Over at O’Reilly Radar Tim O’Reilly wrote about today’s NYT article on Thomas Edison’s early failures in marketing the phonograph. What struck me was the photo that Tim linked in his post. We’ve all had days like this in the projects we’re working on (heck, you may be having that day right now)…
It doesn’t matter what the focus of the project you are working on is, you are doing something new with technology and you are working with people – things are going to go wrong at some point. The question isn’t if it’s when. Your perspective on those setbacks will shape how you deal with them.
While Edison was a phenominal success as an inventor, he failed quite a bit. His outlook is what carried him beyond cashing in, settling for could-have-been. Some of my favorite quotes by Edison:
“Many of life’s failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
“Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do in the first place doesn’t mean it’s useless…. “
“If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward….”
So when you hit one of those walls stay positive, identify the problem instead of the symptom, think solutions not excuses and always assume success.
