
What is failure for you? - vanwilder77
http://joel.is/post/40255236566/what-is-failure-for-you
======
zeidrich
To me, failure is the the result of an action which causes stress.

That sounds wrong I guess, because you assume that you can have stressful
situations where you succeed. But more correctly I mean that when you make
that internalized evaluation of whether you should do something or not, you
look back on your experience doing that thing, and remember whether it caused
you stress or if it made you motivated. Even if the process is stressful, if
the end result is more enjoyable than stressful, it's a success. Otherwise a
failure.

Failure is a pretty key part of learning and building habits. Things that you
have attempted and failed are going to drum of feelings of stress and anxiety
when you contemplate attempting them again. Things that you have attempted and
succeeded at are going to bring feelings of motivation when you think about
doing them.

I don't know that changing what failure means to you affects a lot, but I
definitely think that for me, understanding how stress plays into my
willingness to continue trying to do something makes a big difference. For
instance, when you allow yourself to be really hard on yourself for an
interstitial failure, (like making a schedule to work out 3 times a week and
missing a day) it makes you feel a bit more stressed the next time you
consider attempting it... it gets harder. Eventually you decide it's too hard
to keep trying if you're just going to fail, and you give up (often you
attribute this to personal failings). But if you want to get in the habit of
going to the gym 3 times per week, the best way to do it is to go to the gym 3
times per week. Missing a day shouldn't cause stress, nor should missing a
month. You shouldn't feel "failure", because the "success" condition should be
the results of going to the gym regularly, not some artificial construction of
maintaining a schedule. And in that respect, you're not failing, you're just
not achieving that success condition as quickly as possible.

When you base your internalized feelings of success or failure around external
constructs like that, you kind of undermine your actual learning and habit
forming systems. Is your goal really to be fit? Because the goal you are
really working towards is forcing a routine. The achievement of some abstract
goal (checking off all the attendance boxes for an undefined length of time)
instead of a more organic goal (actually feeling healthier).

I used the workout schedule as an example because it's an example where the
end result makes you feel good on it's own. But I think this idea can be used
in business too. Failure should be something you feel in situations that you
want to avoid in the future, but you need to be careful not to feel too much
failure for situations you want to improve. If you associate the whole action
as a failure, you'll just have more difficulty attempting it in the future,
improving.

I have pretty good control over how I deal with stress, but I struggle with
how to organize my priorities. The goal is to do my best and only let myself
feel stress when it's absolutely necessary, or when I'm in a situation that if
I fail, I should avoid trying it again.

Some people use stress to force themselves into action, because it's a strong
motivator. These people tend to dislike many things. Failure comes frequently
to them, and just the idea of failure causes stress and anxiety, which fuels
them further. It's one way to handle things, and I used to deal with things
this way, but I think it's less healthy, and less controllable.

In conclusion, Failure is an abstract up condition made up to cause stress for
not meeting an abstract goal. They are methods we use to affect our internal
decision and habit forming processes. Success is an abstract reward for
meeting a goal that may not have it's own intrinsically rewarding qualities.
Failure is an abstract stressor for not meeting that goal that may not have
it's own intrinsically painful qualities. If we understand how we are,
individually, affected by stress and reward, we can structure how and when we
let ourselves feel failure to help stop demotivating us from our real
objectives.

For me, rarely letting myself feel like I've failed has reduced my day to day
stress, which makes it a lot easier to control myself emotionally. That was a
hard thing to let go of though. However, if I need to try to motivate myself,
setting goals with a success condition and no failure condition seems to work
better. I started doing Judo a few months ago, the instructor had to leave
town and I didn't jive with the new instructor as much, and I hurt myself and
decided to stop going to the class. Some people would feel like they failed by
not following through with that. If another class with a different instructor
were to start up they might feel less inclined to sign up because they already
tried to do that and failed. But I only remember how I enjoyed the class, and
would look forward to doing it again if I could enjoy it the same way.

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prezjordan
Very well-written. I've had this idea for a long time, but I couldn't really
put it into words [1] like Joel has.

I've always been known to set unreasonably high goals. If I fail these goals,
I find that I still make substantial progress - essentially tricking myself. I
usually joke with my friends "Aim for a 120 on this test. If you end up with a
100 that'll be okay." But in reality, I aim too high when it comes to personal
projects. Make this, make that, make these things over the weekend. I never
_fully_ succeed, but I come out with something cool regardless, and usually a
lesson.

[1]: <http://jscal.es/2012/10/12/you-oughta-be-ashamed/>

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RyanZAG
Failure, to me, is doing something that is not enjoyable that I neither
learned from nor gained from.

Everything else is a success.

------
officemonkey
"Failure is the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently." -
Henry Ford

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sebcat
I'm a parachutist (BASE, CRW). Failure is death, or hurting someone else.

~~~
paganel
I'm an average human being, but sometimes failure is just the act of looking
in the mirror. And then I feel that if I can go over that (overcome that deep
level of failure) than maybe I can genuinely do great things.

------
Sakes
Failure is synonymous with "Quitting" for me.

~~~
jonathanjaeger
“Quitting while you're ahead is not the same as quitting.” -American Gangster

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nerdfiles
I'm not so sure anymore. My industry is being saturated by Helvetica-designers
and people with absolutely no background in traditional design, and who have
absolutely no design sensitivity for accessibility; and who fear risk because
it has been so tightly coupled with their next paycheck. Anything that seems
risky gets lumped into one category, because it is economical to play it safe,
come what may. Two-tone, single-column, this or that. My industry is becoming
hyperfashionable, and morally so. It's beyond me how so many designers I see
today whore out the same pallid, lifeless sans-serif fonts, and they don't
even set their font-stacks properly. So it's monocultural design, with a
tyrannical twist that depends on things like CSS's !important. It's like most
of you are force feeding your 11pt fonts and insipid Microsoft fonts down the
world's throat. -- And you want to ask what failure is as if you don't know?
It's whoever will not follow the trend, in a certain material, financial
sense.

Failure may be individual, but the conditions are defined by the industry in
which it occurs. And honestly, all those designers/developers who are cookie-
cutting their careers make failure habitual for those who actually decide to
take risks and be thorough-going. We have so many designers/developers who
need to make a quick buck, that their "streamlined" notion of things make it
difficult for people who actually have talent to genuinely nurture that
talent, because they have to compete with Frameworkers and (CSS)
Foundationers.

Talk about that. Failure is defined by the suffocation of talent in a
capitalistic mindset.

~~~
nerdfiles
This doesn't even make sense anymore.

Is it not permissible to be critical? Can one even be critical without getting
downvoted? Perhaps that is now the new barometer of success. Heck, most of us
are talking about "document your failure" or "fail fast."

Then that's it. Getting downvoted is the new success. Like Adrian Tan says,
"Be hated."

Downvote the b'jesus out of me. I need validation. Maybe I'll get an algorithm
for creativity, through trial and error on the new norm.

~~~
quomopete
you are way too worried about being downvoted.

~~~
nerdfiles
It's a downvote with no commentary. If you cannot understand why that might be
frustrating or seemingly inappropriate, when I demonstrate no light taking on
the topic, or when I espouse critical beliefs, then let's just move on.

------
wissler
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
-- Aristotle

