How Public and Humiliating Failure Leads to Success
One of the most interesting things we’ve discovered… is that [people] are more motivated by the fear of looking bad than by the hope of getting millions of dollars. So if you want to get millions of dollars, put yourself in a position where failure will be public and humiliating. —Paul Graham
Paul Graham is a man who knows what he’s talking about. He founded Viaweb then sold it to Yahoo! for $46 million. After that, he didn’t just lay on the beach, but went on to start Y Combinator, a sort-of startup factory. He’s seen what success looks like and what failure looks likes.
That quote comes from a talk he gave about why some of the startups he funds succeed and why others fail. Every year he picks out promising teams of people who want to start companies. In order to make sure these fledgling companies do well, he holds a weekly meeting where they have to present what progress they have made — in front of the other teams.
In Graham’s estimation, it’s the fear of looking stupid that leads these groups to push themselves. You have to work hard to have something substantial to report each week.
If you’re looking to succeed, try puting yourself in a position to fail. Was your New Year’s resolution to lose weight? Put up a blog where you chart your progress. If you aren’t such an Internet exhibitionist, try telling your friends and family what your goals are. Give them permission to remind, bother and cajole you into reaching them.
So go out there, set a goal, make a blog, and let the fear of public humiliation drive your success.
P.S. I’m trying the first of a few experiments with this technique over at the sister blog to this one: coin by coin. Check it out if you’re interested. I’ll be trying something similar with this blog that I’ll update you on next week.
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Header photograph by gluvax
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My PhD supervisor in London had a similar approach. For each of his PhD students he set aside an hour a week for a one-to-one talk. An hour is a long time to fill with your recent progress, problems you’ve encountered, explanations of tentative results, analysis of what you’ve been reading, and so on. It was daunting and occasionally terrifying, but almost all of his students finished within the three years standard for a British PhD, in contrast to the students of some of his colleagues. They finished because they were scared of looking stupid in front of him – even though he was the gentlest and least critical academic you could imagine.