FAIL FAST, FAIL OFTEN by Ryan Babineaux, John Krumboltz

• When people are unhappy they tend to fixate on what they feel is wrong with their lives.
• from the beneficial effects of happenstance. When you focus on the shortcomings in your life, drag your feet, and belabor your bad habits and neuroses, you see nothing but your own misery. You become blind to opportunities and don’t take actions that lead to change.
• We have found that the best way to empower people to transform their lives is not by helping them to resolve their problems, but by encouraging them to pursue what they enjoy.
• No matter how trapped you may feel in your current life, there are positive actions you can take and new experiences to be had.
• It is quite simple: If you want your life to change, you have to take different actions.
• Successful people make a habit of pursuing what they enjoy. They take actions that are aligned with their passions and avoid things that dampen their engagement in life.
• people are most creative when they are engaged in work that is intrinsically motivating—when the work itself is a source of joy, satisfaction, and interest.
• If you fall below a basic minimum of sleep—say, six hours a day—then at some point you are going to feel exhausted, have trouble concentrating, and function at a subpar level.
• The enjoyment you experience in your life is similar to rest and food; if you don’t have enough of it, then your entire life will suffer.
• Every day should include opportunities to enjoy pleasurable activities and to make progress at meaningful work.
• The easiest way to improve your life is to spend more time doing things that you enjoy and that result in positive experiences, and less time pursuing activities that drag you down and limit your options.
• successful people take action as quickly as possible, even though they may perform badly. Instead of trying to avoid making mistakes and failing, they actively seek opportunities where they can face the limits of their skills and knowledge so that they can learn quickly. They understand that feeling afraid or underprepared is a sign of being in the space for optimal growth and is all the more reason to press ahead.
• Do It Badly, as Fast as You Can
• But the truth is that most significant accomplishments arise out of hundreds of mistakes and failures.
• Failing quickly in order to learn fast—or what Silicon Valley entrepreneurs commonly call failing forward—is at the heart of many innovative businesses.
• Giving yourself permission to make a mess of things is particularly important if you do any sort of creative work.
• “Very few writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it.”
• You can’t know what something is like, how you will feel about it, or what will result from it until you actually are doing it.
• Successful people understand that the best way to learn about something and get good at it is to fail at it as fast as they can.
• Since every significant accomplishment is preceded by flops, bad ideas, false starts, and failed efforts, these people are willing to fail as quickly and as often as possible to get it out of the way.
• We encourage you to develop a fail first attitude toward anything you aspire to do.
• The cruel irony of the fear of failure is that in attempting to avoid failure, people often act in ways that guarantee it.
• Fear of failure masks itself in many disguises: laziness, jealousy at the success of others, distraction, indecisiveness, doubt, caution.
• A general rule of thumb to the Fail Fast approach is that you should always try to act in ways that leave more options on the table.
• The take-home message of Dweck’s research is that the way that you approach challenges can have a tremendous impact on your performance.
• Try Things Like a Beginner Present yourself as a newbie who is eager to learn. Be playful and curious. Focus on learning, not on how well you can perform. See other people as teachers and ask for help. Expect to make mistakes. Try to discover what you don’t know; reject the idea that you should appear as an expert
• When you judge the merits of potential activities using a cost-rewards analysis, you tend to squash your enthusiasm.
• You can’t try everything, but you can experiment with some new possibilities.
• One of the reasons why successful innovators, entrepreneurs, and creative artists are able to think outside the box and recognize opportunities that others can’t see is that they are voraciously curious about their world and continually learn from their experiences.
• “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something.
• The single biggest reason why people miss out on life-changing opportunities is that they aren’t looking for them. The second reason is that they see opportunities but don’t act on them.
• People who learn to pursue their curiosity expose themselves to a wide variety of experiences that can lead to unexpected outcomes.
• Your curiosity is a kind of awareness, or intelligence, that helps you see more of your world and recognize opportunities to explore and learn.
• Your curiosity shows you the fastest, most effective way to explore things.
• Isn’t it a little crazy that you are supposed to choose and commit to a career that you have never tried out and know very little about?
• Here’s the rub: People are multifaceted and have interests that are continually changing. What challenges and excites you one year may be different in the next—it may even change from day to day. So the idea that you can be described by characteristics that are stable over time is pretty silly.
• Exhaustive plans are usually flights of fancy that have little relationship with reality or the success of a company.
• The companies that succeed in dynamic marketplaces are those that rapidly develop products with minimal planning and commitment of resources.
• “Go see for yourself” should be the first words out of the mouth of every career counselor. There is no way to know how you will feel about a given career until you experience what it is like firsthand.
