How To Screw Things Up (In A Good Way)
Failure is a miserable experience, no matter your personality or wiring.
I’m possibly the least competitive person you know (or don’t know), and I don’t like the feeling of failure. It doesn’t feel good. Winning feels better.
Even if you don’t care about winning that much.
But, like it or not failure is a reality. It’s going to happen. You’re going to blow it. Trip and fall. Mess up the formula on the spreadsheet. Release the wrong product at the wrong time with the wrong marketing campaign. Screw up an important relationship. Say the wrong thing. Do the wrong thing.
It can take on any number of forms.
Mistakes happen. Failure is not only an option. It’s inevitable.
Here’s the best way to do it.
Fail Fast
Try things. See if they work. When you see they don’t work, stop and try something else. The problem with sunk-cast fallacy is that we think we need to continue investing until this thing works.
Don’t.
Stop.
Recognize what’s not working and move on as quickly as possible.
Fail Forward
Learn with every failure. Once you kill the thing that’s not working, do a post-mortem and learn from it. Adjust and try again.