The secret to success? Fail fast and learn fast

Getty Images Learn how to develop a tolerance for failure in order to experience success. Einstein was a failure. He was also preternaturally brilliant, a rare quality we assume should have

shielded him from the Average Joe method of trial and error. Au contraire. In explaining his success, the man who was determined to puzzle out the theory of relativity admitted that he

wasn’t necessarily any smarter than most, but that he “stay[ed] with problems longer.” It took eight years and one failed experiment after another before Einstein scored his win. While

serendipity sometimes plays a role in unearthing new theories or knowledge (or coming up with the next killer app), these epiphanies generally come as a result of eliminating what _doesn’t 

_work. In other words, before you can “discover” the theory of relativity, you’ve got to first eliminate all the wrong approaches. Sounds exhausting, doesn’t it?  So, what do you think? Do 

_you_ have an Einsteinian tolerance for the chance of crash-and-burn inherent in all creative endeavors? Not everyone does. But the good news is, it can be developed. Then read on to learn

how to turn major mistakes into superstar successes. I HAVE NOT FAILED. I’VE JUST FOUND 10,000 WAYS THAT WON’T WORK. THOMAS EDISON HOW DO YOU DEFINE SUCCESS? Today’s most innovative leaders

are eschewing the mindset that discourages employees from taking risks that lead to big rewards, and they’re leading by example. Bill Gates insists that successful innovation and success in

general is often built on learning from failure, and he hires the smartest people he can find who have a bias for action; action that sometimes results in failed attempts while pursuing

grand ideas. Arianna Huffington co-founded The Huffington Post to decidedly mixed reviews, one referring to it as “the equivalent of _Gigli, Ishtar and Heaven’s Gate_ rolled into one.”

Undaunted, Huffington’s bias was to try it. If it doesn’t work, move on to the next idea. Richard Branson of Virgin, Kathryn Minshew of The Muse, and Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook—all these

game changers promote the idea that nothing innovative comes from playing it safe.  BOUNCING OFF A BRICK WALL But perhaps no leader has promoted well-intentioned failure with the zest of

Kyle Zimmer, CEO and co-founder of First Book, a nonprofit that partners with publishers to ensure disadvantaged children receive first-run, first-rate books throughout their early childhood

years. Zimmer created what she calls the Brick Wall Award, an honor bestowed upon employees who pursue an idea that should have gone really well, but ended up crashing into a brick wall

instead. “If you’re pushing in whatever you’re doing, you’re going to fail fast and way more than you succeed,” Zimmer says. Are failure and success related? “It’s that old saying, ‘You can

fail without ever succeeding, but you can’t succeed without ever failing.’ The culture we live in teaches us to fear failure, and that’s a huge mistake. We try to detoxify that at First

Book.” The Brick Wall Award, she says, is “a way of saying, ‘It’s OK, you did the thinking, and you gave it your best shot, and it crashed, but it was an honorable step.’” Scott Adams,

creator of the _Dilbert_ comic strip, labored for years at jobs he hated while dabbling in creative pursuits on the side (a computer program that measured a person’s psychic powers was one

of them). All of his side-ventures crashed and burned, including the earliest iteration of _Dilbert_. It’s unlikely he’s ever heard of the Brick Wall Award, but he embraces the concept. Of

his darkest days he remembers: “I always started out with the idea that [my ventures] were long shots, and they should fail fast. Trying more things moved me from a game of low odds to a

game of better odds. Failure was built into the assumption.” LEARNING TO EMBRACE REPEAT DEFEAT You know an idea has caught fire when higher education fans its flames. Stanford University

offers a course that pushes the notion that failure – and recovery from it – are more valuable to an individual than sticking with what you already know how to do. Professor Carol Dweck

teaches this freshman course called Self-Theories (200 people typically apply for 16 spots) where students are directed to tackle something “they have never had the guts to try.” Students

face personal fears like singing in public or learning a new skill like dancing and then document the process, paying particular attention to the fear of failure, discomfort and doubts

inherent in the experience, and how they overcame those obstacles. So how do you truly overcome a discomfort with defeat? Ryan Babineaux, Ph.D, a lecturer at Stanford who also teaches a

