Failure Modes

Disclaimer: If you dislike em dashes or believe they are proof of AI-assisted writing, then away with you. I will not disown my favourite punctuation mark because of the mob, and I have made sure to use more em dashes than usual in this essay.

This essay is about my failure modes — specific ways in which I have failed and continue to fail at certain aspects of life as I navigate adulthood.

I think this essay is the product of three threads in my life right now, so I want to give some context for why I'm even thinking about this topic at all.

The first thread is that I've been going through an incredibly difficult time in the last four or five months. My personal gold standard for difficult times is the lockdown period in 2020, it was well and truly a time in which I slowly began to go insane, and I mean that quite literally. The past few months have been so difficult that my life is slowly beginning to resemble that incredibly dire lockdown period again. But why do I mention this? Only because difficult times force introspection and reflection, and the only reason I'm thinking about failure modes deeply at all is that they have a lot to do with my present condition.

The second thread is that our lastborn is now in university (college for ye Americans). I find this a little bit jarring, he's the one kid whose conception I remember quite vividly. My siblings and I were woken up in the middle of the night to go to my uncle's house next door because my dad had to take my mom to the hospital — my parents returned from that trip with a tiny human being, and that human being is now in his first year of uni and asking me for advice, it's crazy. Anyway, I've been thinking about what to say to my brother about how to navigate uni and his 20s more broadly, and I think a collection of the failure modes that have plagued my 20s might be a genuinely useful, if not all-encompassing, guide for the young man.

The third and final thread is that I no longer give advice generally speaking. There are many reasons for this, but I think the main one is that I'm wary of the absolute manner with which advice tends to be given. Telling people what to do definitively from the vantage of my small life and limited experiences is something I struggle to do nowadays.

So, with that said, think of the failure modes below not as life advice as such but as a list of some ways in which things have gone wrong in my own life. I hope you find it useful.

I: Learn To Work Hard

A failure mode I've run into again and again is not working hard enough on things I set out to do. And I mean this in the simple, boring way of sitting down at a desk and doing the thing you say you want to do for as long as necessary until you become good at it.

You should learn to work hard, to put your back into it and put a lot of effort into the things you decide to pursue, it's really that simple. The point of this, oddly enough, is not that you will be successful at all the things you work hard on, you could work on something really hard and still fail. Or you could succeed and find out that you don't really like it (I worked fairly hard to get into an engineering program, then realised that I don't particularly like engineering, for example).

The point, as I see it, is that working hard makes you the kind of person who is capable of working hard. It's like building muscle, the more you work hard, the more likely you are to work hard in the future. Which means that even if you fail at something and you need to pivot to something else, you can at least embark on the new journey knowing that you are capable of putting in the effort needed to make it work.

Become the kind of person who works hard, it's important.

II: Learn How To Turn Value Into Money

Another failure mode (and perhaps the most consistent one in my life) is failing to understand how value is translated into money.

It's important to be able to provide value to people one way or the other, but it's equally important to have a mechanism in place for converting that value into money. Just because you can do something doesn't mean someone will pay you for it. So, whatever it is you are doing, figure out how to get paid for it.

Now, I have to say, there are two things I think you don't want to do here:

You don't want to become too fixated on the economic aspects of life and become obsessed with making money. Money is not the have-all and be-all of life and living, and you don't need a Ferrari to be happy.
However, there is certainly an economic layer to life, and you also shouldn't ignore that aspect of reality altogether.

Frankly, I'm using money as a shorthand for the economic layer of life here. Even just in terms of basic needs: you need to eat, you need clothes, you need to get around, and so on.

You should be very clear about the value you are able to provide the world, and then have a mechanism in place for converting that value into solutions for your economic needs. The most common way to solve these needs right now is to "make money," but if you figure out a way to solve them without money, that's great too. Just learn how to turn the things you are good at into ways to provide what you need to keep living.

A good way to do this is to ask questions about how you intend to turn your particular value into money.

"I'm a backend engineer."

