I was asked the other day by Seth via Twitter if I had ever written anything specifically on how one can recover emotionally from project failure.

My assumption is that his question was a personal one and that he was looking for advice on how to move on to the next big thing. A quick scan reveals that I’ve shared a few things here and there about “failure”:

1. More Bloggers Need to Fail
2. A Positive Attitude as Strategy
3. Get Fired
4. Fighting Irrational Fears
5. Worth the Price of Admission
6. Broken Promises
7. You are Not Your Blog
8. How the Mighty Fall
9. My 2012 Year in Review

Those are just a few that have elements of me mentioning failure – but I do not believe that I’ve tackled the topic head-on so I’ll do my best Seth to answer what I believe is your explicit question and then any underlying questions as well.

I almost want to start with the obvious – failure is very much a part of life.

But that’s not what you’re asking Seth and is a pretty shitty way to start a post, I know, but it’s also the foundation of what I will continue to share about.

And, I believe that many people still don’t get it – failure is not just a part of life, it’s absolutely essential to our very existence and survival. It’s a part of being human. When you view success and failure as literally the same thing you allow yourself the opportunity to actually learn.

Failure, in many respects, is more about perspective and opinion than anything else. You see, what others may call “failure” I may see as quite the opposite. What others deem as failure I may see as wild success. This isn’t self-delusion or manic psychobabble, it’s completely legit, especially in the context of entrepreneurship.

(I will say that in other particular contexts failure is quite simply that – abject failure. If you cheat on your wife, steal money from your company, or murder someone, that’s obviously a failure of massive proportions – I can’t see any “success” in those acts alone although you may eventually recover.)

So you started a project, bootstrapped it perhaps or even raised some venture capital. You did your very best and you tried to make it all work. For whatever reason it didn’t take, it didn’t work as intended and you didn’t meet your benchmark goals of customer acquisition, retention, or revenue.

Your friends, family, investors, and the general public mass of idiotic opinion on the internet may classify your efforts as a failure. But in many ways that’s just an opinion and one perspective of many. It’s not to dismiss the unfortunate results – that totally sucks and you may have totally botched the opportunity, but you’ll live and so will everyone else. Success. You’re still breathing.

Ok, so you started a project, raised some decent angel funds, and saw a skyrocket engagement within the first 90 days. You entertained a quick buyout offers and ultimately sold it to a huge conglomerate. You pocketed a bunch of cash and realized you could take a few months off and yet you feel stone cold as if something went mortally wrong. The world may deem this as a great success while inside you may feel like you’ve made the worst decision in your life. Success or failure? Hey, you’re still breathing.

I’ve experienced both scenarios and objectively speaking I could justify both of them could be equally viewed as “success” and yet at the very same time “failure” in the same breath. Which is right? Which one is wrong? Hell if I know.

But I’m still here. I’m still breathing. And recovery for me is simply that – waking up and pursuing what I believe is the absolute best use of my time given my current circumstance and the information that I currently have.

It’s as simple as getting out of bed, shaking off the dreamy cobwebs of sleep, getting a shower, brewing my first cup of coffee, and deciding that I should probably kick some ass today.

I choose action instead of the potentially damaging mind-games of overly-medicated forms of meditation and self-reflection. Do I learn from the past mistakes that I’ve made? Sure. But I instinctively know that if I spend too much time there then any value that was generated out of those moments of silence are for naught.

It’s through action that we learn, call it success or call it failure. The decision to act is not enough. Decision is for when you deliberate if said action can be labeled as failure or success. Action is for those that want to recover and do something meaningful with their lives.

I did a bit of study on how civilians and soldiers recover from grotesque accidents or the consequences of battle and war – they lose a limb, lose their sight, or find themselves crippled entirely. Biologically-speaking, they are now “fail” any test of being a so-called “complete” human being with all their appendages and senses intact.

And a many of them engender that perspective and it rots them to the core. Others, though, act. The latter continue to move forward, despite their new-normal and some even lead more fulfilling lives than what they had previously. They acknowledge their limitations and their “failed” capabilities but they wouldn’t call themselves failures. They recover. In fact, they more than recover. They live fully.

You can do a simple Google Search and the stories are incredible. The human spirit is indomitable.

So, what does this mean for you Seth, for me? Practically-speaking it means that to recover from failure you must give yourself permission to try and fail again. Grieve, if you must, as that’s a natural and important part of being human, but do not stay there longer than necessary. Get up, go build, go do whatever is next.

And a word to your critics: Fuck them. Those that stay behind the curtains of safety who feel that it’s a swell deal to lob their opinions of success and failure from afar will never know what the bitter-sweet taste of raw defeat is really like. Consequently, they will never know what it’s like to live in glorious victory.

Sadly, they will never know what it’s like to really live; to be fully alive, to be fully human.

[Image via Wikipedia]

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I answered a few questions over at Blogging Nerds recently.

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I bet my calendar is prettier than yours. I bet that I have a “lighter” and “more clear” weekly calendar than most of you.

And therein lies one of my secret weapons of productivity. You see, I hate meetings. I. Fucking. Hate. Meetings.

