Fail more often

“If I’m working hard, I’m wrong almost every single day — sometimes several times a day.” — Seth Godin 
We seldom get things right for the first time. 

If you look at most of the success stories (learning to ride a bike, building a product, etc) follow several steps that look like this: 

  1. Try, fail, learn. 
  2. Apply learnings, try, fail, learn some more. 
  3. Apply learnings, try, fail, learn some more.
  4. Apply learnings, try, fail, learn some more.
  5. Apply learnings, try, fail, learn some more.
  6. Apply learnings, try, succeed. 

If you want to get to step 6, you need to go through steps 1–5 (or however many steps it takes) first. 

Failing and learning isn’t something to avoid, it’s more often a prerequisite to producing the best work possible. 

Abraham Kim
Damn! 

This made me just realize that everyday I try to stack my list of successes/wins...

but I try to avoid putting even one thing on my fail-list for that day.

keni
  do you resonate with this as well? I feel like the two of us avoid daily failure everyday to our detriment.... but then we are honest about it in retrospect... but by then we realize we should've confrronted the failure sooner, faster.... learned faster.
2021-07-08 13:49:03
William Liao
abrahamKim
I've definitely been like that too - I've only recently been humbled how integral failure really is to accomplishing the things we set out to do. 

Avoiding failure inadvertently stunts growth/progress. 

If I ever have kids, one of the things I imagine I'll make a point to bring up at our proverbial dinner table conversations is the question: "what did you fail at today?" 

With a smile :)
2021-07-08 20:53:06
Keni
Yes I resonate with it as well Sir Abe. I have thought about failure and wrote about it many times. This was one post I wrote a while back - https://adagia.org/content/1692 

It is still very hard to chase a failure. Or not feel hurt at experiencing failure. I think it gets harder as we age. It is easier on our egos when we are young. Culture also has a big impact on a person's openness to failure in general. My mom couldn't comprehend what I meant when I talked about exposing children to being ok with failure. :) 

It is best to help children be ok with failing cause there are very few people who go through life without failing. Might as well experience it when the cost isn't that severe. 
2021-07-09 03:08:05
Abraham Kim
Nobody goes through life without failure.


2021-07-09 12:04:48