Failing Quickly

Failing can be one of the most productive things you can do.  Most people try to avoid failure. I’m not saying that this is bad, but in many cases they are just delaying failure to a later point in time.  If something you are doing is going to result in failure you should do your best to make sure it happens sooner rather than later.  With few exceptions, failing now is going to be less expensive (in time, money, mental stress) than failing one year from now.

As an example think about a relationships.  If two people are dating and they discover a particular area where they aren’t compatible at all they can avoid that area.  However, this may extend their relationship and just cause it to fail in the future.  Failing in the future is more expensive in time and money and also in opportunity costs (you may miss someone with whom you would be very happy). 

Instead of ignoring conflict areas, couples can do themselves a favor by directly confronting those areas in a way that will either lead to resolution/compromise or make it clear that they won’t be happy together in the future.

This same principle applies to most other areas where failure is a possibility.  If you think you want to study Astro Physics, it is probably unwise to spend your first two years at college taking a bunch of easy general education classes.  Obviously don’t start out with a grad level course, but you should take some of the classes that are known to be hard in the area you want to pursue.  You may find that you have no natural abilities in that area, so even if you don’t fail from a grade standpoint, you may completely fail from a satisfaction standpoint.

Failure leads to change and you’ll grow faster by failing more quickly, learning from the failure and moving on to something where you can be successful.  Life is too short to try to delay failure.