People ask me how I get so much done and although there may be a few tricks here and there the “magic” is pretty simple – I don’t waste time all my time talking to people.

I shared this gem of an idea at a conference keynote last week (I’m not sure I’ll be invited back) which was counter-intuitive and a bit contrarian, especially since the event’s theme was collaboration and connecting with others to get stuff done:

One of the greatest distractions that you have to get shit done is other people.

You see, at the end of the day you are responsible for getting the work that you need to get done, done. It’s not your team, your personal assistant, or your staff of lackeys. It’s you. Just you.

And if you’ve booked yourself out to meet with all these people then you’re most likely wasting a lot of valuable time. How many of those meetings are really that essential to your project? How many of those meetings are really that necessary?

I bet many of them are excuses. I bet many of them are really lame attempts to feign productivity. I bet most of them are a complete bore. I bet most of them don’t amount to much or accomplish anything of significance. I bet most of them can be completely wiped off your schedule and no one would cry and no one would complain.

Then why don’t you? Why don’t you clear your calendar of distraction and get the stuff that you need to get done?

You want to change the world? You want to get that app done? You want to be a full-time entrepreneur? You want to be a full-time fill_in_the_blank whatever? Then why are you spending so much of your week stuck in a meeting with other people who are infinitely less ambitious than you are? Who are content with wasting their time and everyone else’s?

Save yourself, please. The world is waiting for your great invention; it isn’t waiting for your next meeting to get done.

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Killer Chrome Extension here. Quickly see what the “mobile view” of any website.

I like.

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Just like the fact that there appears to be an app for everything these days there’s also a timing for everything as well.

Not all apps will be wildly successful; sometimes it’s more of a timing issue than functional one.

But I’ve been thinking about more than just apps these days; I’ve been thinking about how in life there’s simply a timing for everything. You know? You just never know about this and that and whatever else.

A glorious mystery it is.

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It’s tough being a parent and it’s getting more difficult every single year.

The biggest challenge right now is trying to identify the numerous interests that both of our girls have and being able to match those with activities that will engage and challenge them without imposing the dreaded your-parents-love-this-and-you-should-do-it-too syndrome.

Like all parents we want to give our children everything that we can to provide a solid foundation of learning that consistency feeds their curiosity that may eventually become part of their long-term vocation. At times it seems impossible to know which interests are worth pursuing and which ones are worth investing in (financially) for camps, after-school programs, and such.

The pressure, on a bad day, feels like we’re trying to help create life-plans for them and if we fail then our childs’ life is ruined!

If you’re a parent you know where I’m coming from.

Although I don’t have any answers or suggestions for other parents in terms of solving this tension I’ll share one thing we’re doing with our oldest now that’s neat and very different than what my own parents did with me. This isn’t to say my parents did anything wrong; on the contrary, they did many things right! But it is different.

I believe that there are many things that are just given to us, natural skills and talents that are obvious to all, that help that individual achieve great success in their particular field. We see this in every field of sports, academics, and business.

But I also believe that there are things that can be taught and acquired over time and through significant investment of time and resources success can also be achieved as well. To many this is the 10,000 HR rule proposed by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers. Studies suggest that the key to success in any field has nothing to do with talent. It’s simply practice, 10,000 hours of it — 20 hours a week for 10 years.

Whether Malcom is right or I’m wrong or vice versa (or whether we’re both wrong at the same time) doesn’t really matter – there’s probably a bit of both models happening at the exact same time.

But the important thing to remember is that the latter scenario is within our relative control – that is, I can’t gift my children talents and natural abilities outside of what God has already ordained through the combination of my DNA with my wife’s DNA, but I can guide and cultivate a work ethic that will transcend any particular field or practice.

So that’s what my wife and I committed to, after a very long discussion over the last few months, to start doing with our children. We’re going to teach them how to invest their most precious resource (their time) into their activities with intentionality and wisdom. This isn’t something that they could just “catch” – again, we have to teach them this.

Generally, we call this discipline; we call this training.

For example, I’m now spending time with my oldest every single day outside with a soccer ball, training her beyond what she’s received from her coaches and through just simple play. I spent more of my life participating in soccer than almost any other activity, the first being writing and computer programming. At one point I was playing internationally and training for the Olympics.

At Gladwell’s rate, if we train 20 hours a week for 10 years she’ll be a “success” – we all know that’s just not how life works and there’s so much more involved, but the point of our engagement with our oldest is to help her understand that consistent investment in a particular activity creates discipline which she’ll be able to apply to any other interest in the future. Again, at age 6 she can’t come up with this and it’s our responsibility as her parents to teach her this model and concept.

And besides, it’s good exercise for me since I’m out of shape like whoa.

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Entrepreneurship is so meta – you can call yourself an entrepreneur and never actually have to do anything with it. Being an entrepreneur is as easy as adding it to you LinkedIn bio and listing it as a “skill” or hashtagging yourself on Twitter.

Then there are those that say you aren’t a real entrepreneur until someone else calls you that. I don’t get that either because that doesn’t really matter much more than self-referencing yourself for anything you’d like.

