Adams, Scott. How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life (p. 31).

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big - Scott Adams

Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed - Ben Rich

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen Covey

* Masters of Doom, by David Kushner

* What Doesn't Kill Us, by Scott Carney

* Bad Blood, by John Carreyrou

* The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondō

* How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, by Scott Adams

[1]http://amzn.to/2952RAD

Scott Adams talks about combining skills like that in his book How to Fail at Almost Everything And Still Win Big [0]. He talks about his own combination of skills being "funnier than average" and "decent at drawing". I thought it was a good read. His talk of systems vs goals was also very worthwhile.

0: https://www.amazon.com/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still/dp/1...

[1] cf "How to Fail at almost Everything and Still Win Big" by Scott Adams

Since you mentioned the latest book by Scott Adams, it's called "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life" [0]. I read it recently and I think it's a good book. It has some nonobvious ideas, like systems thinking vs. goal-oriented thinking.

[0] - http://www.amazon.com/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still-ebook...

Until I read "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big"[1] which makes the strongest argument I've seen for having a "talent stack" and combining skills that aren't typically combined. Each skill increases your odds and essentially this boils down to Good + Good > Excellent. You can leverage a combination of average skills to great effect.

The author describes himself as mediocre at art, decent at writing a joke and having business experience... not that noteworthy in and of themselves, but mixed together resulted in Dilbert.

1. https://www.amazon.com/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still-eboo...

Here are some of his blog posts on it:

https://www.scottadamssays.com/2013/11/18/goals-vs-systems/

https://www.scottadamssays.com/2014/01/21/goals-are-for-lose...

Personally, I don't really think of it as goals and habits being mutually exclusive. Specifically, I wholeheartedly agree with your comment, "The only way to know which habits to cultivate (or rely on) is to have a desired result in mind."

-"Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Khaneman
-"The Undoing Project" by Michael Lewis
-"Fooled by Randomness" and "The Black Swan" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
-"Pre-suasion" by Cialdini
-"The Moral Animal" by Robert Wright
-"The Most Important Thing" by Howard Marks
-"Everybody Lies" by Seth Stevens-Davidowitz
-"How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big" by Scott Adams
-The "Freakonomics" Trilogy

One of my favorite quotes:
“I put myself in a position where luck was more likely to happen. I tried a lot of different ventures, stayed optimistic, put in the energy, prepared myself by learning as much as I could, and stayed in the game long enough for luck to find me.” pg - 158

My top ten list for the year:
https://www.gregkamradt.com/gregkamradt/top-reads-2018

[0] http://amzn.com/1591847745 (not an affiliate link)

www.amazon.com/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still/dp/1591846

I'm reminded of a story from Scott Adams

>A week after graduating college, I took my first flight in an airplane. I got in a conversation with a businessman in the seat next to me. He was CEO of a company that made aircraft screws. He told me that his career system involved a continuous search for a better job. No matter how much he liked his current job, he always interviewed for better ones. I assume he failed to get most of the jobs he interviewed for, but over time his system worked, and he became a CEO.

You could try that.

(http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102892840346/systems

or see his book How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big)

* 'Better' by Atul Gawande (also his 'Complications' and of course 'The Checklist Manifesto')

* 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' by Bill Bryson.

Fiction:

* 'Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders' by Neil Gaiman

* 'The Name of the Wind' by Patrick Rothfuss

Graphic novels ("comics"):

* 'Watchmen' by Alan Moore

* 'Promethea' by Alan Moore (actually I'm halfway through this, and loving every bit of it)

Special mentions:

* 'How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big' by Scott Adams - I only gave this a 4-star rating on Goodreads when I finished it, but I'm finding that I'm usefully applying more and more of the things I learnt from this book as the months go by.

* 'Yoga Benefits Are in Breathing Less' by Artour Rakhimov - to be considered more of an article, taught me useful stuff about O2/CO2 balance in the body, their respective effects, and hence ultimately the effects of different rates of breathing.

The 48 Rules of Power - Robert Greene

Fooled By Randomness - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big - Scott Adams

Basic Economics - Thomas Sowell

The World Is Flat - Thomas L. Friedman

The Penguin History of the World: Sixth Edition - J. M. Roberts and Odd Arne Westad