If you're not failing you're not trying.

http://dshipper.posterous.com/if-youre-not-failing-youre-not-trying

by dshipper • 15 years ago

95 47 15 years ago

dshipper.posterous.com

scrrr• 15 years ago

I find the notion of failing as something that should be aspired to worrisome. Often the cost of failure is too high.

You don't want an airliner-pilot to seek failure. If banks make a big mistake and we slide into recession, people loose jobs, should we pat them on the shoulder for trying? What about the judge that sends an innocent man to prison? What about the solider that accidentally shoots an unarmed man? Can we assume he has learned from his mistake and will now be a better soldier? While this might be the case, the answer must be: No, we shouldn't.

Instead of postulating a culture of "fail often", we should find a higher standard. One that is based on hard work, sober and educated decision making and quality.

Furthermore it can be argued that one can learn more from success than from failure. Failure can be a byproduct of trying, but by no means it should be inverted into a measurement of success.

Let's stop this trend towards failure-ism now. I have a feeling that it might have very negative consequences.

tuhin2• 15 years ago

We do not expect an airline flyer to be learning how to do somersaults in air whit passengers.

The post is to be seen in the light of big corporations and individuals who are too afraid to fail and always go for the safer option which is mostly the local minima.

To be able to reach the global maxima of one's potential when you are at the peak of a local maxima, you might need to slide down and then learn to climb the higher mountain.

dshipper7• 15 years ago

Whoa I love the local maxima metaphor that's awesome. And I agree, failure is all about personal growth and overcoming fear.

dshipper7• 15 years ago

Thanks for your comment scrrr, and while I see where you're coming from I don't agree. You brought up airline pilots and how they shouldn't seek failure. Obviously you don't want them to seek failure while they are in the sky. But in fact they seek failure ALL THE TIME while being trained. They simulate systems malfunctions and bad weather conditions and they mess up. In the simulator. But when they face those obstacles in the air they are invariably better prepared than had they never challenged themselves in the first place in the name of success.

mgkimsal• 15 years ago

They seek simulated failure of the equipment to test themselves. They do not set out intending to fail in their reactions to the simulated failure. But, if they do, it's a simulator and they can start over with new lessons learned.

racbart• 15 years ago

It is not about professional activities. I do not expect airline pilot to try new tricks fully loaded with passengers, but I appreciate Wrights brothers efforts to try to put the man in the air in the first place. If they were afraid to try, if hundreds of others who tried it before them and failed were afraid to try, we could be still dreaming about flying.

Bit it's not about innovation either. It's about pedestrian activities which one is afraid to take because of fear of failure. It could be going to play football with friends after 20 years of not playing. It could be trying to ride the first bike a kid got in front of his neighbours. It could be starting your own business. It could be anything one would like to do but his fear of failure stops him.

It's not about taking stupid risks (the airline pilot). It's about calculated risks and eliminating public failure as something one consider critically harmful. If your failure could cost you $1000 and some public exposure and it's the reason you won't try, but you would try if it'd cost you $2000 without public exposure - well, that's what this post is about. To learn to put less "value" on public exposure of your failures so that you'd stop considering it being such a big cost of potential failure.

CeiII• 15 years ago

You need to manage your risk. Without a risk management strategy, failure is likely to be worse. Obviously a pilot won't blindly seek failure to improve (I'll head for that mountain to see how well this baby handles crash landing). '...accidently...' - A lot can learnt (and mitigated against) from accidents.

I agree it's not black and white, but I think failure is more stark and thus sticks with us, helping us to grow.

jasonkester5• 15 years ago

But that airline pilot has been failing on a regular basis for years.

He learned to fly in a little single engine plane, and routinely recovered it from stalls and even spins. His instructor would have him close his eyes, then throw the plane out of balance and have him attempt to correct it by feel (and he'd often fail to do so). He's crashed that very jet you're riding in dozens or even hundreds of times in the simulator. He's even recovered a real one from a stall during his certification.