• The way to determine what you think of a given occupation is by getting as much firsthand experience as possible and coming to your own conclusion.
• Experiencing things firsthand is not only the most informative way to explore what you are curious about, but also provides one of the key ways to get exposed to opportunities you have not yet considered.
• An important component of the lean approach is what Ries calls validated learning, meaning you don’t act on assumptions until they have been tested.
• Lean start-ups strive to create a minimal viable product—one with the fewest features and the least up-front cost. The idea is to get something into a customer’s hands as quickly as possible and see how they respond. Given their feedback, you can adjust course as necessary.
• The idea of minimal viable product is highly relevant to career preparation.
• We encourage you to resist the inclination to be a perfectionist. Instead, find the cheapest, easiest thing to try that will get you into the mix of things, expose your work and ideas, and allow you to see how people respond.
• People often worry that they will look like quitters if they fail to stick to their career plans. As a result, they will stubbornly resist moving on to a more fulfilling career path, wasting years—or even decades—clinging to a job that makes them miserable.
• So don’t get stuck to a plan. Be ready to change course and try new things.
• The lean approach to starting a business provides a useful analogy for establishing a fulfilling career. You should strive to be lean when pursuing your career—to act, experiment, collect information, and adjust course without the need for a huge investment or long-term commitment.
• Make the smallest viable action plan—just enough to take the next positive action.
• Be good at taking small steps that allow you to try and learn about many things.
• Perform experiments to confirm or disprove your assumptions about occupations that you are curious about.
• Be prepared to change course; expect to make many small adjustments, as well as some big ones.
• Avoid big investments in education, training, and preparation until you have learned as much as possible.
• find ways to act small.
• When faced with big problems that have not been broken into manageable, bite-sized chunks, people tend to be overwhelmed and freeze up.
• It is a sad truth that many people who pursue long-term goals end up slaving away toward futures they ultimately don’t want.
• Splitting problems into modest steps clarifies what actions should be taken, relieves doubt and uncertainty, and reduces complexity.
• “Most successful entrepreneurs don’t begin with brilliant ideas—they discover them.”
• Small Wins Get Your Life in Motion
• No matter how confused and chaotic your life may be, you can always find one positive step to take.
• The point is to get moving and make things happen, not to strive for a significant accomplishment. The smaller and easier your action step, the better! One of the hallmarks of the small wins approach is that you often don’t know where your actions will lead.
• Just have fun taking lots of little steps and enjoy the surprise of being led to unexpected places.
• Whatever your action step is, go out and make it happen.
• Be curious and learn everything you can.
• Your small win can never be too small. The faster you take action, the sooner your life will get more interesting.
• The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away.
• INNOVATION—creating new ways to contribute value to your life and world—is at the heart of all personal success.
• Part of being a keen observer is what in Zen Buddhism has been called beginner’s mind: You want to look out at the world as if you are seeing it for the first time.
• Like all positive habits, your capacity to observe is something that develops over time. When you pay more attention to your surroundings, the world begins to be filled with fascinating details you’ve never noticed before.
• Innovators are actively inquisitive. They continually ask: Why are things this way? What is really going on here? What can be done differently?
• Asking good questions can open you to surprising insights.
• “You don’t invent the answers. You reveal the answers by asking the right questions.”
• Oftentimes, it is the simplest questions that lead to great innovations.
• A good starting point when you want to inquire into a problem is to ask “what.” “What” questions help you to think outside of the constraints of your current situation and explore different options.
• A great way to develop your inquisitiveness is to keep an observations and questions log in your journal.
• If you want to come up with innovative ideas, it is important to stimulate your mind with material that gets you thinking in new ways.
• Another way to stimulate your creativity is by reading books and magazines about provocative designers, scientists, artists, and thinkers.
• A fun and inexpensive way to expose yourself to a broad range of written resources is to set aside an afternoon to browse at your local bookstore.
• Key innovations that redefine entire fields often draw upon wisdom gleaned from seemingly unimportant experiences.
• When you realize that the most important learning can happen anywhere and at any time, it encourages you to value whatever you are doing and to always be open to unexpected discoveries. It also changes your perspective on taking risks and the possibility of failure.
• Since there is always something to learn, it means that you can take something away from every situation, regardless of the outcome. Even, or especially, in moments of personal hardship or loss, there are things that can be learned that will help you grow as a person and improve your life.
• If you want to be successful, you should always be on the lookout for opportunities to learn and grow.
• One last way you can embrace learning is by deliberately setting aside time to pursue activities that introduce you to new skills and areas of knowledge.
• You are more likely to come up with transformative ideas when you are doing things out in the world—trying new activities, exploring unfamiliar places, meeting people—than when you are at home watching TV on your couch.
