The Fifth Step: Never Fail Again
The importance of perspective and flexibility
Welcome to All the Tasks Fit to Print, my weekly newsletter on all issues productivity-related for authors and other solopreneurs!
Does productivity count if you’ve failed at a goal?
The answer to this seems obvious: it counts only as wasted effort.
However, I challenge you to think like a project manager instead. Project management is not a zero-sum game, in that no matter whether you “succeeded” at the stated goal or not, you have accomplished a lot along the way. At the end of every project is Step Five: Conclusion & Review.
Step Five, when applied to a (so-called) failed project, is not simply a way to say “We failed!” and wail in despair. It is a time to analyze what went right as well as what went wrong, and plan to make adjustments to prevent future problems.
Truthfully, you have probably been a lot more successful along the way than you give yourself credit for.
I often claim that I’ve have had three careers in my life, but in truth, I’ve had a lot more than that. Each one was a shining star of potential when I picked it up; perhaps, in an alternate universe or three, I advanced with one or the other and have a much different life than I do now.
Instead, every attempt at “making something of myself” ended with a whimper of apathy rather than a blasting horn of triumph.
Yet, you’ll never hear me say I failed at anything important.
The things I failed at, I did not really care about. For instance, I failed to be a successful taxi driver. Yes, I was a taxi driver! For about a year in Orlando, I worked the theme park stands, carting tourists around. Let no one claim that being a taxi driver is easy; to really make money, you have to be in that car 20 hours a day. I slept in my cabs plenty of times! My life was a disaster — this was after 9/11, when the economy of Central Florida collapsed. I actually drove cabs during the hurricanes of 2004 (literally) while my marriage fell apart for the first time. Taxi driving was not the solution to my financial problems I thought it would be, and I finally just chucked the whole endeavor after a minor accident I had because I was falling asleep at the wheel. Realizing I was risking my life for $10 cab rides, I just stopped.
By a lot of metrics, I failed at being a taxi driver.
Oh well. 😃
Then at 40, I finally went back to school for a master’s degree, arguably something that I and everyone who knew me thought I would do in my 20s.
I graduated with my Master’s in Library and Information Studies in 2012 (despite poverty and a devastating case of whooping cough). Then I got a professional, salaried job in higher ed. I SUCCEEDED!
And then after eight years I quit that job.
Did I work for 30+ years, rising through the ranks of bureaucracy and retire with a large retirement fund to live off of? Nope. Does that mean I failed? Also nope.
I do not come to you as the Task Mistress claiming that everything I have attempted resulted in the traditional version of success. I can’t point to my wealth or my social media following as proof of concept.
But what I have done is: A LOT.
I got a license to be an insurance adjuster. I got a master’s degree. I have written and published seven novels. I had a successful career in higher education working in disability services. I’ve been a website developer since 1996. I was an IT project manager. I was a taxi driver. I was a journalist. I was the full time caretaker for my parents as they died.
To me, every single thing I did was not a path but a project. It was something that was doable in concrete ways. Moreover, each time I tried something new, it was with people around me telling me I was doing the right thing in the correct way. That in doing these things I would feel happy and accomplished. Instead…
Being a taxi driver nearly killed me.
Being a property insurance adjuster made me a lot of money at the cost of corrupted morality, on the backs of victims of natural disasters.
Getting a master’s degree did not teach me anything I could not learn on my own from a book.
Being an office drone, either as a low-level secretary or as a salaried professional, was boring, exacerbated my anxiety, and sucked my creativity dry.
Trying to be a popular romance author drained me of all the joy I get from being a writer.
Being a journalist in the 1990s was fun but a dead-end, especially given the onset of the internet era.
Working in IT made me bitter and angry due to all the sexism, misogyny, bigotry, and cut-throat office politics.
If there is anything I can claim, it is: I did that. I’ve done so much. I have succeeded at so much.
The problem is that I’ve done all of that by trying to do the things I was expected to do, in ways that are acceptable. Each time, I had the expectation that satisfaction would just materialize as a result of doing the thing.
It didn’t, obviously.
Let no one say I cannot be taught, and what I have learned is that in order to find my own success in this world, I have to manage my projects in my own way. What others see as failed careers, I see as successfully completed projects. After all, I did what I set out to do. I learned how to do it, did it, and realized that the result was not something I wanted to invest myself in further. I walked away from each “career project” once I learned enough to know what was working for me and what wasn’t, but I was (am!) still my own journey.
One of the reasons I started Task Mistress and created the Personal Projects Management method was not simply to create a business for myself but to help my solopreneur friends become successful at their dreams. Note the adjective: THEIR dreams.
I think a lot about what I could have done, who I could be, if I had followed my dreams when I was in my 20s or 30s. A foolish endeavor for an old woman, probably, but also educational. I was too scared to create my own projects, with my own planning and goals; going “off the beaten path” looked like a sure way to get lost forever.
There are plenty of good reasons for the way I felt then, including complex grief and poverty and PTSD. Yet, following the “to-do” lists given to me by other people never resulted in the security and happiness I was promised. That does not mean I failed at those things.
I often turned my back on those paths when I realized that any gain — financial, or social — would be offset by unhappiness and a strong sense of incompleteness. How can that kind of insight be considered a failure?
Instead, at 53, I am turning towards my dreams and aspirations and creating the projects, task by task, to get me to the life I intend to live.
My task for you this week is to write down all the projects (careers, opportunities, skills, relationships) you consider to be failures and apply Step Five to them:
Did I achieve the original objective?
If no: What was the critical failure of the process and what have you learned from it?
If yes: What made you walk (run?) away from the project after ostensibly meeting your goal?
What lesson can I take away from those projects:
What I did right:
What I did wrong, or the mistake I made:
Do you still feel like those projects were failures? I hope not. Whether you hit the original goal or not, you are still on your journey, and projects are just steps along the way!
Great stuff, restacked !
No failing, only learning, as long as you go, you win ❤️