Change the variables

People say that every failure is an opportunity to learn - what that discounts is how often people take the wrong message from a failure.

In order for a failed experiment to be valuable, you need to understand the variables and assumptions that were at play.

When you read stories of ​successful people​ doing great things, don’t just look to imitate - look to iterate.

No two attempts will be identical. If you follow the same playbook line by line, in your own unique circumstances it’s likely the results will be different.

You may still fail. Perfection isn’t the objective. New knowledge is the objective. There’s a quote that legends from Michael Jordan to Thomas Edison have uttered some version of: “You’re not failing 100 times, you’re learning 100 ways that don’t work”.

Just make sure it’s actually 100 unique failures and you’re not just rolling the dice ‘one more time’ x20 like a divorcee at a Vegas casino thinking 'This time will be different'.