Failure is the better option

For years I've always seen failure as a negative thing and I'm sure that's quite a common way of seeing it. We've grown up through school knowing that failing is not a good thing; you have to succeed, pass exams, be the best on sports day, etc. However, is that actually the right way to view it? Should we be going through life stuck in the mindset that succeeding is the best way of progressing?

Much to our annoyance, we simply cannot be amazing at everything. It can be disheartening to put effort into something only to be disappointed by the outcome, but take it as a learning opportunity; a form of self improvement.

I recently stumbled upon The Parable of the Pottery Class which really resonated with me and kick-started a research into this. This parable comes from David Bayles and Ted Orland’s book, Art & Fear:

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pounds of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

This, to me, was really interesting. It goes against the convention that preparation, good research, and planning will almost guarantee a successful outcome. The group who were focused on quantity ended up also producing the best quality simply from learning more and more from each rubbish pot they made. These incremental gains that get remembered for each new pot built a much stronger foundation in order to produce quality work.

It's made me think about how I can apply that to my life and in particular, my work life. At the start of this year, I began a new managerial role where for the first time in my life, I had direct reports. My immediate mental plan was to NOT fail - I needed to be successful from the very first day. During one conversation with my manager we discussed what fears I had and after a few moments of silence I finally admitted, "I'm concerned that I'm going to do stuff wrong and be no good at this.". The response I got? "Of course you wont be - you’re going to be terrible at this. And that's absolutely fine because you're good at learning from mistakes."

Our ability to improve and get better fundamentally relies upon the requirement of failure. Failure breeds experience, experience breeds success.

Do we actually know what failure is?

I think that many people have an incorrect definition of what failure is. We only really fail when we fail to learn from previous mistakes. No one is born perfect at what they put their mind to. The people that succeed are the ones that recognise mistakes and learn for next time. I know people that seem to always know they right thing to say in heated debates, and when asked how they do this, the response is always the same. It's the fact that they've had years of saying the wrong thing; things that backfire, things that fail to work, and things that make situations worse. Each time this has happened, they've recognised it and learnt from it. The end result is what we see, which is someone that says the right thing; a skill that is built upon years of learning what the wrong thing to say is.

This ties in to the notion that owning up to and recognising your own failures is an admirable trait to have. People tend to have more respect knowing that when things go wrong and it's your fault, you won't shy away and try to lie your way out of it. I've found that this leads to built up respect and people believe me more when difficult situations arise whether at home or at work.

When you fail at something, chances are you will have another opportunity to succeed at that same thing

In our daily lives, there's rarely a situation where we only get one shot at doing something right. Why do we have such a fear of failing at the first go? More often than not, we get subsequent opportunities at succeeding which is more likely the second time around as we now have the experience and extra knowledge gained from the prior failure. The advice here is clear - as soon as you recognise a failure, be aware of what you've learnt from the failure.

Next steps

The next time a failure happens in your life, take a moment to pause and reflect on it. Embrace the failure and ask yourself, "What have I learnt from this and what can I do differently next time?" Each time you do this, you'll realise that you'll be better next time around and these small gains will soon build and become a major improvement in the long term.