How to Be a Complete & Utter Failure in Life, Work & Everything: 39 1/2 Steps to Lasting Underachievement

by Steve McDermott

An amusing and incredibly useful compendium of personal and business development ideas. This is the ultimate un-improvement guide, offering 39 and a half steps to being a failure, and delivered in a 'how not to' way using the power of reverse psychology to make its point while making you laugh.

Genres: Self Help

150 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 2002

Reviews

[Robert Day · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started off being intensely irritated by this book. Instead of saying, for example: 'be nice to people' the author instead writes: 'don't be nice to people' and after a while, instead of being irritated, I got confused.

So I started over.

With a highlighting pen ... a yellow one in case you're wondering.

Then I started to make some real headway and I started to enjoy myself. My brain started to work properly too now that I was making effort just to see - and highlight just the positivity.

I noticed that I only had to highlight about two or three lines on a page in order to both capture the positive and necessary statements. This is probably the case in all books really - but it was made very obvious here.

Because the advise here is so very good - I almost wanted to type up the highlighted statements and release it as a new book. But hey - maybe life is just a little too short for all that.

About half way through I came across some reference to NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming) and it reminded me that the brain only processes positive statements and so (theoretically) strips out all the 'do not' parts of statement. Maybe this is why the author wrote the book this way - maybe not.

The thing is though - maybe the brain does do this, but I bet it sure takes a lot of processing power to do it.

I gave this book five stars because I made it good with my trusty highlighter. Without my extra processing - one way or another - it would have been a zero.

Be warned!!

[Rod · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to be an utter failure in life, do not read this book as it may increase your confidence and energy, leading into an upward spiral of successes at home and work.

[Rodie King]

As you can see I started this book earlier this year . I love the quote to avoid in chapter 39
' The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems.' Gandhi
Also the last chapter 39 and a half has a couple of lovely Disclaims ' for those of you foolish enough to be pondering doing exact opposite of the steps suggested in this guide, be careful with step 17 Don't wear a parachute !

[Kulveer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this whilst going through my 'self-help' reading phase. I thought it stood out. I liked the self-deprecating nature of the book. And, actually learnt a lot because it was written in a non-lecturing tone. Would recommends.

[Cheryl Crichton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliantly light and funny, how can you not fail to be motivated. Give it a go if you like funny business books.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was okay the don't do this type of advice got old after awhile. Some of the stories and advice was good. While some of it ignored reality. There are probably better advice books out there.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

some weak jokes, but wise and fun overall