Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic strips, died yesterday.

I first stumbled on Scott on an episode of the Tim Ferriss Show. We’re going back almost a decade now, but I remember Scott waxing lyrical on random topics like hypnosis, the creative process and how he turned Dilbert into the success it became.

I was utterly drawn in.

Scott came across as someone who thought deeply and who wasn’t afraid to go against the grain.

Take his main ethos for example:

The power of NOT being world-class.

This might raise a few eyebrows in a culture which says “always aim for greatness”.

But Scott advocated the idea that it’s not how skilful you are that matters. What matters is the number of skills you have.

Scott put it like this:

“I’m a rich and famous cartoonist who doesn’t draw well. At social gatherings, I’m not the funniest person in the room. My writing skills are good, not great. I also have years of corporate business experience which most cartoonists do not. In the early years of Dilbert, my business experience served as fodder for the comic. Eventually I discovered my business skills were essential in navigating Dilbert from a cult hit to a household name”

This "good + good > excellent" idea casts doubt on the idea that we need world class talent or ungodly amounts of hard work to achieve success.

In fact, on 4^th May 2023 I wrote a daily email about my plan to use this EXACT idea from Scott in my writing/coaching biz.

And I have.

Clearly I'm not a world class coach. I’m not a world class writer either. But since I took my first dainty steps almost four years ago and then diligently studied, practised and applied myself ever since, I’ve got to the point where my coaching and writing combo is standing on its own two feet.

Plus, like Scott, I have an ace up my sleeve:

15+ years of corporate banking experience.

Scott was a master at poking at the nuttiness of office life in his Dilbert comics. And while I take a similar view to Scott (we should all look at corporate life with a cartoonist’s eye), knowing how corporate life works (the people, the politics, the processes and what gets the head honchos perking up) is one hell of an advantage when it comes to running my Mindset & Clarity workshops and Mindset & Clarity Beach Bar.

Corporate life is the spark for many of my daily emails too.

Back to Scott though:

Scott would LITERALLY use his job to support his cartoonish ambitions.

In his autobiography How To Fail At Almost Everything And Still Win Big (worth a read or three), Scott writes about the time he got diagnosed with focal dystonia. This is basically hand muscle cramps and NOT what you want when you rely on your hands for your craft.

When Scott saw a doctor and asked about the cure, the answer was blunt:

There is no cure.

In Scott’s words:

“My dream of being a cartoonist for the rest of my life was over unless I found a way to be the first person in the world to beat focal dystonia”

So what did he do?

Back to Scott:

“At my day job, as I sat through endless boring meetings, I started practicing my drawing motion by touching my pen to paper for a full second before feeling the onset of a pinkie spasm. Eventually it was two seconds, then five.

One day, after I trained myself to hold pen to paper for several seconds without a spasm, my brain suddenly and unexpectedly rewired itself and removed the dystonia altogether.

My hand doctor said I’m part of the literature on this topic now”

A better story I could not find to demonstrate Scott Adams’ attitude to life. He didn’t wallow in misery, throw his arms in the air or resign himself to his fate. He just adjusted to reality and kept going.

I think that might even be the whole secret to life right there.

It was something Scott Adams epitomised too.

I mentioned Scott’s book just now. Well, there’s a chapter in the book where Scott lists out his favourite failures. There are too many to mention here. But reading how Scott created a meditation guide which sold three copies, invested his savings into the corporate success story Enron and even tried to create a food product from Dilbert’s success (a burrito called the Dilberito - I shit you not) was in equal parts surprising and inspiring.

It really rammed home the idea that yes, there will be failures along the way. 

But what separates the people who are moving from those standing still is what they do with those failures.

Scott gave good advice on how to do this too.

He explained it using his dog, Snickers. When Snickers decided it was playtime, she’d follow Scott around and stare at him with such intensity that eventually he’d stop doodling and take her into his yard. So from Snickers' perspective, playtime wasn’t up to Scott. It was up to how hard she stared.

Scott’s point was that we all live inside our own interpretations, most of which are probably wrong. So we might as well pick the ones that make life lighter, happier or more workable.

That’s spot on.

We do it without realising too.

In fact, Scott’s comic strips themselves were the perfect example of how we all fill in the blanks.

Scott deliberately gave Dilbert no last name, never named Dilbert’s company and even Dilbert’s boss didn’t get a name. Scott did this so his readers projected their own workplace onto the comic strips. That way, the strip became about their job too.

Fascinating stuff. It's also one of the hypnosis principles Scott talked about on that podcast with Ferriss.

Anyway, I’ve been typing away for a while now .

But I did want to pay my respects to a guy who had a huge influence on my coaching, my writing and my life. Scott’s teachings are baked into everything I do like sugar is baked into a chocolate cake.

Not least his knack for adjusting to reality instead of fighting it.

That feels like a useful thing to bear in mind today.

If this email has piqued your interest for all things Scott Adams, I’d highly suggest checking out his books.

RIP Scott.

To fulfilment, 

Tom