we become overwhelmed. What I’m describing here is an intellectual capacity – our ability to process raw information” (Gladwell 176). When people feel attacked or criticize they will fight for their side, even if they know they are in the wrong. My approach made it seem that I was fighting for him. Seeing me as an ally rather than a critic made him more open to listening and understanding my ideas. I also applied a clever marketing tactic when making him see in his bad future. In the book “Impossible to Ignore”, by Carmen Simon, she writes a key point is, “Tie your message to a current but unfulfilled goal. People tend to pay greater attention to and remember more of what is not finished because the brain seeks closure” (Simon 68). The goal I mentioned was graduating college. He wants to graduate college so showing him that his goal is unfulfilled and becoming out of reach, this made message effective.

To end our story, we need two more things to bring closure to our narrative, how the conflict was exited and what type of conflict was it. The exits that we took together when in tandem, he apologized for his actions after he internalized the fear of being a dropout with no future. After hearing a genuine apology from him I forgave his actions. My forgiveness was more for his sake because I still do not like his actions and honestly do not think he cares about the effects of his actions on others. The reason he apologized, in my view, was because he was selfishly motivated to do so. His apology was self-serving and was to ease his mind, he cannot stand knowing that somebody that he knows is upset with him.

Now diagnosing the type of conflict is relatively easy because this type of conflict is seen every day around the world between roommates. It is a difference in value between two people. In both of our perfect worlds there is opposites of what we want. He would like to have had twenty people over at the apartment drinking alcohol while jamming out to the latest 21 Savage song until six am. My ideal would be a house that has some mellow seventies rock music playing gently in the background until about nine pm then peace and quiet afterwards. Not to mention that the only person that would be my girlfriend. A value conflict is hard to solve because both sides tend to like and want different things.

After the conflict my roommate and I get along just fine.

He has not played loud music past ten pm since the incident happened, at least when I am at home. His attitude towards school has shifted slightly too, after having to drop a class fall term because of a bad grade he has had two terms of a B average and was accepted into the school of business at the University of Oregon. The conflict might have been a benefit to him because of his now serious approach to schooling. As for me, I have not had a night of sleep interrupted by loud subwoofers or loud party goers. The steps that I took to resolving the conflict of using persuasion to play on his fears was appropriate. Maybe not ethical, but it solved the problem for me and has a net benefit for him as well. In the end the most important thing was that both sides won in a sense and the relationship between my roommate and I is fine. Knowing that in the future anytime there is an issue when it comes to partaking in unruly behavior I can mention his future to him and see drastic improvements in a short

time.