Okay, great, what do you need to turn that into money?

"A job?"

Okay, great then what do you need to have in place to land a backend engineering job?

"Perhaps a good portfolio, a warm network you can probe for jobs, and certain certifications"

Okay great. What do you need to make a good portfolio, create a warm network and acquire the certifications you need?

Keep asking those questions until you get to what you actually need to be doing today to create the mechanism you need to turn value into money.

III: Finish Things

Another common failure mode I run into is leaving things unfinished. This one is nasty because it both compounds and metastasises. It spreads throughout your life like a cancer — if you end up being a quitter in one area of life, I can almost guarantee that you will end up being a quitter in other areas, and it's just a matter of time.

The person who sets out to become a copywriter abandons that project two months in, then he tries to take up running and abandons that after a month, then he tries to become a designer and abandons that after four months to pursue something brand new in frontend development.

On and on he goes without realising that the common thread running through his life is that he does not see things through. Once the initial excitement of starting something new has worn off, he quits it and turns to something else.

Eventually, if things don't change, he will wonder why he finds relationships a struggle once the initial dopamine of meeting someone new and exciting wears off, and he won't realise that it's just his inability to see things through showing up in a different area of life in different clothes.

Okay, enough narrative. Seriously, you should learn how to see things through. Embark on projects, have a clear definition of what "done" means for that project and then do all within your power to mark that project as done at some point.

Much like learning to work hard, the point of finishing things is that each time you finish something, you build that muscle, you become the kind of person who is more likely to see things through, and that is an incredibly useful muscle to build.

One way to do this is to bias towards completion, not perfection in your projects. Or as the motivational speakers, life coaches, and leadership gurus like to say: "done is better than perfect." I tend to be wary of clichés, especially the ones that people use often on LinkedIn, but I think this is a great cliché if properly contextualised.

Done is better than perfect does not mean you should not do things well, and it certainly does not mean putting out lazy, mediocre work. It means that you should not let the quest for perfection stop you from finishing things.

The work will never be perfect, never. It can get better and better, but it will never be perfect. So, work hard, put in the effort, do all you need to do, but then at some point you have to declare a project finished and move on. At some point you must ship the thing, submit the application, publish the essay, release the product, finish the book, or close the project. You can always make the next thing better.

"Oh my God, I don't think this essay is good enough for people to read yet."

Well, publish it then. The only way to really find out is to let people read it. Also, it typically won't matter terribly what they think of your initial attempt. If anything, the initial feedback is just input that you can use to make better work next time, and indeed so it is with all feedback. And in fact this is one of the reasons why done is better than perfect — because you need feedback more than just about anything else if you are to get better at whatever you are doing. But if you don't put anything out, then you will never receive feedback.

IV: Kill The Fear Of Exposure

This one should probably be a subset of the failure mode above, but I've decided to give it its own section because it's another one that plagues me terribly.

Please, whatever you do, don't be afraid to put your work and yourself out there.

Of course, what "putting yourself out there" means varies from endeavour to endeavour. And in fact, I think this applies even beyond your career, which is typically the area of our life we think about when advice like this is given.

I would frame it in three statements like this:

In whatever you are doing, you probably need good constructive input and feedback to get better at it.
Getting that feedback can often require you to also expose yourself to the possibility of receiving all kinds of other (read: adverse) feedback, including ones that may not be good or constructive.
Don't let that fear stop you from trying to get the feedback you need to grow anyway.

When framed like this, I think it becomes clear that this applies beyond careers and even beyond situations where the problem is that you need to present your work to a bunch of strangers to see if you might get a constructive comment or two (looking at you, social media).

Say you're trying to be a better husband or boyfriend, for example. Exposure in this circumstance might mean talking to your homeboys (friends if you're a millennial and above) about how you're failing and seeking their help. That's a room full of familiar faces, but that exposure can still be quite scary. As a matter of fact, as I write this, it occurs to me that exposure can mean talking to your spouse/girlfriend to understand where they think you're falling short. That's a room of one, it's a room of someone you know intimately, and yet it can be scary still.