contrarian approach to success in his course, Fail Fast, offers five suggestions from his book, _Fail Fast, Fail Often: How Losing Can Help You Win:_ * _IDENTIFY YOUR FEAR_: Find something

that you would like to try but have hesitated to do because of your fear of failure. (I want to try working as a professional photographer, but I am afraid that I might not be good enough at

it to be successful.) * _REVERSE YOUR THINKING_: Come up with a way that you can fail fast at it as quickly as possible. (I am going to find a setting where I can take lots of bad pictures

and let people see them. I can try at my cousin’s wedding, which is happening next month.) * _DO IT ANYWAY_: Get out there and give it a try. Make mistakes and have fun doing it. Ask others

for help and feedback. (While taking pictures at the wedding, I will let people know I am a beginner and ask for comments and suggestions.) * _FAIL FORWARD_: Use your exploratory actions as

a means to learn from mistakes and discover what you need to know. (What parts of taking the wedding photographs were the most or least enjoyable? What pictures did people like or dislike?

What came naturally, and what do I need to work on? * _FIND THE NEXT CHALLENGE_: Seek out the next opportunity to do things at the limits of your abilities. (Next time I will ask to take

pictures at a wedding where I get paid for my work.) IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO LIVE WITHOUT FAILING AT SOMETHING, UNLESS YOU LIVE SO CAUTIOUSLY THAT YOU MIGHT AS WELL HAVE NOT LIVED AT ALL, IN

WHICH CASE YOU HAVE FAILED BY DEFAULT. J.K. ROWLING THEN AGAIN, WHAT IF YOUR BOSS ISN’T A FAN OF FAILURE? Advice to “fail fast and fail often” is all well and good, but even managers who say

they tolerate failure may not be capable of implementing that mindset. (It’s a lot easier to be sanguine about failure after emerging victorious from it.) Even frequent failer Scott Adams

admits that failure in the workplace can give your resume a black eye. So be smart about failure and success, by cutting your losses quickly and always having a plan B. “I’m sure there are

some little pockets of departments out there where they say failure is good and they mean it,” he says. “But in general, if you fail you are in trouble. Your boss has to explain it to his

boss. And even if you failed brilliantly, by the third telling, it’s just a failure. So all things being equal, success is better. Nobody is trying to fail. It’s just part of life, and you

should try and fail intelligently.” AARP asked the CEO of TubeMogul, Brett Wilson—whose progressive leadership style has been featured in _The New York Times_—about managers who claim to

embrace failure but punish it instead. “Embracing the ‘fail-fast’ mentality is easier said than done,” he says. “Organizations must first recognize that they can only win in the long run

through innovation, and achieving an innovative culture is only possible in an environment where employees aren’t afraid of taking risks that might result in failure. Organizations that get

this understand that not only will they fail sometimes, but that doing so is imperative to survive over the long term.”  To encourage a failure-friendly culture, Wilson says,

business-as-usual needs to be tended to while side projects—or moon shoots as he calls them—can be conducted concurrently, with no catastrophic consequences if they fail. “In this way

organizations earn the right to experiment—and sometimes fail—by establishing a cadence of predictability achieving the current core business objectives.” In other words, keep one eye

focused on the bottom line and the other looking toward the horizon of possibility. For the pre-millennial generations (Boomers, that’s us) that were taught to color _inside_ the lines,

embracing a failure mindset can be a formidable task. When we talk about failure, we of course don’t suggest that failing due to procrastination, laziness, incompetence or apathy is

acceptable. It’s not. We do suggest that daring and taking risks greatly carries with it the opportunity for both failure and success and that the two are not mutually exclusive. In the end,

this Japanese proverb distills the failure philosophy to its essence, whether you are pursuing the next great idea or just living life: “Fall down seven times, get up eight.” * Fernando

Leon/Getty Images for TIME SARA BLAKELY, CREATOR OF SPANX Sara Blakely failed to get into law school and took a job selling fax machines door-to-door. She set aside her life savings of

$5,000 to work on an idea of creating seamless and form-flattering undergarments. After dozens of potential investors rejected her idea, in its first year, Spanx made $4 million in profits.

