Member-only story

Fail! Fail a Lot! It’s Good for You

Nir Eyal
Psychology of Stuff
7 min readJan 14, 2025

--

Failure + resilience = success

“There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.” — Brené Brown

Failure is baked into the human experience. So why are we so terrible at dealing with it?

Fear of judgment and the stigma that our failures reflect poorly on us discourage us from trying new things. Negative self-talk and rumination convince us that our failures mean we’re incapable and undeserving.

But failure is typical in all professions.

Organizations across industries see an average win rate of 43 percent for the requests for proposals (RFPs) they send to solicit bids for potential business; that means 57 percent of their RFPs fail.

New surgeons have a 30-day mortality rate of 6.2 percent — meaning 6.2 percent of patients they operated on died within 30 days after surgery — and experienced surgeons have a 4.5 percent rate.

One in four businesses fail within the first year. Within 10 years, 70 percent of companies fail.

Amazon was once predicted to fail. Imagine if Jeff Bezos allowed that to deter him.

Why make ourselves feel miserable for failing when it’s a factor of progress and a prerequisite for success?

--

--

Psychology of Stuff
Psychology of Stuff

Published in Psychology of Stuff

Interesting thoughts at the intersection of technology, psychology, and business

Nir Eyal
Nir Eyal

Written by Nir Eyal

Posts may contain affiliate links to my two books, “Hooked” and “Indistractable.” Get my free 80-page guide to being Indistractable at: NirAndFar.com

Responses (23)