Failure is Always an Option

"I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work."

-Thomas Edison

It takes a lot of internal strength to fail, or as Edison has shown above, perhaps a distorted view on the very definition of failure.  My point is that failure is not always easy to come to terms with. However, if history as shown us anything, it is that the world’s greatest failures are often also the world’s greatest successes.

I started a new job two weeks ago.  In my first week, I was given a task that I felt was completely misaligned with my skillset and frankly, a rather foolish thing to have me doing. I’m not sure if I was given the task because my supervisor lacked information on my capabilities, if they had a pressing need for the task’s completion or if they simply wanted to test me out of my depth.  Either way… I failed at the task, however, I didn’t fail in the right way.

Yes, there are most definitely different ways to fail.

If in approaching a task, you are able to keep an open mind and accept the distinct possibility of failure, you will mentally document each step and pay closer attention to your actions so that upon your blunder’s post-mortem, you can see where you went wrong.  If however you act as I did and charge into the problem like a western gun-slinger with a penchant for brushes with death, you will not maintain the state of mind necessary to monitor your shortcomings.

This isn’t to say that we should enter new territory with the expectation of failure, however, I believe that we should always approach the unknown accepting the possibility of failure. By doing so, we remove so much of the apprehension and fear associated with failing.  We actually think through what it would mean to fail and are able to mitigate the risks of failure or even realize that the consequences of failing may not be that great.

It’s a challenging concept to accept but failure is not always bad.  As Edison’s quick turn of words in response to a nosey New York Times reporter reminds us, failure is an essential element of success.  Accepting failure allows for risk. Risk allows for progression, innovation and the unexpected… all things that ultimately lead to breakthrough success.

You may be wondering what happened to my first week at work.  As I mentioned, I failed the wrong way by the end of my first week as I didn’t accept the possibility of failure and didn’t learn anything.  Ok, I’m lying a little.  I did learn one important thing that I carried into my second week of the task which has drastically improved my work approach, and outcome:

Failure is always an option.

Forget Your Passion, Find Your Challenge!

“Be passionate about your job and you’ll never work another day in your life.”

I call bullshit. Sure, this quote gives us that Hallmark warm and fuzzy feeling way down in the sub-cockles of our heart (which by the way, the word “cockles” is nothing more than an incorrect latin translation of the word chocleae, which referred to ventricles… go warm your ventricles, people), however, there is a very harsh reality that this quote ignores.  If everyone in the world followed this quote to the letter, we would have a ridiculous number of rock stars, hoards of mediocre professional athletes, and such a high demand for accountants that they would be the highest paid individuals in the world.  My point it is that sometimes, it isn’t possible to follow your heart.

When I was 18, I was an optimistic farm boy, preparing myself to leave the small town and enter the city for University.  I had gotten into a number of schools and was torn between two very different paths: engineering or music. I still recall a conversation with my Aunt, the conclusion of which told me that music would always be there for me no matter what, but engineering wasn’t really something that people did as a hobby.  “Besides,” my Aunt concluded, “if you pursue music as a career, it becomes work, and you can never really love work.”

While I may disagree with my Aunt on that last point, that conversation was quite possibly one of the most important defining moments of my young life. The difficulty was, had I followed my passion and pursued a career in music, I would probably end up among the huge statistic of struggling artists who barely make ends meet working shift jobs at cafes and pubs, trying to chase a dream that has less than a prayer’s chance of coming to fruition. The issue here was a problem of demand; there simply wasn’t enough of it to justify another guy like me trying to play music for a living.

This isn’t to say that one shouldn’t be passionate about their work, however, don’t feel as though you have to be so narrow-sighted in the pursuit of your goals so as to ignore the opportunities around you and find a way to achieve both passion and success.  I, for example, have made a damned good life for myself as an engineer turned businessman. This has afforded me the luxury of playing in a band during my free time to satisfy my need for music. Win-win, right?