Blakely is the world’s youngest female self-made billionaire. 1 of 25 * John Biever /Sports Illustrated/Getty Images NFL QUARTERBACK DOUG FLUTIE Despite an NFL draft card that listed him as

“extremely small” at just 5 feet 8 inches and 180 pounds, Doug Flutie defied the odds, earning the prestigious Heisman Trophy and the Davey O’Brien National Quarterback Award. He went on to

play professional football in Canada and the U.S. 2 of 25 * Bettmann/CORBIS F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, AUTHOR First published by Scribner’s in April 1925, _The Great Gatsby _by F. Scott Fitzgerald

received mixed reviews and sold only 20,000 copies in its first year. Fitzgerald died in 1940, believing himself a failure and his work forgotten. However, the novel experienced a revival

during World War II. Today, _The Great Gatsby_ is widely considered a literary classic and is consistently ranked among the greatest works of American literature. 3 of 25 * United

Artists/Getty Images SIDNEY POITIER, ACTOR After one of his first auditions, Sidney Poitier was asked by a casting director, “Why don’t you go wash dishes or something and stop wasting

everyone’s time?”  4 of 25 * Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Turner CONAN O'BRIEN, LATE-NIGHT TALK SHOW HOST After graduating from Harvard, Conan O’Brien lost his first job in

television and went on to work a series of menial jobs while launching one failed project after another before landing the television role of his lifetime, replacing David Letterman as the

host of Late Night. 5 of 25 * Apic/Getty Images HENRY FORD, AUTO INDUSTRY PIONEER Henry Ford, the man who put the horse-drawn carriage out of business, forgot to put a reverse gear in his

first automobile. 6 of 25 * Michael Tran/FilmMagic OPRAH WINFREY, TALK SHOW HOST, ACTRESS, CEO Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first television job in Baltimore and was told she was “unfit

for TV.” 7 of 25 * KENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images STEPHEN KING, AUTHOR Before becoming a best-selling book, blockbuster feature film, Broadway musical and TV movie, Stephen King’s novel

Carrie was rejected by 30 publishers. Lucky for them, King didn’t possess his eponymous subject’s telekinetic powers to exact revenge.  8 of 25 * AFP/Getty Images ALBERT EINSTEIN, PHYSICIST

Albert Einstein failed to speak until he was three years old. His parents were told he might be mentally retarded. 9 of 25 * Jeff Siner/Charlotte Observer/MCT via Getty Images MICHAEL

JORDAN, NBA BASKETBALL PLAYER AND TEAM OWNER Michael Jordan has lost almost 300 games and missed 9,000 shots in his illustrious career. 10 of 25 * Keystone/Getty Images THOMAS EDISON,

INVENTOR Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb, held over 1,000 patents, most of which were flops. 11 of 25 * Hulton Archive/Getty Images WALT DISNEY, ANIMATOR Walt Disney was more than

$3 million in debt from business failures when he released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, a blockbuster film that supplied Disney with the fortune he needed to build Disneyland. 12 of 25 *

Paul Drinkwater/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images KIRSTIE ALLEY, ACTRESS Despite her very public struggles with weight gain, Kirstie Alley fox-trotted past failure with two brave stints

on Dancing with the Stars, where in season 12 she earned a perfect 30 for her cha-cha-cha and finished in second place. She returned in season 15 with an all-star lineup. 13 of 25 *

Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images WINSTON CHURCHILL, UK PRIME MINISTER Winston Churchill, one of the greatest orators and leaders in world history, suffered from a speech

impediment, failed the sixth grade, was sickly, and lost every election for public office until finally becoming the prime minister of the United Kingdom at age 62. 14 of 25 * Susan Weinik

/Sports Illustrated/Getty Images TYRONE CURTIS "MUGGSY" BOGUES, BASKETBALL PLAYER Tyrone Curtis “Muggsy” Bogues, measuring 5 feet 3 inches, was told he was too short to play

basketball. With determination that dwarfed his small size, Bogues became one of the most popular players in the Charlotte Hornets’ history. 15 of 25 * Amy C. Etra/Corbis STEVEN SPIELBERG,

FILM DIRECTOR Steven Spielberg was rejected by the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts not once but several times! 16 of 25 * Bettmann/CORBIS HARLAND DAVID

