We’re expecting a dangerous heat wave today in NYC and I’m somewhat amused as I witness the city freak out about 95 degree weather.
The Texan in me will be basking in the sun later this afternoon at a rooftop in Brooklyn with Lily and my other friend, Abby.
I welcome any and all feedback. Share with friends or on your socials if you feel so inclined. :-)
Have a great weekend.
Earlier this week I posted a tweet that said:
And now I want to dump a few ideas that have come up since then.
Fail Fast
I’m currently reading Shoe Dog by Phil Knight. It’s a memoir by the creator of Nike. I’m about 125 pages in, and I can’t put it down. It’s an excellent book, which I highly recommend if you enjoy underdog stories in business.
Anyway, I just read a passage on my way to the office this morning where Phil is torn between continuing his business of selling shoes (of which isn’t going so well; cash flow is negative), or if he should give up his fantasy of entrepreneurship and tread along life like the rest of his miserable peers, working a 9-5 job with a security net shaped like a noose looming over their heads. Of course, being the creator of Nike, he chooses the former. But before making his decision, he was genuinely at a loss for what to do. That is until he realized that failing, and failing fast, was probably exactly what he should be aiming for:
But my hope was that when I failed, if I failed, I’d fail quickly, so I’d have enough time, enough years, to implement the hard-won lessons. I wasn’t much for setting goals, but this goal kept flashing through my mind every day, until it became my internal chant: Fail fast.
You might be thinking, how deep in the shit do you need to be to come to that conclusion? Failure as a goal? That goes against everything I want to achieve. I want to succeed, not fail, dummy.
To which I will say: Failure is what you get after you do things your way. Why? Well, because it’s inevitable. Doing things your way means leaving the nest of comfort and security. It’s dangerous outside of the nest, which is why so many people choose not to leave it. They prefer to be protected from the uncertainties of life and to feel safe from the cold realities of the world. So going outside of the nest means exposing yourself to risks that you are not prepared for. You are doing the unfamiliar. You don’t know any better. You will fail. There’s no question about it. It’s just a matter of when.
As Phil states, once you come to terms with that, your next job is to make sure that you fail fast. There’s no point in wasting time avoiding the inevitable. Might as well get it over with, right?
So then, the question remains… how do you fail fast?
Do It Your Way
It’s simple. You fail fast by doing things your way. In other words, listen to your gut and don’t succumb to the fears being projected by other people.
Do it your way.
Not your parents’ way, your friends’ way, or your partner’s way.
YOUR WAY.
This involves a great deal of strengthening your intuition, blocking the noise that wants to keep you in the nest, and finally, building the courage to say ‘fuck it’ so that you can move forward in your rightful path.
But… more on that later.
Peace!