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Taking “Fail Fast” to a whole… ‘nutha… level

Jason · Jun 10, 2010 · 19 Comments

your word against theirs

I hate it when writers resort to dictionary definitions to make a point.

“The New Oxford American Dictionary defines ‘authentic’ as ‘relating to or denoting an emotionally appropriate, significant, purposive, and responsible mode of human life.’

“So true, so true, and that’s the perspective you must adopt to become adroit in social media.”

Yeah? ‘Cause from what I can tell “authentic” actually means “pretending to care about what other people think so that they’ll mention you on Twitter.”

But when I saw this thesaurus entry for the word “human,” I had to share (my emphasis obviously):

HUMAN — they’re only human — mortal, flesh and blood; fallible, weak, frail, imperfect, vulnerable, susceptible, erring, error-prone.

So basically, “human” means “full of error.” Couldn’t we — the entire English-speaking population of the last 200 years — have attached our species to a more uplifting synonym group?

But there you go. And where there’s smoke there’s fire.

So now back to those tired-but-true platitudes: Fail early, fail fast, fail often.

It’s not that you should fail, but rather that, like it or not, you are constantly failing. The platitutes are really saying: Admit it, then act accordingly.

Your assumptions are mistaken; are you testing them? Your gut knows your logic isn’t airtight; are you listening? Your current ideas lead you to better ideas; are you adopting them?

Success doesn’t come to those with the best ideas, but those most willing to seek better ideas.

It’s not about being smart or having the best theory. It’s about constantly looking for evidence that you’re wrong, that you could improve, that you should adapt, eagerly incorporating new information instead of wasting time rationalizing your old ideas.

You’re pathetically, irreparably, hopelessly human.  Ignore at your peril.

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