"COLONEL" SANDERS, CREATOR OF KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN Harland David “Colonel” Sanders traveled across the country trying to find someone—anyone—who would buy his fried chicken

recipe that used 11 herbs and spices. After more than a thousand tries, he brokered a deal in Utah and Kentucky Fried Chicken was born. 17 of 25 * Lester/Getty Images THEODORE SEUSS GEISEL

(DR. SEUSS), CHILDREN'S AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR Theodore Seuss Geisel, better known—and beloved—as Dr. Seuss, had his first book rejected by 27 publishers. 18 of 25 * Paramount/Getty

Images HARRISON FORD, ACTOR After carpenter Harrison Ford’s first small film role, a Hollywood executive advised him that he’d never succeed in the movie business. 19 of 25 * RKO/Archive

Photos/Getty Images FRED ASTAIRE, DANCER, SINGER, AND ACTOR In one of Fred Astaire’s first screen tests, an executive wrote: “Can’t sing. Can’t act. Slightly balding. Can dance a little.” 20

of 25 * DeAgostini/Getty Images VINCENT VAN GOGH, PAINTER Vincent Van Gogh sold only one painting in his lifetime—“The Red Vineyard”— just months before his death. His paintings are worth

millions of dollars today. 21 of 25 * SUZANNE PLUNKETT/Reuters/Corbis J.K. ROWLING, AUTHOR J. K. Rowling was a jobless, single mom and “as poor as a person can be without being homeless”

when she began work on the Harry Potter series of books that catapulted her to fame and unanticipated fortune. She is now considered to be the richest woman in Great Britain. 22 of 25 *

Hulton/Archive/Getty Images PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN Abraham Lincoln endured an extraordinary run of failures, including losing six times at bids for political office, before being elected

president of the United States at age 52. 23 of 25 * Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images for Bombay Sapphire ROBERT DOWNEY JR., ACTOR After hitting rock bottom with drug-related criminal charges

and multiple stints in rehab that jeopardized his acting career, Robert Downey Jr. finally achieved long-term sobriety. With six movies that have each grossed over $500 million at the box

office worldwide, Downey now tops Forbes’ list of Hollywood’s highest-paid actors with an estimated $75 million in earnings between June 2012 and June 2013. 24 of 25 * L.

Cohen/WireImage/Getty Images EMILIO ESTEFAN, MUSICIAN, PRODUCER, AND DIRECTOR Emilio Estefan, a Cuban immigrant with attention deficit disorder, overcame countless obstacles to become a

successful musician, producer, and director, with 19 Grammy Awards to his credit. Oh, and he’s married to Gloria Estefan. Not too shabby for someone who at age 17 was told by a professor

that he was “too old” to learn music. 25 of 25 THE RISE OF THE FAILURE PROJECT Driven by her own unexpected fear of failure as a graduate student at the University of Cincinnati, Allison

Carr (who has since earned her Ph.D. in English and comparative literature) launched what she called “The Failure Project,” a public archive of ordinary people sharing stories about the fear

of failure, to address the way society has stigmatized failure. On her Failure Project website, she invites individuals and companies to post their own “failure narratives.” The idea was to

debunk two myths: 1) that failure should be shameful and experienced privately; and 2) that failure only exists as the antithesis of success. “I wanted to project the message that failure

is a universal experience, and that the entire range of feelings it involves—shame, sadness, anger, anxiety, etc.—are important and ok to feel,” Carr says. “Similarly, I wanted to suggest

that we might benefit from understanding and experiencing failure for failure's sake, and not as a neat, predictable little opportunity for redemption or success. It's bigger than

that.” In an exclusive interview with AARP, Carr, now an assistant professor of rhetoric at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, talks about how she conceived her unusual idea, and what we all

can learn from it. WHAT INSPIRED THE FAILURE PROJECT?  I was in graduate school at the time, beginning my Ph.D., and just having a rough go of it, feeling overwhelmed and not good enough,

which were new feelings for me. I'd always found school to be pretty easy, but I started being really hard on myself, fearing I'd have to leave, and not really having a backup

plan. And, you know, I had a great graduate experience surrounded by tons of creative, smart and supportive people, but not even the best grad program is one that welcomes such crises of

confidence. I guess I was kind of staring into the metaphorical abyss, unable to focus on much of anything beyond this idea of failure and success—a thing I very much felt I was on the verge

of—and what it meant to me personally, what it means in school environments, what it means out in the world. So I started writing about that a little bit, and along came this idea.