The only reason he's good enough to be trusted to fly with you in the back is because he's been training to failure all those years.

mkr-hn3• 15 years ago

I wonder how many times Chesley Sullenberger had to break a simulated plane in half before he could land a real one in the Hudson River.

jimfl• 15 years ago

A good engineering team will design with various simultaneous failure modes in mind. I've never ever seen this mindset on the business side.

tuhin2• 15 years ago

I wrote about this in detail some time back: http://tuhinkumar.com/journal/screw-up/

Think-Screw-Iterate-Screw-Iterate-Succeed (very similar to Feynman algorithm)

svdad• 15 years ago

I think you mean

Think-Screw-Iterate-Screw-Iterate-Screw-Succeed-Screw

If you're getting it that often, why stop?

bluethunder• 15 years ago

True growth only lies at the edge of failure

dshipper7• 15 years ago

Agreed, thanks for your thoughts.

jasonlynes2• 15 years ago

i was just reading about this today in "Rework", about failing in obscurity. similar notion to failing at something mundane with the M&M's. relish the opportunity you have while operating in obscurity, to fail as often as you can so you can adjust and learn and tweak and process all the data that comes with that.

also reminds me of the zuckerberg quote: "unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough." failure isn't the goal, rather a byproduct of good work.

dshipper7• 15 years ago

I had never heard that zuckerberg quote before but I love it do you remember where you got it from?

jasonlynes2• 15 years ago

on startup quote: http://startupquote.com/post/1624569753

dshipper7• 15 years ago

Saved on evernote thanks

mbesto• 15 years ago

Michael Jordan Failure Commercial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45mMioJ5szc

After growing up watching MJ play, it speaks volumes.

dshipper7• 15 years ago

Well played sir

digitaltothem• 15 years ago

I love the MJ example. This is actually what I first thought of when I read the title of the article. The way I see it, the point is in trying, giving your best and not giving up, not in chasing failure. One should not be afraid to fail, but should always strive for success. And work on it!

jkahn• 15 years ago

I don't agree with this whole glorification-of-failure stuff that is posted occasionally.

It's not that I see failure as particularly bad, or horrible. It's that it's not the point. The point is to WIN. When you launch a startup, and fail, try again. But wouldn't it have been better to succeed? Isn't the point to make money, or build a platform, or win the game? Not every product has a market. Not every customer call will result in a sale. But the point is to make a winner.

Why would you purposely seek out failure?

Of course, the undercurrent here is that in order to succeed - in order to win big - you must risk a lot, and risk failure. Risking failure is necessary. Making mistakes happens. If you're not risking failure or humiliation, you're not playing the best game you can.

Risking failure is not the same as actually failing.

Maybe that's just semantics, but it is a very important difference. If you're purposely seeking failure, I feel sorry for you.

dshipper7• 15 years ago

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and I see your point, and I think that all of us have the goal of winning in mind. Of course it would be better to just succeed right off the bat. But that's not realistic. Success is a process.

This post wasn't really about seeking out failure as it was about recognizing that we have limitations and taking that as a challenge to overcome them. It was also about further realizing that failure at something isn't necessarily an indictment of your ability to succeed but a sign that you are pushing yourself sufficiently that if you keep learning from your mistakes you WILL succeed eventually.

momotomo• 15 years ago

Second this. It's the same as the rejection therapy thing that started catching on. You need to be conscious of failure and unexpected outcomes but don't turn it into yet another friggin' cult movement or goal.

Set your target, go hard towards it, if you fail or come off the rails, accept it, assess it, suck it up and keep going.

All I see this doing is encouraging people to be wreckless, and not in a constructive way. Go hard, but hard enough that it's of benefit to you and your project, have some regard for the outcome that you actually want.

jasonkester5• 15 years ago

Real world example: Rock Climbing

There are two basic approaches to route climbing with ropes: "Traditional Climbing" with removable gear placed as the rock allows and the potential for injury if you were to fall, and "Sport Climbing", with closely spaced fixed gear, where falling is a matter of course.

"Trad" climbers will often go years, decades, entire careers without ever falling off the rock. "Sport" climbers will average around a dozen good falls on a typical day out.

So there you have two observable groups, one where failure is not an option, the other where failure is commonplace. Given the difference in mindset, it's not surprising that you'll often see 14 year old kids with one year of experience in a world where falling is just part of the game out-climbing men with 20 years experience who've never truly exceeded their limits.

kahawe2• 15 years ago

Unfair comparison - falling as a 14 year old is a whole different thing than falling at age 30 or 40, not just from body size and weight.

jasonkester5• 15 years ago

Fair comparison. 40 year climbers with 5 years experience and a willingness to push themselves to failure routinely climb harder than 40 year old climbers with 25 years experience gained climbing without falling.

