How to Abandon a Sinking Ship

I’m not big on quotations. A friend of mine once said, “Quotes are for people who don’t have the brains or the balls to say what they need to say.” (See what I did there?) That said, there is one aspect of life that is best dealt with through quotations: failure.

I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. -Michael Jordan

The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure. -Sven Goran Eriksson

I could pull up a few more, but you get the point.

Avoiding failure is not the goal; dealing with failure is. If you plan to accomplish anything even remotely notable, you must risk failure. If you plan to accomplish something remarkable, you will face failure. In the face of failure, there are two questions that need to be answered.

#1 – How do I deal with this failure?

Volumes have been written about coping with failure, but the best advice I can give is to remember that failure is just a synonym for feedback. Understand why the idea failed, and apply the lesson to your next endeavor. But this question is not the focus of today’s article, the second one is.

#2 – When Should I Pull the Plug?

Accomplishing big goals means overcoming many obstacles. However, sometimes an idea just isn’t going to work out. You can struggle mightily against that fact for a long time, sinking time, energy, money, and other resources into it, only to realize that you were doomed to fail from the beginning. The question is how to identify the difference between the obstacles that can be overcome and the indications that an endeavor is doomed to fail. Of course, situations will vary so wildly that there is no way that I, or anyone else, could give you a hard rule to follow in these situations (best guess: follow your gut), but there are ways to minimize your investment in those doomed-to-fail endeavors even if you can’t always differentiate them from the struggles that lead to remarkable accomplishment.

Thrash Early

In this great talk on “shipping,” Seth Godin discusses the “thrashing process.” Thrashing is, effectively, ironing out the details of what the final product or accomplishment will look like. When you thrash at the end, which is the tendency, problems arise and each fix seems to cause another problem. By thrashing at the beginning – that is, defining exactly what the end result will be including considering contingencies that may arise in the process – you ensure that the end goal is achievable and well understood. This process makes success more likely, as those ideas that are doomed to fail are often exposed in the thrashing process.

Do the Hardest Thing First

In the same vein, it helps to take care of the big things first. Sometimes, thrashing is the hardest part, sometimes it isn’t. By identifying the hardest parts of the endeavor and attacking them first, you can avoid sinking a lot of time and effort into smaller issues that are meaningless if the big things don’t work out. For example, if you are designing a new product, do the market research first before worrying about how the design should look or what advertising techniques you’ll use. Discovering that no one wants to buy your product is a lot less painful if you haven’t already introduced it to the market.

Fail Big

If you are timid in your approach because you fear failure, your endeavors will slowly swallow up all of your energy. If your idea is going to fail, make sure it fails big. That doesn’t mean that it has to make you lose your shirt. It means set an ambitious goal and go for it so that if you fail, it will be obvious that you’ve failed. In my days as a musician, it wasn’t uncommon to hear someone start playing at the wrong time. In that situation, my directors always stressed that it was better to play the note confidently than to play meekly because you were unsure. If you’re going to mess up, own it! People will respect you more and you’ll get reliable feedback. There is a time to dip your toe in and test the waters – it’s when you’re 7. Dive in!

Ask Why

If you’re thinking about pulling the plug, but still aren’t sure, ask yourself why you want to continue. Is it because you’ve already invested too much? In poker, there’s a saying: “Don’t throw good money after bad money.” It means that when your best reason for staying in the hand is that you’ve already put a lot of money in the pot, you fold. The money you have is still good. Don’t throw it after the bad money you already lost.

So You’ve Decided to Pull the Plug – What Now?

If you do decide it’s time to pull the plug on your endeavor, you have to get out and move on completely. Don’t ruminate on the failure and wonder how you could still make it work. Thinking about the failure will only detract from your next endeavor. Learn the lesson, make a mental note, and move on. There is no sense in carrying any baggage forward. You may need to take a break. You may need to dive right into something new. Whatever you do, you must get the failure off of your mind.