If you aren’t getting rejected, your goals aren’t ambitious enough (2010)

http://cdixon.org/2010/09/12/getting-rejected/

by vbv • 12 years ago

53 21 12 years ago

cdixon.org

supercoder2• 12 years ago

Who rejected you today ?

nodelessness• 12 years ago

Girl who works in the cubicle down the hall.

brador2• 12 years ago

Is there an optimal rejection rate? How would you calculate such a thing?

joelrunyon2• 12 years ago

This is a good point. If you're getting rejected all the time - what's the chance that you're simply wrong?

What's the chance that everyone else is?

At some point you have to have some sort of breakthrough or you're just the guy that got rejected 1,000 times.

RollAHardSix• 12 years ago

Tell that to Thomas Edison...

But yes, it would be wise for people to not believe that they are a special and unique snowflake who will succeed no matter what in the face of adversity...the world just doesn't work like that.

I guess you could say shoot for the stars, but stay realistic.

brador2• 12 years ago

From my back of the envelope calculation, you should be getting rejected at a minimum 1/e ~36% (that's the failure rate due to random chance in a perfect system).

Max rejection rate cannot be found due to a tendency to infinity.

Key takeaway - don't let your failure rate get below 36%.

nl• 12 years ago

The article actually says: "If you aren’t getting rejected on a daily basis, your goals aren’t ambitious enough."

omegant2• 12 years ago

This is in my experience the hardest part of being a founder. Is where I procastinate the most.

michaelochurch• 12 years ago

It's not about rejection rates. It's about what you learn, and the progress. Numbers (of this sort) don't matter.

Learning tends to happen when things don't go as you expected they would. Unexpected good and bad events can have that effect.

Rejection and failure don't have intrinsic merit, and I've seen plenty of people (with the luxury to fail, due to trust funds or connections or whatever) who continually fail and don't grow. But if you never fail-- of course, there are degrees of failure and total failure is uncommon and still undesirable-- you're probably taking too few risks.

donquichotte• 12 years ago

I quite enjoyed the first comment:

"People that reject me are doing me a favor.

They're not rejecting me or my product. They're rejecting the combination of me and them together.

They're telling me we would have a bad relationship. And they're probably right."

supercoder2• 12 years ago

"They're rejecting the combination of me and them together."

That definitely still sound like rejection.

If you downvote this, you're not actually rejecting the comment but just a combination of you and this comment.

jmnicolas• 12 years ago

Well I guess if we can transpose this maxim to dating, my goals are mightily ambitious !

ukoki• 12 years ago

This also applies for the job market — if you got an offer with few interviews and little negotiation, you should've asked for more / applied for something more challenging.

nsxwolf• 12 years ago

Or just maybe - your goals are exactly as ambitious as you want them to be, and perfectly in line with your abilities.

SuperChihuahua• 12 years ago

Ted talk: Surprising Lessons From 100 Days of Rejection (http://youtu.be/ZFWyseydTkQ)

futurist• 12 years ago

The video is a classic. Here's what inspired him to do it: http://rejectiontherapy.com

curiouslurker• 12 years ago

This made my day. Got rejected twice yesterday by funding leads I that looked promising. One told me, the best I can do for you is be brutally honest and spent almost an hour dissecting my business to shreds. The other said "I think you are a great guy and I am sure it will turns out well" with a chuckle, but told the guy who gave me the brutal feed back how effed up my plan was.

If you aren’t getting rejected, your goals aren’t ambitious enough (2010)

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