Falling onto a dynamic rope is not in any way traumatic, even to an old guy like myself. The equipment really is that good. A 10 foot lead fall into space is nowhere near as demanding on the body as, say, a lay-up in Basketball.

nicpottier• 15 years ago

I'm not sure I totally agree with this, but I'll go with it, and expand upon it even more.

Those climbers who primarily boulder, that's climbing without a rope, fairly close to the ground, are better still. Because they work on insanely difficult problems and fall all the time.

reemrevnivek• 15 years ago

You're missing one of the points of the article: When you fail, it has to be cheap (i.e, a rope attached so you fall a few feet).

Bouldering and falling all the time does not mean that you're failing cheaply. Falling hurts!

ecaradec2• 15 years ago

Failing is a question of time scaling. If you look at a small piece of time or at a larger piece of time everything fail : - Roman fail seen from today, that was a big empire - MS is failing today - Facebook failed sometimes and will fail one day If you look at a micro level there is failure everywhere, bugs, stuff, missed contracts. If you fail AND are still growing indeed then it's actually a success... for the moment.

rheide• 15 years ago

There's so many articles these days about failing. What if you fail to fail?

robeastham• 15 years ago

This post is genius I'm off out to buy a pack of Maltesers right now - I hate M&Ms. It made me think of this picture too:

http://londonleisureandpleasure.blogspot.com/2011/02/you-hav...

A friend of mine sent it to me a while back but I remembered it recently whilst watching the uprising in Egypt. It now hangs on the wall in my bathroom. I'm sure I've been failing unwittingly and wittingly with my new start-up:

http://www.mightycv.com

In spite of any failure "I know the only thing I'm addicted to right now is winning" - read this inspirational and somewhat related post by Jason Baptiste from OnStartups for a great take on this now infamous Charlie Sheen quote, entrepreneurship and failure: http://bit.ly/efGLFi

michaeldhopkins• 15 years ago

The key to this post is that the candy-throwing experiment is not failure. It's training to become oblivious to public criticism, so one doesn't choke and fail in actual endeavors.

kabuks• 15 years ago

Last night as I was closing my laptop for the day I noticed that I had a lump in my throat and a clenched feeling in my chest.

I was lightly entertaining a passing thought about shutting down my startup.

I was thinking: "I love my startup. I put so much work and heart into it. But maybe I should shut it down."

You see, I had just finished reading a series of emails from customers telling me how unusable they thought it was. They really loved the idea, but just couldn't use it.

These were smart people, who got what we were trying to do, and yet were leaving.

And then it struck me: I was failing! That's why it's hard to breathe.

The feeling was so intolerable, and so unfamiliar (I rarely set myself in a high-probability-of-failure situation), that I didn't even know what it was.

All I knew is "This feeling must stop. At any cost"

I agree that failing isn't something to be aspired to. But I don't think that's what the OP is saying.

If I'm stretching myself, I should be feeling this more and more. And getting more comfortable with it as just part of the picture of a successful life.

idlewords• 15 years ago

If you're not failing you may be succeeding.

droz• 15 years ago

or you aren't doing anything.

wmat• 15 years ago

The "fail fast" meme is useful for me only when followed up with "deliberate practice", so I don't fail again.

_ques• 15 years ago

It is important to differentiate between

* Catastrophic failures: You fail so bad that you have no option but to trash everything and start again

* Detectable / Manageable failures: You fail, but this failure is not central to your existence, so you simply try again

While there are some cases where you have no option but to risk catastrophic failures, manageable failures are something people completely miss.

Fitness / Weight training has all sorts of examples of this, the goal is to identify the limits of your abilities and to push this limit, without risking permanent damage.

Consider this: Blogger (Pyra Collab tools), Flickr (GNE), Twitter (Odeo), Nokia Phones (losses for first 15 yrs), Google (initial focus was Enterprise Search until Adwords / Adsense acquisition) were all pushing the limits, and failing, but not so spectacularly that they didn't have resources left to pivot.

Identifying the difference, and the ability to contain possibly-catastrophic errors into manageable pieces is the true art of the startup.

toddwahnish• 15 years ago

Always an interesting debate on whether you should try and fail quickly in a project etc. The faster you fail, the more m&m's you can attempt to catch in your mouth?

If you're not failing you're not trying.

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