• An important aspect of becoming an innovator is learning to act outside the box—to step out of your usual haunts, habits, and thinking patterns to embrace new possibilities.
• The researchers found that the more countries a person lives in, the more likely she will generate innovative products or businesses.
• The more industries a person works in, the more likely she is to become a successful innovator.
• Creative people often work independently, which can isolate them from encounters that help to develop their vision. So as a creator, it is important to find ways to venture outside of your usual workplace.
• Perhaps the most powerful way to initiate transformative ideas is by interacting with people outside your usual social network.
• We are great analyzers. We enjoy coming up with plans, resolutions, to-do lists, and goals. Although we are masters at analysis, we are less skilled when it comes to boldly engaging in the key actions that lead to real change.
• When people must select from a number of choices, they are likely to get confused and choose the most familiar option, even if better alternatives are available.
• Numerous research studies have shown that making decisions can sap away energy necessary for initiating action.
• In summary, research tells us that unnecessary thinking and analysis can stop you in your tracks.
• If you want to be a doer—a person whose life is filled with meaningful experiences, diverse opportunities, and continual learning and growth—then it is essential that you not deplete your confidence and energy by overthinking your opportunities.
• The way to avoid getting bogged down by big decisions is to shrink them to a more manageable size.
• People are better at recognizing risks than they are at identifying opportunities, place a higher premium on potential losses than they do on equivalent gains, and react more strongly to negative stimuli than they do to positive ones.
• A simple way to overcome your negativity bias is to apply what we call the “One Yes Trumps Three No’s” rule. The idea is that when you are considering whether to do something or not, give each positive reason three times as much weight as each negative.
• Sometimes the biggest risk is the future that you will end up with if you are unwilling to change:
• Although it is easy to be indecisive and wimp out when it comes to our own aspirations, most of us will hold firm when we make a promise to others.
• In Silicon Valley, failure is often the pathway to success. The more quickly and frequently you fail, the more likely you are to stumble upon the killer idea that does launch into the stratosphere.
• Although most of us recognize that success and happiness come from taking action to embrace the opportunities in our lives, we often have trouble getting ourselves in motion.
• Resistance tends to be the most powerful and persuasive when you are facing situations that can result in significant change in your day-to-day life:
• Although your immediate feelings can be an important reference point when considering potential courses of action (our approach is based on the importance of trying fun, new things), your mood in the moment is not always a reliable indicator of the best way to proceed.
• The best way to get in the mood to do something is by doing it.
• Not only is taking action the fastest way to establish a more positive attitude toward doing something, it is also often the only way you can come to feel positive and comfortable about unfamiliar activities.
• The truth is that how you feel has little to do with your ability to take positive action. We routinely do incredible things despite not feeling gung ho about them.
• If you want to be successful, then you need to have old-fashioned stick-to-itiveness, or what Penn psychologist Angela Duckworth calls “grit.”
• Procrastination is the most tricky (and familiar) way that resistance discourages us from action.
• Procrastination is the hidden killer of dreams.
• Spend time every day working on your most important projects.
• The key point is to get in the habit of doing quality work that isn’t interrupted by checking your email, surfing the web, or trips to the refrigerator. By doing thirty minutes of focused work, you overcome your inertia and reignite your interest. This helps change your mind-set from being a procrastinator to being a producer.
• The antidote to procrastination is to reverse this process—to become skilled at spending time each day engaged in your most significant work.
• The crucial thing is that you engage in at least one of your key tasks each day.
• IF YOU STUDY the lives of successful people, you will find that most every story of personal success is founded upon the help and support of friends, mentors, advisors, and family.
• People recognize when you are interacting with them as a means to get something and will rightfully be wary of you.
• There is no more powerful way to enrich your life and encounter the unknown than by having meaningful relationships with a wide range of people.
• A simple way to expand your social relationships is to talk to a new person each week.
• One of the easiest ways to broaden your social community is to reach out to those whom you already know.
• A great way to meet new people and form deep friendships is by becoming a teacher.
• Keep in mind that relationships are never a one-way street.
• If a group doesn’t exist, then you can create your own.
• The Fail Fast approach provides a simple way to transform your life through small, immediate actions.
• Successful people have a knack for performing poorly. They deliberately seek out opportunities where they can face the limits of their skills and knowledge so that they can encounter the unknown and learn.
• Successful people have a lean approach to planning. They find ways to take small steps in order to experiment, collect information, and adjust course, without the need for a huge investment or long-term commitment.
• The best way to gain confidence and improve your mood is to take action, even though you’re not feeling up to it.