The concept of failing fast says, “Go do the thing, imperfectly. Fail. Learn and move to the next iteration.” It works brilliantly in business. And it can lead to long term success with your personal resolutions and goals. So forget perfection. And download Michelle’s free tracking system to help recalibrate your health at ShesGotPower.com/HowIFeel.
In this episode you’ll hear about:
- Why failing fast is used in business and how it applies to our personal lives.
- Nachos, a drunk date and confirmation that failing fast is the way to go.
- How to apply this principle to your New Year resolutions, or any goals you have for yourself.
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Is the fear of failure holding you back?
I do a lot of fast failing as an entrepreneur who has run my own small business for the past 13 years. Failing fast is a business philosophy that is very common in the tech industry. Even though I’m not in the tech industry, it works for me, too — go do the thing imperfectly, fail, learn from that, and move on to the next iteration quickly.
If, instead, you wait until everything is perfect then finally do the thing and fail, you’ll have lost a ton of time and money. So if we’re going to fail, we want to fail fast and cheap.
We’re all so desperately afraid of failure. What if we just let ourselves? We find out it’s not that big of a deal because we can get back up and try again. We’re resilient like that. It reminds me of when I started dating after getting divorced a couple of years ago. I would meet someone, I’d be introduced and we’d be texting each other for a couple of days/weeks/months before going out. You can imagine the anticipation.
When you fail fast, you learn fast
There is this one date where I showed up and he was already drunk at the bar. I guess he got there early. He’d been very nice over text, but in person, our conversation was super awkward. So we ordered nachos, and I think I ordered them because I figured if we weren’t talking, maybe we could be munching on something.
The plate was almost empty. There were three cold chips with hardly anything on them, barely a speck of cheese was left, and he asked the waitress for a box to take them home. Three chips! He told me he was also going to reuse the takeout box at home. Also, he had taken the bus.
There was no chemistry happening, and that’s pretty much when I realized I need to fail faster with this whole dating thing. Instead of waiting days, weeks, months, I started asking guys out right away. They loved it.
A lot of women want to wait weeks and maybe months to vet someone, but you can’t really vet someone well until you are there in person and on that date. I figured I would rather meet them and find out it wasn’t going to be a match sooner than later. I had a lot of bad dates after that. Maybe one time I’ll tell you guys about the beekeeper or the state cop with bad shoes.
Failing paves the way to success
I think there’s something to this whole “fail fast” thing when it comes to New Year’s resolutions or any type of goal that you’re working towards because a resolution demands perfection in a way. “I resolved to do this thing where I resolved to not do this thing 100% perfectly.”
But technology systems are like human relationships. It’s complicated. You can’t just decide to do a thing and, boom, success. Instead, what if you think about sticking to a resolution day-by-day or hour-by-hour? This way, if you fail (and you will, because we all do), you’ll fail fast. You catch yourself. Okay, you failed for that hour, yet another chance coming up very next hour.
Or maybe things didn’t go the way you planned this morning. What needs to change in the mornings to make you successful?
You fail, you learn, and you iterate, iterate, iterate. To me, this is the ultimate form of resiliency and the fastest path to success. I never, ever expect myself or my clients to be perfect. That’s why I’ve developed a 10-point tracking system to keep yourself on track without ever stepping on a scale, so even if things veer off for a while, health-wise or otherwise, just keep coming back to these 10 metrics and you’ll be able to recenter and recalibrate.
Grab that free tracking system ShesGotPower.com/HowIFeel.