Subscribe to my newsletter - the Step Up! You'll get an inside look into my thoughts, mental models, and ways of going about life - with the goal of helping you do the same. Take the first step and join me on this journey. Newsletter every Thursday at 4:30pm CST.
The Step Up - Volume 3: Fail Fast & Often
Volume 3: Fail Fast & Often"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work" -Thomas Jefferson on inventing the light bulb This is one of my favorite quotes - ever. It's not defeatist. It's just a guy who knows he's on the path to accomplishment, and these "failures" are just necessary steps on that path. A lot of us have heard people say "You don't fail unless you quit. Until then, you learn." It's been said countless times over millennia in different ways:
Just Google "quotes on failure," and you'll find all these and more. But let's take this line of thought a step further. Think of learning as paying down "ignorance debt" - the concept that your lack of knowledge hinders you in doing what you want to do. You are in debt to your not knowing. You can pay down your ignorance debt in various ways:
Failure is just a method of learning - of paying down ignorance debt. And it's accessible to everyone for free at all times, unlike formal education or most professional resources. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me. I end with this quote that shook my soul when I first saw it: We're all X amount of failures from our goal. We just don't know how many. How fast would you want to fail? I'd think as fast & often as possible. See you next Thursday, Steppers. We will succeed, Grayson Song of the Week:
glaive's new project Y'all sent me down the rabbit hole of his 2020-2022 music and MAN, I forgot how addicted I was to his music! bastard ranked #7 on my Top Songs of 2021 list, and it's truly next-level hyper pop. I absolutely love how he harmonized with himself in his earlier music, and the energy and song structure for such a short run time makes it like an audible Oreo - I can never listen just once. |
Grayson Stepanek
Subscribe to my newsletter - the Step Up! You'll get an inside look into my thoughts, mental models, and ways of going about life - with the goal of helping you do the same. Take the first step and join me on this journey. Newsletter every Thursday at 4:30pm CST.
Volume 4: Bias to Action My good friend Tim Miquez (love you, Tim) made a great LinkedIn post recently about initiative, and it reminded me about a concept I'm heavily invested in: Bias to action. It's simple: once you've had an idea, lean toward acting. It's very easy to continually brainstorm ideas, push back a task or project, or think about a decision for many reasons: You want all the information You want the "perfect" idea You're waiting for the "right" time You're nervous about making...
Volume 2: Systems > Goals Don't focus on goals. Focus on systems. Goals are exciting and wonderful and motivational and everything good!!! Until you need to achieve them.. Then comes the frustration, disillusionment, and burnout. Goals are nothing without the systems in place to achieve them. Goals are ideas. Systems are repeatable frameworks of actions. Goals are a destination. Systems are how you get there. And life isn't a destination - it's a journey. An infinite game. You don't "win"...
Volume 1: We will succeed In my Welcome email, I told you my definition of success: "causing others to succeed because of your success" I start off my newsletter journey with this motto because it is the core of who I am, and it was produced during the hardest time of my life. One of my best friends, Austin Johnson, committed suicide on June 20, 2019. I can talk endlessly about that day, but I'll leave it at that for now. It was rock bottom for myself, our friend group, and his family. And...