"Hey, why don't we talk about this more?"  WHAT WAS THE MOST SURPRISING/UNANTICIPATED THING TO COME OUT OF THE FAILURE PROJECT? In many ways I think I was most surprised that

anyone bothered to submit their stories at all. Here I am, a total stranger, asking total strangers to send me stories about failure and success that, for the most part, expose

vulnerabilities and insecurities, and then I'm going to put those on the Web. That response told me that I was onto something, propelling me into further research and, down the line,

becoming the subject of my dissertation, which looked primarily at the emotions of failure and how those impact learning environments. ARE FEAR OF FAILURE AND AVERSION TO RISK THE SAME

THING? Generally I would say no, I don't think these are really the same, though I think they are closely related. I think a fear of failure can cause an aversion to risk-taking,

certainly, and that generally fostering an aversion to taking risks can result in a more pronounced fear of failure, but I think these things are not totally congruent. For example, I would

say that despite my enthusiasm for failure, when it comes to my work and the things I care about most deeply, I am petrified of failing, and I think most people would nod their heads and say

they feel this way too. But I also know that big risks often reap big rewards, so I'm frequently talking myself into those scary situations. My willingness for taking risks 

doesn't mitigate the fear. Things don't always work out the way I'd like—sometimes, it's just a total failure—but I think that's OK. WERE THERE ANY RECURRING FAILURE

THEMES YOU'VE IDENTIFIED IN THE STORIES THAT HAVE BEEN POSTED ON THE FAILURE PROJECT?  Sure, I think probably the one thing that appears in all of the submissions is a feeling of

loneliness. Fear of failure makes people feel really isolated, at a time when we probably need people most. I think it probably causes us to withdraw. So I'd hoped the archive would

help in that regard as well, giving people some sense of community, even if they're moping around in their jammies alone.  YOU WILL BE TEACHING A COURSE IN FAILURE THIS FALL AT COE

COLLEGE IN CEDAR RAPIDS. TELL US BRIEFLY ABOUT THAT AND WHY FAILURE COURSES SEEM TO BE BECOMING A TREND IN HIGHER EDUCATION. We'll be reading a mixed bag of essays and articles tackling

the “stuff” of failure from a wide variety of viewpoints, but what I'm most excited about is asking students to undertake a failure project of their very own. They'll have to

identify some kind of activity or task at which they are sure to fail, and attempt to master it, all the while documenting the experience and striving to learn from mistakes and each other

as learners and, well, as failures! We're really going to try to own that word. As for the national trend … I think [for] young people moving toward independence from their parents, and

older/middle-aged people moving toward retirement … there's a lot of uncertainty in these big transitions, and much hangs in the balance between taking risks and protecting oneself. So

it makes sense that we would want to explore these ideas in classrooms, where we ostensibly accumulate the skills and tools needed to really thrive out in the world. IT’S FINE TO CELEBRATE

SUCCESS, BUT IT IS MORE IMPORTANT TO HEED THE LESSONS OF FAILURE. BILL GATES HAVE YOU APPLIED ANY OF THE FAILURE LESSONS LEARNED THROUGH THE FAILURE PROJECT TO YOUR OWN LIFE? Maybe this

sounds quaint, but it's true—I'd say The Failure Project has helped me remember that nobody is better at failing than anyone else; nobody has it all together all the time. Failure

is everywhere, and it always sucks. But, it enables a change of perspective, and that's why it matters. Learning from mistakes are lessons I think we learn again and again, maybe proof

of their importance. I'm someone who has been accused of liking to fail, which is mostly true, and it still wrecks me. But it's OK to feel wrecked. Maybe that should be the

archive's motto. WHAT'S THE ONE THING PEOPLE CAN DO RIGHT NOW TO CHANGE THEIR MINDSET AROUND FAILURE?  Fail early, fail often! Practice failing any chance you get. I don't

want to suggest that there is any one right way to fail or to feel about failure—only you can know what that is for yourself, and you'll only come up with that if you’re taking risks

and you give yourself the chance to fail. Take that chance. But, you know, listen to your financial advisers too. MORE ON PERSONAL TRANSFORMATION * Discover your strengths and talents