Michael Batnick, Director of Research at Ritholtz Wealth Management LLC said this about failure. “I suspect that people persist in failure because they don’t even know that they are failing in the first place. And they don’t know they’re failing because they don’t record and track their results.”
My conclusions:
Write things down. My iPad Pro and pen is my constant companion. Writing things down and using technology to record project meetings have helped me see one of my most significant blind spots. I don’t have to rely on memory.
Measure what matters. It’s easy to assume it’s working. Assume nothing. Measure progress. People want results.
Fail forward, fail fast. It’s okay to have ups and downs. That’s part of life. Just make sure you are aware of whether you are experiencing an up or a down. If it’s a down, proceed but fail fast. Never let failure keep you down.
Crap jobs are created by other people. Dream jobs you make yourself. We all heard THAT definition of insanity a hundred times. The problem is that many people just wish they lived in an alternate reality. Do the same thing, take no risk, feel super comfy, and just get awesome results. Yay! If you want change, real change, the kind that will get noticed, you have to be willing to do the kind of stuff that Steve Clayton does over at Microsoft. Be willing to do something every so often that might get you fired.