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#399: Adam Grant — The Man Who Does Everything

The Tim Ferriss Show

CHAPTER

Are You Keeping a Resume of Your Failures?

"I've rarely, ever done anything that didn't fail radically before i achieved some success," she says. "It's a good way to do a little bit of mental time travel and say, he you know it i remember,. i remember throwing away a hundred two thousand words of my first draft of my book." The author is currently working on her second novel about life in the U.S., due out later this year.

00:00
Speaker 2
Group therapy, if you want people to open up. I mean, there there are a lot of contexts in which that is really smart. That's great. I
Speaker 1
like that. And then for the, for the unstructured, i do this spontaneously a lot. So every time i get off the stage, you know, usually somebody'll say, oh, you know, that was, that was great. Or, thanks, yes, that's not useful to me, right? So i'll always say, what's the one thing i can do better? And i've kind of drafted them, against their will, into my challenge network eris sometimes they say, well, you know, nothing. And i feelii have to push them a little bit. And so i've, i've started that, i guess i've gotten a little edgier about this over the past few yearsand i'll say, ha, you know, it's funny, i thought you had higher standards than that. You couldn't find a single thing i could improve on. You really think this is perfect? Come on. And then, if if they won't give me anything, i will criticise myself out loud, and i'll say, look, here are the three things that i think i did poorly. Tell me if you agree with any of those. And then what i'm missing. And then i've never had somebody just completely plunt at that point. They always offer something,
Speaker 2
eh, that's great. That's
Speaker 1
great. Ou'v youre just giving them permission.
Speaker 2
With mored orwin, push behind it. Why do you keep a resume of your failures? Is that an accurate description of whatever they were trying to describe in this piece? What is a resume of your failures, and what's the point of it? Yes,
Speaker 1
it's excellent. An idea i got from a scientist, melony stepen, who said, lookwe we do such a disservice to young people in any field, because when they look up to their roll models, they only see them their peaqe. And when you look at somebody's resume or byo, it only has their accomplishments, and not all the schools that rejected them, not all the jobs that dinnied them, not all the creative projects that failed. And so it can be really discouraging, if you're moving into a field, to look up at people who seem perfect. And so i just thought it t was a clever way to be comfortable sharing all the things that i'd stumbled in. And then also it was, i found it i thought i was a good exercise for me to say, you know, look, its is easy to get caught up in believing that as you accumulate more success, your odds of success go up over time, because you gain experience, you surround yourself with better people, you, you know, maybe avoid repeating past mistakes. An the reality is, i think that you also on more ambitious projects. And so in some ways, the odds go down. And it was since it's been a reminder to me that i've rarely, ever done anything that didn't fail radically before i achieved some success. And it's a good, i guess it's a good way to do a little bit of mental time travel and say, he you know it i remember, i remember throwing away a hundred two thousand words of my first draft of my book, which was a hundred three thousand words. And at that moment, i felt like i was never going to write a book, and i couldn't make it as an author. And, youknow, i kind of edited that out of my story in the way that i think about, you know, the process of writing a book, because i moved past that. But if i remember that, it's a lot as easier to cope with with to day's failure or to morrow's failure.

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