The throughline here is that regardless of the endeavour, you need good feedback to get better, and you should never let fear stop you from seeking the feedback that you need. Whether it's putting your work out on social media or asking your friends how they really feel about your tendency to self-sabotage — take Nike's advice, just do it. You'll be better for it, I promise.

V: Think Beyond The Current Circumstances

This one is, I think, especially tempting when you're still young and haven't had the time to learn that most conditions in life are not permanent. It is therefore important to cultivate the ability to think about and visualise your life beyond your current circumstances, whatever they may be.

As with failure mode II above, this one also has two modes you should be aware of:

The current problems/challenges/issues you face will likely pass away (probably to be replaced by a new set of problems/challenges/issues in the future).
The good times you're having today will also almost certainly pass away (hopefully to be replaced by other good times in the future).

Most people give advice focused on 1 and completely ignore 2, as though times of happiness, joy, elation, laughter, and fulfilment are ever present in the life of anyone.

The point here is to take a long-term approach to your life and not become a slave of the present moment.

If things are not going great, it's okay to be downcast or sad about whatever is wrong. However, make sure you don't project that into your future as though whatever is wrong today will always be wrong. There were things five years ago that felt like the end of the world at the time, but I can barely remember now, and such is the nature of life: time goes on, and situations change.

Of course, some situations can be really serious and may alter the trajectory of your life, but I think the point is that the internal feeling of permanence that an adverse situation brings is almost always stronger than its actual permanence. In most circumstances, you can and will survive, and you will look back on the situation sometime down the line and struggle to remember how final the situation felt when you were going through it.

And likewise with the times when things are going well. Please be aware that those times will pass too, so make the most of them. This is something I've been so terribly guilty of not doing in my 20s. I look back at so many great times and relationships that I took for granted because I imagined they'd always be around. Alas, they are gone now, and I did not make the best of them that I could.

Is something going great in your life now? Make the most of it, nurture it, cherish it, enjoy it. And when/if the time comes that it's no longer there, you can remember it fondly and be grateful that you got to experience those times to begin with.

But all in all, don't forget that the present moment is not your entire life. Treat it as such.

Just read Ecclesiastes man, the preacher makes this point better than I ever could (with a much more gloomy tone, I admit).

VI: Fight Today's Battles

Having just said that you must think long-term, I shall now say that another failure mode is dwelling in the future or the past as opposed to the present.

Or, in other words, fight today's battles relentlessly.

You should think long term about the trajectory of your life, but you should be relentlessly focused on what is to be done today in service of that trajectory. The fact of the matter is that today is the only day available to you. Yesterday is gone, and tomorrow has yet to come, today is where we stand, it is the present moment, the now.

You can decide, for example, that you want to become a novelist of renown in the next decade, that is all well and good.

However, once you have decided on that trajectory, you must turn your attention back to what is to be done today. In fact, several things that need to be done today may not seem directly connected to that goal. For example, you might need to do laundry, go shopping, and food prep for the week today. None of those tasks seems directly connected to becoming a famous novelist in ten years, but they are important self-maintenance tasks, and the would-be novelist will have to do self-maintenance forever in varying forms.

Of course I think it goes without saying that this applies to the past as well in the sense that you shouldn't fixate on what has come and gone — good or bad. The rejection letter, the bad review, that one time when you were flying high that hasn't returned since it ended. They've all come, they've all gone, and here we are in today.

So, fight today's battles.

What needs to be done today?

What do you need to do today?

Here is a quote from Tolstoy to drive it home better:

"A man on a thousand-mile walk has to forget his goal and say to himself every morning, 'Today I'm going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep.'" — Leo Tolstoy

VII: Don't Fixate On Particular Outcomes

This one is probably the most flexible here, but another failure mode is fixating on particular outcomes in any situation. You must avoid becoming so wedded to your expectation of how things should pan out that you hang your happiness on this or that outcome.

