Failure
12 January 2011
You have probably seen David’s blog post about failure. If not, head over there and read it.
I’ve been thinking about what David wrote for the last few days and it helped me actually to process a couple of things. As one of the founders of a new company, a certain tendency to worry a bit too much is probably very natural. There is a high probability to fail, because in the previous jobs we’ve been kind of set. We’ve been part of a bigger machine that has all it’s flaws, but it’s rather hard to screw up too badly. With a company of my own, Mr. Failure seems to be lurking behind a couple of corners.
But that’s not a bad thing.
David’s experience thaught him some valuable lessons. Sure, 50k in cash is a lot of money and I’d be fine to not go through the exact the same experience as David did, but if I would need to, I know that his words would also lurk in my mind and help me cope with what happened. Honestly, I don’t know, if I would be as good in what I do, if I wouldn’t have a certain amount of fear to fail. With every passing year in my previous job, I grew accustomed to the fact, that I can basically do whatever I want to and nothing really bad would happen. Convenience is the death of creativity and it’s so incredibly easy to get to this point of convenience that doesn’t allow you to reflect on what you’re doing.
In this sense, I’m very happy that I build an environment for myself in which I know of my chance to fail, because it’s always will give me the much needed kick to do the next step and a step after that.