Category: Process

Recently I was talking to a few different people about the idea of failure and motivation. It’s a combination of things I’ve seen manifest itself in a number of forms, but it almost always plays out the same way.

Here is the standard approach towards failure I see often in creative people.

1. Try something that you have in your mind or in sketch books/journals, etc.
2. It doesn’t work as planned at all the very first time
3. Quit.

It’s the quitting part that for me is the downside. I have this story I tell to almost everyone (I’m not even sure if it’s true anymore – but it doesn’t really matter) when Thomas Edison was inventing the incandescent light bulb, he produced over 1000 failed attempts at creating that bulb. Usually I then say that most people might fail at something three or four times before they quit. And the funny thing is no one ever challenges me on that rough number. Ever.

I think that the reason no one does is because in truth that number is probably one.

I think a lot of people try things and then walk away – and that as an artist is death.

Here is a story I was told by a former US Olympian. I her met years ago at a social function and we were talking to a group of kids about succeeding in life, reaching goals, etc., she was talking about her past as a runner – she was a member of the US Olympic team in the eighties. She was not a dominant runner – so the TV didn’t do a big “get to know” kind of video, but she was at the olympics as an athlete, not a spectator.

A year before the olympics she was ranked number four in the ladder of US runners for her event and was not going to be included on the team. Here’s what happened. The two runners ahead of her quit running competitively inside of the year before the games which allowed her to make the team.

That story always floors me.

Last thing, Here is a video made from an Ira Glass radio show (I think) about taste and failure – it’s interesting as well.

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