Sam Radford

June 14, 2021

Fail small, not big

If you’re anything like me, you may have an unfortunate tendency to make negative occurrences a bigger deal than they really are.

Something goes wrong and your response is: ‘This day is ruined!’

But does the whole day have to be written off, just because something has gone off track? 

Gretchen Rubin doesn’t think so. I love what she says on rebounding from mistakes:

Instead of feeling that you’ve blown the day and thinking, “I'll get back on track tomorrow,” try thinking of each day as a set of four quarters: morning, midday, afternoon, evening. If you blow one quarter, you get back on track for the next quarter. Fail small, not big. (Source: Better Than Before)

In other words: Don’t make your mistakes bigger than they need to be!

–Sam

Got some thoughts on this? I’d love to hear from you – do hit reply or drop me a note.

@samradford | samradford.com

About Sam Radford

Husband, father, lover of books, writer, tech geek, sports fan, and pragmatic idealist from Sheffield, England.