The importance of failure
Every morning when I get up I have a routine. First I fire up my laptop on the dining room table, then I check my numbers and see how I am doing from yesterday. My numbers are very important, coffee is brought to me, and no one is to talk to me until I have finished examining my numbers and drank my coffee. Also while I am checking my numbers, drinking my coffee, I also read on various boards new posting from the nite before, and I check the search engines to see how they are doing. As ussual I have digressed :), but I think it is helpful if you are able to do several things at once :). I have stated this before the most important things a blackhat can do are research (30% of your time should be spent doing this) and experimentation. Which bring me to what I want to talk about.
I can not find the origional source but the copy that i read was posted here
http://forums.seo.ph/showthread.php?t=2255
and it references to Mr Tan’s blog here
http://forums.seo.ph/showthread.php?t=2255 http://internetmarketingsingapore.com/blog/
The part that jumped out at me was his statement It’s difficult at the start, but your experience and failure will be the one thing that separates you from the pack.
When things are going good, it is pretty simple to run things, anyone can win, but it is how you deal with failure. Everyone has heard the great speeches of churchhill from WW2 when britians back was against the wall. Things looked pretty bleak at the start of the Battle of Britain. They has little resource, inferior aircraft, shortage of trained pilots and they where getting the stuffing knocked out of them. USA and the rest of the world thought it would be just a matter of time before they would be over run by the nazis. But despite these overwhelming odds, they found new ways to fight. And britain’s darkest hour when it was over became one of the brightest.
People often ask me what is my secret to success. And I think they are shocked when I tell them it is because of failure. 9/10 of my projects I start end in failure. But 1/10 end up making me $$$ :). Ironically most of the time the 1/10 are the projects that the experts tell me are stupid :). Most people when they fail either beat themselves up,just pack it in, or worse yet attempt to do the same thing over again. Insanity is repeating the same thing over again and expecting different results.
When I fail I attempt to analyse what went wrong. But not in a fucking cry baby manner. I do not say stupid shit like, ohhhh if only google was not so mean, etc. Instead i try and look at what i did from an abstact manner. I look at what parts of my project did work, and they I try and see why did it fail. From the failure perspective I attempt to see what caused the demise. Then I try and think what can I change so if I repeat the project again it will be a success. If I think the project could still potentially be profitable (as in gain outwieghts risk) I will often repeat the project with new variables in place.
Another problem is that society in general has a taboo against failure. As a result people are scared to do anything for fear of failure, they then stick to the tried and true. When they are have to make a decision they will panic and then just make any stupid decision, instead of wieghting all thier options.
It is how you pick yourself up when after u fall down that shows what type of person you are. And that is what seperates the men from the boys.
November 27th, 2007 at 6:28 am
Another great post nop. People always look at me funny when I tell them about my failures online. They wonder why I see them as a good thing. You know the usual babble, “Why don’t you just get a job?” “Why don’t you go back to college, Mr. Pirate?” “Running a business is risky and unpredictable.” They don’t see the joy in learning new problems, then going back and fixing them. Turning them into successes.
Then when I finally have success, people insult me by telling me how “lucky” I am. Overlooking the hard work (failures!) that went into that success.
November 28th, 2007 at 10:20 am
“Another problem is that society in general has a taboo against failure. ”
- Very good point nop, I always tried to explain this in the terms of behavioural heuristics, though the matter might turn to be easier: people just do not want/are able to acknowledge faulure.
So one should weight not only real outcomes of a choice, but also put much weight on the other people perception of the outcome (though it also should be able to be easily adopted to some heuristics:) )
Nice to read your posts, Nop!
November 28th, 2007 at 11:23 am
thanks for this, great advice nop;.