Failure is Not An Option

Actually, the title of the chapter in Rework says “Failure is not a rite of passage” and goes on to say that “learning from mistakes is overrated”.

I just recently re-read Rework before finishing off their second book It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work, and the authors do have contrarian views, some I can agree with and others I question. I might do some posts on certain chapters because I think they are relevant to today’s way of hyper work. These guys don’t subscribe to the “work, work, work” philosophy and have created a different way of working in their own company. They are entrepreneurial and have created their own company so you would think they would have the work, work, work beliefs in their bones, but no, they have created an alternative way of thinking about work – which is very attractive.

These books are arranged in short snippets of ideas that can be read in a nanosecond, like they have been designed for the short attention span in this digital age. For me, who like to dig in deep, this takes getting used to.

Their second premise in Rework is a counterpoint to embracing failure on your way to success: they don’t believe in failure (or at least back in 2010; in their latest book I hear nary a peep on this subject so maybe they have changed their minds). They also don’t believe you can learn from failure.

Harrumph.

I happen to have problems with these positions. You have to fail before you can succeed. That is what practice is all about: failing until you succeed. You fail at riding a bike until your legs get acclimated to the activity. You fail at adding and subtracting until one day you actually learn it. You fail at cooking until you get a grasp of what can and needs to be done. When practicing, you are failing until you get it. Of course, these are small failures.

Starting a business is a whole ‘nother level of failure. Somehow you either have to have enough resources to tide you until you reach success or your failures have to be small enough that they don’t permanently sink you.

And the point that you can’t learn from failure, you only learn from success? I happen to disagree with that too. Not only do you learn what NOT to do but you may actually pick up some tidbits along the way that you can’t use at the present moment but you might use in the future. Kind of a “keep in my back pocket” kind of thing.