Why I FAILED

Apologies

My remote posting tool is malfunctioning. Sorry for some recent blank posts. I’ll get to the bottom of what’s going on.

When I Grow Up…

Someday I’d like to be able to write with the clarity, power and effectiveness of Seth Godin. In the mean time, I’m content to point you to his posts, like this one, and quote from him directly:

“The object isn’t to be perfect. The goal isn’t to hold back until
you’ve created something beyond reproach. I believe the opposite is
true. Our birthright is to fail and to fail often, but to fail in
search of something bigger than we can imagine. To do anything else is
to waste it all.”

Please don’t waste it all. And don’t think it, or you, doesn’t matter. It does. You do.

We have an awkward relationship with self centered-ness. And while I can agree a self-absorbed and uncaring person cannot live a successful life, a completely self-less one cannot either. Self-less people cannot contribute, add too, increase or build up. And this is a world in desperate need of contributions, additions, increases and buildings - real and imagined.

This is what you’re here for. We need you to be full and to be trying, failing, trying, failing and trying so we can be changed. It’s not about you changing it or not either, the question is whether or not something will be changed. Why? Because you’re the only one that can contribute, add to, increase or build the way you do.

“To do anything else is
to waste it all.”

Amen my friend.

Failure Isn’t Fun, But…

From BoingBoing, courtesy of Mark Frauenfelder:

J.K. Rowling’s terrific commencement address at Harvard is available as a video, MP3, or text.

The fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure….

I
think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven
years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An
exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a
lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain,
without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I
had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard,
I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to
stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was
a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press
has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea
how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end
of it was a hope rather than a reality. So why do I talk about the
benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of
the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything
other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing
the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything
else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one
arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest
fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had
a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea.
And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my
life. ,…Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained
by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I
could have learned no other way….Such knowledge is a true gift, for
all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any
qualification I ever earned….

Link(via CT2)

The Self-Defense of GROWING

PersistenceUnlimited brings us a great post on the benefits of educating yourself. I firmly believe that stagnation is the main reason for the rampant boredom I see in most people. And as Brad says: “If you find you are simply bored, education is the perfect remedy.”

He’s dead on, but the reason I’m highlighting this post is the fact that he frames the topic by giving three reasons to educate yourself in defense of your marriage. Uh, YES!!!

My wife and I nearly separated and divorced several years ago and a lot of people thought we should have. But we fought through it be educating ourselves about relationships, personalities, people skills and positive thinking. The result, we learned about each other and fell in love all over again.

Nothing worth having comes without a fight. Whether it be your dreams of vocational success and personal satisfaction or maintaining and growing a lifelong relationship.

Fight for what - and who - you want.

Music 1.0 is Dead

I’m already growing tired of the 1.0 and 2.0 thing, but nevertheless, former EMI exec Ted Cohen has pronounced the death of music 1.0 as “five hundred top members of the music business gathered today in New York.”

Nate Anderson reports that the following statements “were made today without controversy:

• DRM on purchased music is dead
• A utility pricing model or flat-rate fee for music might be the way to go
• Ad-supported streaming music sites like iMeem are legitimate players
• Indie music accounts for upwards of 30 percent of music sales
• Napster isn’t losing $70 million per quarter (and is breaking even)
• The music business is a bastion of creativity and experimentation”

Sounds good to me.

Are you ready?

Failure Friday - How to Succeed

There’s a story I heard about a high school girl getting cut by the volleyball team. While talking it over with her parents, she was told to work hard at proving the coach wrong. The thought was that she should become so good that the coach could not live without her on the team.

Steve Martin says the same thing here, only better.

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Failure Friday - Fail Forward

The number one key to success is failure, but only if it’s done properly. It’s not enough to simply fail faster, you must also fail forward.

Failing Forward is the antithesis of insanity. It’s said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while hoping for different results. This is how most people fail and it is why most people quit trying.

Failing Forward means continually adjusting your strategy of attempts and/or goals. If your first path doesn’t work, use another. If the path reveals a reason to adjust your goal, change it.

Failing Forward also means you build on wins, however small they may be. There are ALWAYS wins if you look for them. They may be tangible gains or a lesson learned, but they are always there. The important thing is to use them as stepping stones to the next level. Make them powerful wins by putting them into practice.

Success is a minute by minute, inch by inch, win-by-win process. A process that only works through trial and error - and failure.

One more thought: get rid of the word try. Face it, most of the time we use the word “try” so we can have an out when we fail. We say it like “well, I’ll try, but…”  We are also very adept at saying “I TRIED, but it just didn’t….”. It’s likely that the most common word following “try” is “but.”

Stop trying. Do. In fact, fully do. Be engaged, go for it, give what you do 100% of yourself. You can’t get what you want by “trying.”

