What is in it for me if I fail?

Will I be successful? It is a question that keeps me up at night. Really, all this effort spent writing, coding, learning, commenting, and tweeting would it lead anywhere? Maybe I am not doing enough or I’m not doing the right things.

I just don’t know. I have minor success: First Class for my master degree, acing Coursera’s machine learning course, winning Start-up Weekend London 2010, had a blog with over 100,000 views and sold my first start-up to umoo.com. None of these came with any significant monetary rewards.

As I grow older, I’m beginning to redefine success. It has gone from something that 1 in a 1000 can achieve to more mundane stuff like be fit and be healthy, you know things that almost everyone can achieve. Maybe I’m copping out. What happen to shoot for the stars?

I still aim for the stars. The goals now have multi-objective. If I fail I want a consolation prize. My first start-up was a simulated stock market site. There wasn't no take away when I was done. You could say I learnt something but you could say that for about anything I did. Like now if I’m doing a start-up there must be some tangible benefits even if I fail.

This is my mentality right now. What is in it for me if I fail? What is my consolation prize? If there is no consolation prize can I restructure what I’m doing so that there is a consolation prize. Take me working on solving Artificial General Intelligence, a definite shooting for the stars project. If I can use the project to form new friends in AI community that is a consolation prize.

You can add that to the list of questions you can ask when you are shooting for the stars: What is in it for me if I fail?