Personally, call yourself whatever you want – the only titles that will last longer than your own life are probably going to be the ones on your tombstone – think about that for a moment if you will. Can you imagine that?

John Name Doe
1/1/1971 – 1/1/2014
Social Media Guru, Entrepreneur, Blogger

Ridiculous right? I’m sure you’d want something else on there.

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It’s neat to pursue one’s dreams but not all of them are businesses. In the same way, not all businesses fully realize one’s so-called dreams.

And although I’m sad to break that to you it’s simply the truth. Many of the organizations and businesses that I’ve created in the past were not fulfilling some long-held dream or vision for my life. They were fulfilling and doing exactly what they were meant to do: Be a business.

Again, I hate to be the bearer of bad news and I’m sorry if I’m the first person who’s every told you that your dream might suck as a business. It may even feel a bit crippling, but far better to be aware of the reality than to be blinded by illogical and wishful thinking.

Sure, anything is possible so I don’t count it completely out but if you blindly believe that converting a dream into a business and vice versa is the only real possibility you’re considering then, sadly, be prepared for a very rude awakening.

When I survey my previous ventures and businesses almost none of them were in the pursuit of “that” dream. They were decent ideas that were executed just as decently. I was passionate about the project for a short while, putting everything that I had into it for a concentrated time. But I never called them anything close to “my baby” and I could never look anyone in the face and tell them that I’m in any way, shape, or form living “the dream.”

I was instead pursuing something that could create value for myself and for others. I was interested in building great products and a great business.

And that can be discouraging, I’ll admit it. Many of these things, these projects, can seem so close to our so-called dreams, our “babies,” the things that we hold close to our chest and hope will one day experience the sweet taste of glorious success.

But if I haven’t already done so then I’m about to break your heart because I want you to learn to say “no” to them, at least for now. Saying “no” to your dreams can feel like a crushing blow but it won’t kill you. Trust me, I know.

You see, not all dreams have legitimate business models that will work, both short and long-term. Many of these dreams will never be financially profitable, they will never thrive beyond conception, and just can’t grow. Instead, it’ll stay a dream or a ill-fated and never-attempted project, which is good – leave it there and instead focus on a business that will generate revenue.

This isn’t about money exclusively; this is about being able to create an institution that can continue to create value for others, which means that for 99/100 businesses you need to create revenue in some form or fashion.

You see, successful builders of businesses understand that just because you can make a product doesn’t mean that you should. In just the same way, just because you can dream doesn’t mean that you are able to conjure up a business model that’ll work with that dream.

But here’s the thing, and be encouraged – dreams are, by definition, fleeting and incomplete. Just because one dream doesn’t work as a business doesn’t mean that the next one can’t. Just don’t rush them but be sure to choose the right dream to turn into a business and venture.

Don’t just choose what you’ve done historically. Don’t just do what you’ve always done, what you’re the most familiar with, or even the one that you’ve been holding onto “for years” – choose the one that’s going to be a success today. You can fulfill those other dreams when you have the time and financial resources to fill blackholes with cash.

You see, it’s way more fun to run a successful hot dog stand (i.e. business) than a completely bankrupt (i.e. dream) marketing firm.

Besides, you can always do the marketing firm later.

[Photo Credit: Nhoj Leunamme == Jhon Emmanuel]

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Since reading is an essential part of not only leadership and entrepreneurship but also my very life I am constantly amazed at the stories that I read and how successful some of these individuals are.

Naturally, since I’m reading this book, their story, their biography, they have achieved a level of success that warrants my attention, so I shouldn’t be surprised, but what intrigues me the most is how common many of them really are.

It’s like my Sunday School teacher shared with me when I was little:

You’re unique, just like everyone else.

Their achievements were fantastic and have impacted many of our lives, their philosophies and perspectives now shape the very core of our own thinking, and yet they were all deeply flawed people, flesh and blood, just like you and I.

Many struggled with depression, displayed neurotic behavior, and many had mental disorders that would make our own small quirks laughable. Yet they persevered and did not stop their pursuit.

But the moment I put them in a place that is less human than myself I do them an incredible disservice. Despite their humanity they achieved greatness. Despite their brokenness, their struggles with their own personal demons, they thrived.

You and I can do the same. I have worked with too many people who have used a comparison of themselves against some fabled success story as a reason they cannot be successful themselves. This trap is self-generated and is the diciest and most disabling of all.

You want to build the next Facebook or Twitter? You want to invent the next paperclip or pair of scissors? You want to fly to the moon on a self-propelled jet created out of cardboard and scotch tape? Sure, go for it.

You may fail at your attempts but that’s ok. I think you’ll learn more about your own humanity which means that much later you’ll be creating better and more realistic solutions for… wait for it… humans.

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A friend, Peter Pollock, just recently published his book, Web Hosting for Dummies, via Wiley Publishers and I’m proud to be a part of this publication as the Technical Editor.

Wiley sent me a copy and I don’t need it so I’m giving it away – just comment below with a haiku about web hosting to enter.

Congrats again Peter! So glad I could help.

Oh, and he’s giving away some killer stuff himself if you order it this week.

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