Go fail forward.

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Failure Friday - Fail Faster

From IBM founder Tom Watson:

“It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You’re thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all.”

In what may seem like a strange twist on this blog, today I want to encourage you to fail. Fail often, fail fast and fail big. Why? Because failure is the breeding ground for success. Want proof? Think about learning to walk.

When you were somewhere around your 1st birthday, something clicked about the time your coordination and muscular development were ready and you attempted movement on two legs. And you fell. You tried again and fell again. Each fall - failure - was providing feedback to your brain that was used to alter your next attempt. This feedback loop of try-fail-adjust-try is what taught you to walk. The failures bred success. The same thing happened when you learned to ride a bicycle. Then a skateboard. Then…

Then you went to school. Suddenly, despite years of learning through failure feedback, you were taught that failure was bad. So you stopped failing by limiting your attempts to only those that you knew would succeed. And for this you were handsomely rewarded with good grades and kudos.

I’m not trying to bash school, I’m pointing out the contradiction between our nature of learning from a failure-adjust feedback loop and the “don’t fail” mentality we’re taught later on. They both have there place, but I’m encouraging you to use the natural loop. If it worked as a one year old, it’ll work now. Here’s how:

Fail Often

Success teaches nothing. How often have you thought about walking lately? If your answer is anything but “not at all” it’s only because you recently stumbled, tripped or fell. The only time we learn is when we fail, so if you want to live, find, push through and grow, fail often. Seek to “double your failure rate” as Tom Watson suggests. It will double your success rate.

Fail Fast

Despite what I’m saying here, the point is NOT in the failing, it’s in the feedback and learning. So don’t belabor the point. If you’re failing, FAIL. Get it over with, learn the lesson and move on. In other words, cut your losses.

Fail Big

Go for it. If failure breeds success, it only makes sense that big failures breed big successes. The key here is to “fail up.” Think of each failure as a step up not a knocking down. With that in mind, don’t hesitate to take big steps sometimes.

Who knows, there’s always a chance you just might succeed too.

And if you do? Don’t become complacent or “all that.” Learn from your successes too. Treat them like a failure by tearing them apart looking for feedback that will help you in the future.

Go fail.

Failure Friday - 12 Investing Mistakes

I simply HAD to share this post with you because the title sounds like my book’s: 12 Investing Mistakes I’ve Made (and what you can learn from them). And in addition to giving useful financial advice gained through experience - someone else’s - it also fits in my my theme for Fridays: learning from failures.

Note: The post is from Get Rich Slowly but is in fact a guest post from Pinyo, author of Moolanomy, a personal finance blog about money, wealth, investing, and more.

“Not investing soon enough” was Pinyo’s first mistake and it reminds me of something I read from drummer Paul Leim. His number one career advice for musicians was “pay yourself first” and this is what he meant. It’s advice I didn’t heed either, so I join with Pinyo and Paul in encouraging you to start investing immediately.

With that foundation, here are my two favorite “mistakes” from the post:

2. Not knowing the basics— When I finally began investing, my first move was to give my money to a full brokerage firm to invest for me. I didn’t know anything about stocks or mutual funds. I just knew I should invest money to make more money. This was a big mistake since each trade executed by my broker cost a lot of money. Also, the mutual funds they picked weren’t good, and were very expensive.

11. Investing without a goal — Not until recently did I define a real goal for my investment — among other things, one of my investment goals today is to build a $1 million investment portfolio by 2017. This is my main retirement portfolio. Other goals, which I am still defining, are investing to subsidize my kids’ college expenses and my parent’s retirement expenses. Without a clear goal, I was chasing short-term performance and was prone to act on market swings.

The subject of Financial Literacy, the basics of money and investing, is tragically absent from schools. In its absence, the banking and investing industries have been more than happy to play teacher. And their lesson has been that we can’t possibly understand money so we should just trust them to know what’s best.

There are two takeaways here: first, you can - and must - learn about money. Make this a high priority that you work on daily or at least weekly. It’s not difficult, but it does require effort. And don’t be afraid of the numbers and math. Third grade math skills will cover anything and everything you’ll ever encounter with money.

Second, find financial advisors - paid and unpaid - that encourage education and partnerships. Seek people that understand you are working together to manage the second most important asset you have - your money (time is your most important). It’s that important because you can’t live without money (hunting and gathering is out of vogue these days) and the final exam on this subject is 10, 20 or 30 years out. Failure is not an option. You must get your money act together.

Which leads to financial goals, or better yet, life goals. What in the world are you working for? Even with a cool career choice like music, we’re still talking work and money. What is that you are spending all this time creating? What do you want now, and in the case of investing, in the future?

Money is a tool. Make sure it helps you build the right life.