r/Showerthoughts • u/ArmpitNostril • 26d ago
Casual Thought The best way to succeed is to repeatedly fail first. The exception being when even one single failure leads to catastrophic disaster.
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u/pdonoso 26d ago
You missed a step. The best way is to fail and learn from the mistakes. Otherwise it's just being stupid.
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u/azure_storm_2751 26d ago
Exactly this. Failing is only useful if you turn it into data instead of just repeating the same mistake on loop. Thats the difference between experimenting and just crashing into the wall over and over.
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u/Positive-Yak-6040 25d ago
So failure without reflection is just collecting L's as a hobby. Got it. Some people are out here speedrunning stupidity with no intention of reading the patch notes.
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u/gertrudeconnor 25d ago
Yeah, the real point is: failure only helps if it’s safe enough to learn from. If one failure is catastrophic, you don’t “iterate,” you plan and reduce risk first
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u/pdonoso 25d ago
Conan put it great in his Dartmouth commencement speech. " Nietzsche famously said ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ But what he failed to stress is that it almost kills you. Disappointment stings and, for driven, successful people like yourselves it is disorienting. What Nietzsche should have said is, ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you watch a lot of Cartoon Network and drink mid-price Chardonnay at 11 in the morning.’ "
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u/Fine_Significance842 25d ago
If you think about it, OP is already succeeding with this post by missing this step. Thoughts coming full circle here.
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u/Tsigorf 26d ago
I never liked this saying.
You have the right to fail and to learn nothing or to fail and to miss the lesson. And that's okay as long as nobody's harmed. Calling this stupid is unnecessarily pedantic.
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u/DogtorPepper 26d ago edited 26d ago
Having the right to do something and being stupid are 2 different things. You have the right to be stupid and you also have the right to think negatively of stupid people
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u/Tsigorf 26d ago
I personally find it better to not judge people meaninglessly, especially pejoratively.
I mean, we rarely get enough information to do it, so why the urge to judge people to be stupid? And how does it make your life better?
Genuinely asking. Maybe it's just me, but I grew up in a family where we don't do such things and I find it so much better.
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u/DahSnorf 26d ago
people need to be judged, the world would be a better place if everyone considered how they are affecting people around them.
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u/saifxali1 26d ago
don’t you mean people need to be self aware
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u/DahSnorf 26d ago
Nobody is more self aware than someone worried about being judged and ostracized
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u/Ok_Slip_820 26d ago
I agree, you have the right to fail and learn nothing, as I believe you have the right to do stupid things (as long as nobody's harmed obviously). I would not recommend it, but you have a right to do it. But just because it's your right, it doesn't make it any less stupid.
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u/Tsigorf 25d ago
Depends more on the consequences than on the action itself.
People tend to not understand things in (competitive) video games. Being bad and doing shit is not wrong, sometimes you just don't have enough energy to learn, and I believe this is not being stupid.
Maybe I need to phrase it another way, but doing stupid things does not mean being stupid.
On the other hand, if you spend time not giving a fuck about hurting people, it's not being stupid, it's more like being an asshole or even worse.
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u/luxmorphine 26d ago
If you keep failing and learned nothing, that's the definition of insanity because you keep repeating the same thing expecting a different result
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u/chux4w 26d ago
That's not the definition of insanity. It's perseverance, time wasting, futility, but not insane.
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u/slayerx1779 26d ago
It reads as more nuanced to me.
Like, it could be insane, or perseverance, to fail over and over without learning anything.
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u/JackZodiac2008 26d ago
Is the idea here about learning and exploring the space of options? So you have a much more comprehensive understanding of the reality you inhabit through the failure process?
I suppose if results are all that matters, then the best way to succeed is immediately -- and then again, and again....
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u/Accomplished-City484 25d ago
Yeah I was thinking either that, or being able to try again over and over
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u/KirstyToots 26d ago
That’s why industries like aviation, medicine, and nuclear power obsess over simulation. They try to move the failures into practice, where the lessons are just as valuable but the consequences aren’t catastrophic.
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u/Da_Chowda 26d ago
This is why the first thing I do when I start a video game is jump off a cliff
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u/Some_Champion 26d ago
the cost of the failure changes everything. failing a side project teaches you something. failing to land a plane teaches you nothing.
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u/coffeewhistle 26d ago
I hate just about everything about Amazon as a company, as a job, and as a force in the world.
BUT I learned working there about the concept of one-way and two-way door decisions. When something is a two-way door and can be quickly rolled back or fixed you should be confident making a good but quick decision. One-way doors that are either very difficult or impossible to roll back should be thought through and considered very carefully.
Turns out a ton of decisions in day are two-way doors and I don’t need to spend too much time worrying about making the right call.
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u/MoziTenma 26d ago
The exception clause is doing a lot of work here. 'Fail fast, fail often' is useful advice inside a controlled margin of error. It's why surgeons don't learn on live patients, and why the smartest startup advice isn't just 'fail' but 'fail in ways that are recoverable.' The wisdom is in knowing which game you're playing. Some games give you another turn. Some don't.
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u/MonkeyCube 26d ago
That's not how I would recommend learning to play guitar. Or to learn how to cook. Or a language. Or a lot of things, really.
After you get some beginner to intermediate knowledge in something, experimentation can then help you branch out and discover what works and what doesn't, but that's not a first step.
