Failure | Productivity501

Why You Need to Fail to Succeed

2009 by Mark Shead 5 Comments

That's a rather provocative title, I suppose. Surely if you can avoid failure that is better, right? Not necessarily. There are two ways to avoid failure. Working so hard and doing such a good job that you succeed. Only taking on projects that are so far below your capabilities that failure is never a realistic possibility. If you want to succeed--really succeed, you have to be willing to take on things that have a high chance of failing. If you only attempt things that you know you can do, you aren't challenging yourself properly. If you never have any failures, it is a pretty good indication that you aren't taking on things that are true challenges for you. You are … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Development Tagged With: failure, learning, success

Failing Quickly

2008 by Mark Shead 2 Comments

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 relationship. 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 … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Productivity Tagged With: failure

The Benefits of Failure

2008 by Mark Shead 10 Comments

My wife and I were doing some research into how education is handled in various countries when we ran across some interesting statistics. Basically researchers took middle school age children from a bunch of different countries and tested them in mathematics. The US children did very poorly compared to the rest of the developed world. However, the researchers went a step further and asked the children to rate themselves in mathematics. The US children consistently ranked themselves higher than the children in the countries who were actually more skilled in math. So while the US wasn't the best in actual mathematics, they are the best in teaching students how to feel like they are good … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Development Tagged With: education, failure

IndyMac Bank Failure

2008 by Mark Shead Leave a Comment

With the IndyMac failure, we've had quite a few people reading a previous post about the NetBank failure. If you had money in IndyMac, it would be interesting to hear about what the procedure was to get your money from FDIC. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Asides Tagged With: bank, failure, Money

Gym Membership

2008 by Mark Shead 9 Comments

My wife and I have been planning on joining the local gym for several months, but we've been on the road so much that it hasn't been practical. Now that our travel schedule is slowing down we went ahead and filled out all the paperwork and signed up last week. When we turned everything in we asked about the schedule and what was the busiest times of day. The receptionist told us, "oh January is really busy with New Years resolutioners, but they will all be gone by February." One of the biggest mistakes people make with resolutions is shooting too high. Some people think, "if I shoot for 100 maybe I'll hit 51 which is better than if I shoot for 50." In reality it doesn't work … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Development Tagged With: exercise, failure, goals