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.
If you're not failing you're not trying.
21–30 of 50 posts
Re: If you're not failing you're not trying.
#22I 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…
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.
Re: If you're not failing you're not trying.
#23There's so many articles these days about failing. What if you fail to fail?
Re: If you're not failing you're not trying.
#24I 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…
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 obstac…
[deleted]
Re: If you're not failing you're not trying.
#25I 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…
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 sim…
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.
Re: If you're not failing you're not trying.
#26This 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:
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
Re: If you're not failing you're not trying.
#27Michael Jordan Failure Commercial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45mMioJ5szc After growing up watching MJ play, it speaks volumes.
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!
Re: If you're not failing you're not trying.
#28The 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.
Re: If you're not failing you're not trying.
#29Last 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.
Re: If you're not failing you're not trying.
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 sim…
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.
Not the point. Even if he never trained for that specific instance before, he was ready for failure.
When things went wrong, he didn't lose his cool or panic. He was ready for things to go wrong even if he wasn't expecting it.
By failing all of the time during training, he conditioned himself to not be upset about failure.