I Don’t Know Why They Say It Isn’t: Failure Is Always An Option

 Why does failure have to be a negative thing?  Who decreed it so?  Who decided people should always succeed?  Don’t get me wrong; I like success.  It’s great.  I’ll even go so far as to say that I prefer success over failure.  But failure’s fine, too.  Why not? 

Most pro-failure posts are going to go on about how great failure is because that’s how you learn.  And it absolutely is.  That’s pretty much the only way to learn.  But what if you fail and it turns out that it’s not a learning opportunity.  It just didn’t work out.  That’s okay, too.  Not everything in life has to matter.  Not everything has to have value.  Sometimes, stuff just happens.  Sure, it’s wonderful if you can learn from a failure and use it to motivate you to improve.  Yeah, you go!   
When I went for the written portion of my driving test, back in the days when we used dinosaurs (do you know how hard it is to parallel park a Brontosaurus?), I failed.  That’s it.  I took the test and I didn’t get enough answers right and I failed the test.  I went back the next day and retook the test and passed it.  Not the best story.  I didn’t learn a lesson about perseverance or determination.  There was no montage of me staying up all night, surrounded by books with titles like, “The Law of the Road” and “Driving and You,” drinking too much coffee, falling asleep with pencils in my hair.  I didn’t have an emotional breakthrough as I discovered that, yes, test anxiety is real and I have it!  I don’t think I even studied again.  I just shrugged it off, came back the next day, and got my permit.  No, it wasn’t material for an After School Special or Lifetime Movie.  But it also wasn’t material for an After School Special or Lifetime Movie, if you see what I am saying.  It was just something that happened.  I don’t know why.  Maybe I was distracted or nervous.  Maybe I didn’t read the questions (or answers) correctly.  Maybe... I can’t even think of a reason.  I just didn’t pass.  It wasn’t meaningful or tragic or inspirational.   
Life is filled with so many giant, life-changing events, but not everything has to be one.  It’s okay to fail and have it mean nothing.  Unless you are skydiving, you should feel free to fail.  Most of the time, it isn’t going to matter.  Sometimes it will be good.  It will mean that you’ve learned something and that you have the opportunity to change and explore new paths and possibilities.  Embrace those moments!  They can change your whole outlook on life.  They can be what drives you.  They can be the best things that ever happen to you.  Or it will be something you never really think about again. 

Why does this matter?  Because fear of failure stops people from doing things.  Things they want to do.  Things they need to do.  Things that will help them grow and will allow them to live the life they want to live.  People are afraid to fail because someone said failure is bad.  Again, I don’t know who, but it must have been someone important because now almost everyone agrees failure is bad.  But most people can’t tell you why.  Just simply because it isn’t success.  But what if we stopped thinking that?  What if we strived to do our best for the sake of doing our best and not for the sake of succeeding?  What if we tried things and didn’t worry about the outcome?   
Yes, of course, there are times when success really matters.  I hope that my surgeon and my banker and my veterinarian are all very successful.  But does it really matter if you don’t pass a test when you are allowed to retake the test as many times as you want?  No.  Not really.  Does it really matter if you lose at bar trivia or at a pick-up basketball game?  Does it really matter if you look stupid when you dance?  No, none of that matters.  Go try something new.  If you fail at it, that’s okay.  If you don’t learn anything when you fail at it, that’s okay, too.  You can pick yourself up and try again or you can just move on to something else.   

In Favor of Procrastination: Why Putting Off Tasks Makes You More Productive

 Rather aptly, I keep putting off writing this post.  It’s been sitting on my to-do list for more than two weeks.  And I am supposed to write a post at least once a week.  So my social media coach tells me.  (Yeah, coaches have coaches) I’ve had the skeleton to this post, but I just haven’t gotten around to turning that into a full post.  

 

Procrastination gets such a bad rap. But like most things in life, it is neutral.  It’s all in how you use it.  Procrastination lets you know that you are not working at your peak performance. Putting something off can let you come back to it with renewed energy and fresh eyes.   Forcing yourself to plow through something when you have lost focus is not going to produce the high-quality results you want.  Sometimes plowing is a necessity.  Sometimes there are deadlines or other people are waiting on you or you plow through the boring parts to get to the good stuff.  But if it’s not a necessity, then stick that work in a drawer and come back to it.  Let your mind think about something else.  Take that break or work on something else.  When you come back to the original activity, you will be able to really see it.  It’s like when you spend half an hour looking for your keys, only to have someone else find them, sitting out in the open on a table you’ve walked past a dozen times during your search.  The more we look at something, especially if there is an urgency or emotional element, the less likely we are to really see it.   

It gives you time to consider a problem or come up with a more creative solution.   Thinking about something else can sometimes spark ideas.  Archimedes was tasked by the king to figure out how much gold was in the royal crown.  You see, he thought the metalsmith had cheated him by mixing the gold with silver.  Archimedes pondered this conundrum but was unable to come up with a solution.  He grew frustrated and decided to put the problem aside and go take a bath.  Hey, who doesn’t like a nice bath at the end of a hard day?  Archimedes filled the tub and when he got in it, water splashed over the side.  He yelled, “Eureka!” and went running, naked, from the bathhouse and down the streets, screaming about water displacement, volume, and oh, how the king was going to love him.  Okay, that probably never happened.  But that’s the story and it has a good moral.  Go take a bath.  Or go for a run (clothed, please).  Or play a game.  Or just sit and observe the world around you.  You may not come up with a physics axiom, but you might be inspired to find what you need to move forward. 

Procrastination reduces stress by letting you know that you need rest and rejuvenation.  Your body and brain can only take so much.  Stress reduces efficiency.  Let’s say you spend 3 hours working on something, but you are forcing every step of it.  You’re working at maybe 35% efficiency and it keeps getting lower as you plow through.  But what if you worked at 35% efficiency for half an hour and then said, “Forget this, I’m gonna go take a bath.”  You soak in the tub for half an hour and then you come back to your work, rested and with a positive outlook.  Now you’re working at 80% efficiency.  And yes, you took half an hour off, but that only lowered your overall efficiency to, like, 62%. No, that’s not 100%. That’s not even 80%, but it’s a lot better than 35%. 

Procrastination can tell you if you are prioritizing your work correctly and help you work more efficiently. Sometimes we put things off because we tell ourselves that they are not that important. And here’s the thing: sometimes that’s true. And that’s good to know. We push to the foreground those things that have deadlines or where someone else is involved and waiting on us. Because cleaning the kitchen can be done after that assignment that is due in the morning.  

 

 

 
Of course, it’s only procrastination if things get done in the end. If things aren’t getting done, that’s not procrastination; that’s not getting things done. Which is a whole different topic which we will cover in another post. When I get around to it. Procrastination can be overused and that makes your life more difficult. But let’s not say all procrastination is bad. Because it isn’t.  Before trying to force your way through the procrastination, see if that procrastination isn’t trying to tell you something. Maybe it’s time for a rest or time to change subjects for a while or time to just sit and think. Listening to your procrastination can help you to work smarter.