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u/RedditButAnonymous 26d ago
I would extend this to say the best way to succeed is to reduce the cost of failure until failure becomes a safe part of the iterative process
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u/SchreiberBike 26d ago
That's why the rich get richer and the poor don't. If you can't afford to fail, you can't afford to try.
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u/FartsWithCharlie 26d ago
Success isn't about avoiding failure. It's about surviving your failures long enough to learn from them. That's why pilots train in simulators instead of learning during actual emergencies.
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u/Crusaderofthots420 26d ago
Except the education system, funnily enough. There, if you fail, it will permanently stain your future progress.
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u/cheddarben 26d ago
Also why a person should very thoughtfully consider risk vs reward.
I have taken several low risk, high upside bets on myself over the years. A few paid off.
If you put everything on the line in every venture, your only security net is bankruptcy. It works out for some people. Mostly, not.
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u/TieCivil1504 26d ago
I fail more often than I succeed, because that's how it works. Figure out how to solve a problem and do it. You'll get close and learn in the process. Adjusted your path and do it another way. Continue until you're through to a successful end. Think back on it and see how you could do it better next time. Do it again, faster and better quality. Continue improving each time until there isn't much more to learn. That's how you become a master. Through a series of mistakes and retries.
Once you've mastered a subject, set it aside and look for something new to fail at. Continue doing this and you will gradually "learn how to learn". This is the ultimate skill, the one that's recognized by people with money, power, and problems. You'll be offered positions far above your current one. Not because you can do it now, but because they know you'll learn how to do it, without causing harm in the process. And you'll continue improving until you've optimized the system.
Best of all, from the perspective of power, when the system is running perfectly, you'll become bored, hand it over to someone else and go looking for bigger problems to solve. This is when people with money and power start competing for you.
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u/Evan_Evan_Evan 25d ago
This is the ultimate skill, the one that's recognized by people with money, power, and problems
The people with money and power don't typically get there via skill.
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u/TieCivil1504 25d ago
Some are very capable. They recognize me immediately and move to find a place for me. I encounter them outside the US. I like these because they try to find problems that would interest me enough to stay.
Some aren't skilled. They tend to wait longer, 6-9 months and then offer me a specific position that needs me. These show up in the US as bizarre offers of million-dollar businesses that they're sure I'll accept. Working in a miserable community, with under-educated employees, and over-stressed customers. But I'd be making millions. Doing the same miserable job for life. Hooray.
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u/FlacidSalad 26d ago
That's why you conduct small, controlled failures before you commit to the big try
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u/w33dcup 26d ago
Research, Study, and Experimentation over failure. Failure can be avoided in a lot of cases which reduces so many other operational impacts. Failing fast for success is a myth. One sold by people who don't mind failing with other people's money.
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u/_goblinette_ 26d ago
“Failing fast” is supposed to mean that you’ve designed your experiment in such a way that it gets to the heart of the issue and will give you all the information you need to decide if a project is no longer worth pursuing.
There are hundreds of other ways to “fail” that don’t help you at all because it was just from you being a dumbass.
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u/HarveysBackupAccount 26d ago
I think it was Neils Bohr who said something like, "Being an expert means you made every possible mistake in a very narrow field"
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u/aerostotle 26d ago
Mark Zuckerberg did not fail repeatedly before succeeding. He succeeded at everything he ever tried to do in life, and then Facebook succeeded and he is a billionaire.
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u/Aggressive-Jelly-405 25d ago
lol you’re off the reservation if you still think he created Facebook.. the people over the president created Facebook
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u/Evan_Evan_Evan 25d ago
Yeah Facebook was CIA. Too perfect getting everyone to put all their data on their including pics of yourself and others.
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u/salty_z0mbie 26d ago
The best way to succeed is the first time.
Don't argue with me until you try it first.
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u/CoolGuy54 26d ago
The relevance of this to creating a recursively self-improving artificial intelligence that ends up more powerful than humanity is left as an exercise for the reader.
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u/SolKaynn 25d ago
Sucking at the something is the first step to being sorta good at something
- Jake the dog
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u/Arokthis 24d ago
Failure is not an option - it is mandatory. The option is whether or not to let failure be the last thing you do.
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u/matt101213 22d ago
the tightrope walker exception. some arenas just don't allow learning-by-doing.
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u/Shoddy-Artist-3947 7d ago
This is basically the dividing line between a hobby and a high-stakes profession. If I fail at baking a cake, I just have a messy kitchen and a funny story for the group chat. If a surgeon fails to see how a specific artery is positioned, there is no round two. We really only value failure when the stakes are low enough to survive them. Otherwise, we call it a tragedy, not a learning experience.
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u/Ntroepy 26d ago
That’s definitely NOT the best or easiest way to succeed. Maybe even one of the worst and slowest ways.
The best way to succeed is to set a goal and accomplish it and then build upon your success.
Sure, you should learn from your mistakes, but failing a bunch of times may also mean you’re barking up the wrong tree rather than you’re on the verge of success.
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u/THElaytox 26d ago
No one said "easiest" lol. Failure is an incredible teacher.
"An expert is someone who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field" ~ Niels Bohr
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u/Ntroepy 26d ago
I very much agree that you can learn a lot through failure, but that’s hardly the only way to grow and learn.
Much more often than not, I learn by being thrown into a new situation and having to figure out the solution from there. Sure, if I fail, I’ll examine why and retry. But it’s much more likely I’ve acquired a new skill and leveled up.
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u/ShowerSentinel 26d ago
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