It is rather easy to feel like a failure. Much harder, however, is to actually prove it.
Failure, of course, does not need to be the terrible, awful, really bad thing we tend to think it is (because, of course, it’s just a step in the direction of progress). But maybe we treat it that way because we’ve been conditioned to give failure the benefit of the doubt – and much more so than we do success.
My own personal MO is to get something 90% right and suffer over the 10% that isn’t1. The operative word here is “suffer.” Rarely is anything 100% perfect (especially in creative work), so 90% of the way there should feel really fucking good!
And yet!!
Measurable objectives make us want to measure more objectives, and then we endlessly measure our need to keep hitting higher and higher objectives.
I (we?) suffer. Suffer because the guitar part isn’t quite right yet (while the rest of the song feels excellent). Suffer because we can’t seem to get that one sentence to read the way it should (when we know the whole thing will get another round of editing). Suffer because we “only” have 10,000 monthly listeners or because we didn’t hit any editorial playlists…on Spotify (“it got a few good ones on Apple Music, but that doesn't count!”).
Our productivity gurus might tell us that some good, SMART goal setting is in order here. But then we end up living in the world of metrics and widgets and measurable objectives – which is all well and good, but not exactly what the world needs more of all of the time.
Remember, measurable objectives are what led us to freaking out over only having 10k monthly listeners, or only getting 500 likes on our latest post, or only making $100,000 a year. Measurable objectives make us want to measure more objectives, and then we endlessly measure our need to keep hitting higher and higher objectives.
So, how do we know when we’ve failed? And how do we reclaim “failure” as a productive step forward, a lesson learned – or just literally anything better than “curling up in a ball on the floor thinking about giving up and why I wasted my twenties!!”
I think, for me, it’s a matter of “somewhat measurable intentions2” – expressing our desires not in what we can accomplish, but what we can feel, what we can experience. “I want to have fun doing this.” “I want to feel a connection with my audience.” This is measurable; this is real. But it’s not a number; it’s not a metric. Even when we do need some external validation, “I want to make people laugh,” seems a lot healthier than, “I want 100 ‘😂’ reactions to my story.”
And if we don’t make anyone laugh, okay. We missed the mark. Learn from it; do it again; work a little more; try a little less.
I heard Andre 3000 say in an interview recently, “I only work on feeling. Feeling is my only barometer of what I’m doing,” he said about both how he knew his work with OutKast was right – and why he hasn’t released new hip hop since then.
I don’t get the sense that he walks around feeling like a failure these days, though, even when he’s openly struggled with his creative process.
Shifting our mindset from “success” and “failure” to experience and intention opens us up to a more fruitful and sustainable creative process. Failure, after all, is just another name for growth.
And I like to know I’m growing all the time.
-DR
What do you think? What makes you feel like you’re failing? How do you know you’ve succeeded? Do you like SMART goals and I should just shut up and do what my YouTube algorithm tells me to do?
We can easily trace this back, in my own life, to the “What happened to the other 10 points?” kind of response I got in high school when bringing home a 90 on any given test. This made me very “successful” at school, and very self-critical ever since.
Forget SMART Goals and KPIs: let’s get some SMIs going!