Trying to see if you fail

I’ve been reading Wil Shipley’s blog, and he always has something interesting to say. He had a post the other day called Failure is Success that brought up some really good points.

His point is basically that people are held back by a fear of failure, yet if you do not fail then you are not really pushing/challenging yourself enough. Failure is what happens when you find the limits of your abilities.

That’ s a pretty deep thought, and I had to stop and think about it a while. I’ve come to learn that you can always learn something from your failures, but I’ve always thought that the lesson was limited to “what not to do next time”. The idea that Wil presents is more like negative logic: “I did not fail this time, so next time I should try harder/different and find out where my limit is.”

Its pretty clear this can be applied to many things in life, but probably should be used with some common sense (i.e. don’t try to see a sunspot with your naked eye just to see if you fail or not). Its definitely something to think about. Why let a fear of something that could be good hold you back from doing what you want?

And having said that I’m going to stop worrying about my next programming project and if it is designed well enough, or if I’ve thought about everything. Instead of worrying about all of the little details (its a personal project) and not doing anything while I agonize over the small stuff, I’m going to hit the publish button and then start slinging some code.