On Derailing is Nailing It

How a lot of people treat derails:

“Damn I derailed… that sucks.”

How I treat derails:

“Getting charged is GOOD for me because it means I put more attention to those tasks and gracefully accepted failing/losing, and to fight another day.”

The key part here is the acceptance. In the past throughout most of my life I was so perfectionist as to not accept failure. This may sound admirable/desirable on the surface, but it encourages me to escapism and avoidance rather than trying, as well as makes me unable to handle failure.

Handling failure is possibly the most important factor to success in any endeavor as mistakes and failures are necessary to learn/progress in anything.

Of course this applies directly to entrepreneurship as iterative lean startup systems design (fail fast, rapid iteration to find product-market fit, testing/data-driven mindset, etc) is widely considered an optimal strategy for startups and innovative projects, particularly in environments with high uncertainty.

3 Likes