You may still be wondering if this means that work must therefore be a monotonous drudgery until the day we retire with our only respite being the hobbies we pursue in our leisure time.  Foolish earthling, give your head a shake. Research into human motivation has shown that there are a number of factors that drive our work habits (particularly things like mastery, autonomy and purpose). I would argue that in order to enjoy your work on an ongoing basis, you need to find a job that challenges you.  We humans seem to be addicted to the positive feelings of accomplishment and few things give that junkie’s fix like overcoming a big challenge.  There is a certain element of pride and strength in the knowledge of overcoming a meaningful problem though independently learning and applying new knowledge and skills.  For me, this problem solving high is only slightly less enjoyable than the feeling I get from being on stage with a guitar and a captive (albeit slightly alcohol-fueled and inhibition-lowered) audience.

All that said, if you wake up every morning knowing - absolutely KNOWING - that you will one day be the greatest ballerina that ever lived… by all means, follow your passion.  However, for the rest of us who have our doubts, a good challenge can be a great substitute for passion and something that I for one, can get passionate about.

Why Can't We Be Happy?

In the past two months, I have done a disturbing amount of introspection. I’ve gotten to know myself better than I ever wanted to. Through this process, I was attempting to find the core of what made me tick with the hope that I could answer a very simple yet extremely important question:

Why can’t I be happy at work?

To be fair, I’ve always enjoyed work to a degree. I like the challenges I encounter each day and I enjoy the satisfaction that comes with solving problems and impacting the lives of others. However, this time around, I didn’t just want simple pleasures here and there, I wanted a workplace that I had to be physically removed from the office at the end of each day. I wanted to find a job that I could enjoy doing more than my hobbies.  I wanted to love my job.

This led me to think about some of the typical responses to happiness at work. Was it fame? Given the wake of countless athletes who have taken their own lives and when considering celebrities such as, Ms. Houston, who drowned in spirals of depression, it is difficult to highlight fame as a big selling point. What about fortune? Getting a bit less anecdotal and a bit more statistical, if one looks at the extreme ends of the global suicide rates, the positive effect of money is quickly brought into question:

• Haiti – 0.001% ($673 GDP/cap)
• Pakistan – 0.002% ($1,197 GDP/cap)
• Philippines – 0.0021% ($2,255 GDP/cap)
• Finland – 0.0193% ($44, 488 GDP/cap)
• Japan – 0.0238% ($45,774 GDP/cap)
• South Korea – 0.0312% ($23,749 GDP/cap)

From this quick exercise, one could almost conclude that the people in some of the richer nations are actually less happy… or at least, are certainly killing themselves more.

*I’m using suicide as an indicator for unhappiness here, which may be a poor choice, however, certainly gets the point across about the effect of some variables

The concept of ‘fit’ gets thrown around a lot. While this term is a bit ambiguous, it tends to refer to the way that an individual meshes into an organization’s culture. I, for example, should never in my life choose to work for an accounting firm or say… the military. Fit is definitely an important factor, but is it the be-all-end-all?

I would argue that all of these things – fame, fortune, fit – are prerequisites for happiness to some degree, however, they are just that: prerequisites. You need to be paid enough not to have to worry about salary. You need to get enough recognition to satiate your ego. Your organizational surroundings need to align with your beliefs, not perfectly, but enough that you can find common ground. However, beyond this, I believe that the onus is on the individual.

Our minds are disturbingly powerful tools, yet we so often neglect that power. How is it that a rice paddy farmer in mainland China can be exponentially happier than an iBanker working on Wall Street? The answer is simple: perspective. Recent work by Shawn Achor in the field of positive psychology talks about a misconception in many of the developed nations. We believe that success will bring us happiness, when in fact all of Achor’s work points to the exact opposite: happiness brings success. In short, simply by taking a positive approach to your life and work, you will be more likely to succeed and said positivity and happiness will simply perpetuate upon its self.

Perhaps even more interesting is that our happiness and positivity does not necessarily have to be sourced from the outside world or “natural.” Work by Dan Gilbert has shown that we can simulate happiness and that it provides the same physiological impact on our well-being. Happiness does not need to be found – through success, love, fame or fortune – we have the ability in our own minds to synthesise happiness. All we need to do is approach our lives and our work with the right state of mind.

So to answer my original question, why can’t I be happy at work? Maybe because I’m just not thinking about it the right way.