Is this a picture of success? Or a picture of failure? In fact it’s neither: It’s practice.
Much has been written about success and failure in business, in life, in sports…. I’m here to share something about failure in design.
In her book, Grit, Angela Duckworth points out that it takes years to find something you’re truly interested in. That thing that lights your fire. Then, it takes at least a few more years to get good at it. And what are you doing during that whole time? You’re practicing, you’re finding your way, you’re making work that sucks, and you know it. But is there any way around this kind of failure? Of course not. The only way is through it. Duckworth’s research also showed that the only thing that carries you through all these years of making awful work is that you inexplicably love doing it.
The process by which we get good at anything worthwhile is incredibly messy, long, and filled with trial and error. With most things that require skill, like design or coding or writing, often you actually can’t do good work unless you’ve done bad work first. (Trust me, I’ve spent years ;-) It’s a harsh fact that often deters young designers who are just starting out and lacking confidence. So I’m here to say: jump in the mud, there’s no other way.
John Maxwell, in The 15 Invaluable Rules of Growth, lays out the path to success as: Test, Fail, Learn, Improve, Re-enter. Although he’s writing about personal growth, he and other writers illustrate nicely how failure used to be looked down upon in business circles as expensive, risky, and foolish, until technological improvements made it incredibly easy to fail repeatedly and learn from mistakes. Now, the best, most innovative, companies release work that fails quickly and often: it’s an extremely effective growth engine.
Before attempting the elbow stands above, my teacher taught me to fall safely, which is, when you think about it, one of the most valuable life lessons out there. Proficiency is build on practice, which is built on repeated failures and growth. So, repeated failure, in a very real sense constructs the architecture of our future success. It’s been pointed out by Malcolm Gladwell in Blink that extreme proficiency often seems like magic to those who haven’t experienced this process. In other words, if you aren’t able to look back on past work, and cringe, you’re likely not doing it right. Only real improvement can provide this perspective on your past work, or your past self.
So, what I’m doing this year is carving out a little daily space each day to practice, to fall, to fail, to make some mess, and to make my own worst critic cringe - because it’ll mean I’m getting much better at what I do. What will you fail at today?