Ask HN: What was your failure in 2015?

Hey,

Yes, I know we all are not open to admit our failure. And actually I started following hackernews to get inspired by others success. But reality is, we all fail.Some of those we share when we get successful but most of the failure we hide or just pretend we did not fail.

Somewhere I read, "smart people learn from others mistake". So here is our chance, lets speak about our failure, it will help everyone. I am starting with my own failure:

"I wanted to switch job because I got too comfortable with my job, not being challenged and most importantly not learning new staff (technology, process and etc). But I got a promotion which came with a handsome raise so I did not switch. But when I go to bed, most of the night I got the feeling I did not do anything significant , basically a wasted day. And when I looked for new job I found I am getting paid well above average and most of the new offer is around average of my level. So the plain the thing is I am afraid of switching because I will be less paid and I can not afford it. But I am still looking for new challenge who knows what will happen in 2016".

Thanks in advance.

My failure isn't the good kind of failure.

Mine was inaction.

My biggest failure in 2015 was probably that I was too reactionary. I lacked the autonomy that I often had in the more distant past. Instead of making and following long-term plans, I found myself doing small projects and waiting for people's reactions before proceeding to do something else. What I would do next was too often based on the responses I received. There have been times in the distant past where I was the opposite -- too much autonomy for too long -- leading to building a large project that nobody really wanted. In 2015 I saw the opposite end of the spectrum. Recently recognising this phenomenon has helped to remind me that both ends -- heavy autonomy and heavy interaction -- are bad for productivity. I am now thinking that perhaps autonomous spurts of 3 to 9 weeks at a time are best in the long run. Waiting for a reaction after just a few days of work is too short a time, and building alone for 9 months without validation is too dangerous.

You don't sound negative, you sound very reasonable that's why I deleted the parent comment, happy new year!