Failing Forward
When I tell people I taught myself HTML and CSS in the span of about 7 hours, they usually look at me like I’m crazy, unless they also know HTML and CSS. The reality is, it’s not actually that hard, and people who’ve done it know that.
In the modern era there are so many tools to get started on your path of learning to code if you’re serious about learning that it’s really as simple as opening up codecademy online (a free tool for the most part as well) and starting with lesson one. Technology has always seemed like some over-complicated and out of reach intellectual pursuit to those who don’t understand it, but one of the most useful things I’ve learned is that everything seems more complicated than it actually is, and programming is no exception. When I started my event marketing business for example I had very little comprehension of how to start a business, and I think that knowledge gap is why a lot of people spend their lives working to build someone else’s dreams instead of their own. People fear uncertainty, but it’s the ones who, to quote Richard Branson (because I love my quotes) say “screw it, let’s do it” and just dive right in and then learn how to swim who end up going the farthest.
Take for example 2 companies, one is a multinational firm with thousands of employees worldwide, and the other is the small startup you and a friend are creating in your garage. To someone with little business experience you may look at that comparison and see it as some massive daunting task to take that small startup to the scale of the big multinational that you’ll never be able to accomplish because there is just way too many variables to think of and create to ever be able to get your business to that point, so why bother, you may as well work at one of those big firms instead. That is exactly the wrong mindset, because in fact it’s those big firms that were started by normal people just like you, and while yes as a whole the big multinational firm is complicated, consider all the individual processes that each employee goes through every day and you realize they tend to be quite simple, they have to be because if they’re not easily replicated then they tend to not be scaleable. The point is that just because when you put it all together it’s more complicated, scale that down to the size of your startup and it becomes quite simple. It’s like a puzzle that just keeps growing as you add more to it, but at the start there are only a few pieces you need to fit together, and those don’t change too much as you add more, even though you’ll adapt and change as you grow. For this reason the daunting task of starting a business, is actually pretty easy.
No matter what you do, whether it’s starting a business, learning to code, or to even just learning to play piano (something I’m teaching myself right now) if it’s not worth doing badly, it’s not worth doing at all. What that means is when you start something new, anything new, such as realizing you need to add an HR department to your company because you need better recruiting or performance management, you can’t expect to be good at it immediately or have it work the first time. Think about when you were little and tried a sport for the first time, you probably didn’t quit when you started because you realized you weren’t a FIFA level soccer player, because it would be ridiculous to have assumed you’d be that good on the first try. The same logic holds true for everything else in your life, you need to work at it, and over time you improve.
I see so many people doing what’s easy and comfortable, because they think it’s too scary or hard or complicated for them to learn a new skill, start a new business or make a career change to something that would make them far happier. To make your life the way you really want it you need to remember these three things: It’s not as hard as you think it is, you’re not going to be great when you start, but that shouldn’t discourage you because again if it’s not worth doing badly, it’s not worth doing at all, and lastly you don’t need to know everything, you just need to know what you don’t know and immerse yourself in whatever it is that you’re passionate about and surround yourself with people that can support that and make up your knowledge gaps, and eventually you’ll get somewhere.
Fail forward, fail fast, and get back up faster.
