Collect failure

It’s easier to become great at something by collecting failures than it is by trying to collect successes.

In On Writing, Stephen King shared an anecdote which has always stuck with me. After receiving the first few rejection slips for his manuscripts, he shifted his goal from “getting a manuscript published” to “collecting rejection slips from publishers.” He struck a crooked nail into his wall and set himself the single goal of filling it with rejection slips. He collected failure, and through doing so, made success far more likely.

“Write a great book” is a terrible goal. As an aspirant, how can you action the “great” part? Do you even know what “great” means? Is your sense of taste and judgement informed enough for that to mean anything? Or is it simply some impossible standard that will serve to paralyze and frustrate you?

“Get published” is similarly unhelpful. The ultimate success or failure of the goal lies with outside forces. You’re focusing your energy on an outcome, something fundamentally outside of your control.

But “write twenty books” is a much more useful. It lies entirely within your control. It builds fast feedback loops. It develops taste and judgement. “Get rejected twenty times” is even better: it requires interaction with the publishing process, exposure to feedback, and incentivises effort instead of deterring it.

It is far better to focus energy on processes and goals that we can control, and allow success to emerge as a byproduct. Aiming to collect failure gives us control, and reframes the negativity that comes with failure—it becomes something useful, even necessary, in service of the ultimate goal, instead of a pain to be avoided.