The key here is that you must not confuse a goal with a single acceptable future. For example, your goal might be to improve your financial situation, and the way you want to achieve this goal is by getting a job that pays better than your current job. That is a perfectly reasonable goal deserving of your time and energy. And yet, you must never confuse that goal for the only acceptable future in which your financial situation improves. Your financial situation may become better on account of things that have nothing to do with your finding a new job at all.

For example, if this were an old Nollywood movie, you could mysteriously discover that you are the long-lost son of the king by a palace concubine and the king wants to reconcile with you before he dies. Also, he doesn't have any other male children, so you're now the prince, heir to the throne, and quite wealthy — and all of this without landing that new job you were hoping for.

Yes, I know, life is not a Nollywood movie, but I think the point stands. The ways in which your goal can be achieved might not be the particular outcome you desire in any situation, so you must not get too wedded to a particular outcome. Have your goals, pursue them, but never confuse them for the only possibility open to you.

The possibility space of all potentially right decisions for any question facing any human being can be quite large. Likewise, the number of good outcomes to any situation you currently face is probably larger than the number of the ones you are thinking about.

A better-paying job is one way to improve your financial position, but so is starting a business on the side, or consulting in your area of expertise while you keep the current job, or the shares you own suddenly doing 200x in value for whatever reason. Have goals, work towards them, but stay nimble and open to what might happen. Especially when the goals don't materialise at all.

When you don't get the better-paying job, or you have to drop out of the program because you can't pay fees, or the relationship you wanted badly doesn't work out, or the life you thought was perfect comes crashing down. In those times, incredibly difficult as they are, it's important to remember that the end hasn't come yet, and the possibilities for a good life regardless of the setback you are experiencing now are numerous. It's important that you don't treat the collapse of one outcome as the end of your life.

Life has multiple winning states, so don't make your psychological well-being contingent on one particular manifestation of success. Leave room for the future to surprise you.

VIII: Match Your Strategy To Your Desired Goals

I've had a lot of help from Clayton Christensen in articulating this one so you can watch this video for more on this. This failure mode is failing to make sure that the strategy you employ from day to day matches the goal you claim to desire.

Unfortunately, this one is probably the most common failure mode and I continue to fall prey to it just about every day.

As an example, think about marriages. I can guarantee that almost no one goes into a marriage intending to be an unfaithful spouse, have an unhappy marriage, a broken home, and have their kids raised by someone else. And yet this outcome is so common, and I bet that if you audit the strategy this person was employing from day to day, it diverges widely from their desired goal of a great marriage. They wanted a great marriage, but day to day they were working late, prioritising work over their spouse and kids, deferring family time, and so on.

It's such an interesting failure mode because it applies everywhere. You say you want to be a writer, but your day-to-day strategy consists of reading, watching videos about writing, conceptualising worlds, and doing everything except the writing itself. You say you want to be a pastor eventually, but you don't actually put in the effort to understand what the bible says day to day. You say you want to be a great friend and build close friendships, but you wait for your friends to initiate everything.

You must avoid this.

When you settle on a goal — perhaps to graduate with a first class, to increase your earning power, or to become a good partner — you must ruthlessly evaluate the strategy you are currently employing to make sure it can plausibly deliver that goal.

Can the current strategy you are employing deliver the goals you hope for, my friend?

I do not know the answer, but you do, and you must answer honestly so that you can fix what needs to be fixed.

As I said at the beginning, this isn't life advice per se, it's a list of ways in which things have gone wrong in my 20s. I hope that it will be useful to those just beginning to navigate their 20s.

When I started writing this, I had a younger audience in mind (my younger brothers in particular), but as I've worked through each of these, I've come to realise that most of them can apply to anyone at any age, so whether you are 53 or 22, I hope that you find something here that enables you to live a better life ultimately.

You may have accumulated a lifetime of expertise in a particular failure mode, and I know people say that leopards can't change their spots, but thankfully you're not a leopard, you're a human being, and you are capable of great change. I wish you well on your journey, my friend.