#29💔 Core PM Skills - The Practice of Failure (Part 1)

Practicing failure to find your next job.

Welcome to Tech Atypically 👋, your weekly blog that explores the intersection of ADHD, product management, and the complexities of a neurodiverse life. In each issue, I dive into the science, stories, and strategies that can help you navigate the challenges of ADHD and being a product manager.

Part 4 of the Book of ADHD Product Management awaits you in this edition.

🌋Takeaways

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A quick note about today’s issue

I’m splitting up this topic into 2 parts. This issue contains the Story and next week will be Science and Strategies. I am trying to deliver the same type of content in a quicker-read format with more real-life examples. There’s a poll at the bottom where you can give feedback on the format.

⭐Introduction

I have spent a lot of time and energy trying to avoid failure throughout my life. I sometimes spend more energy worrying about potential failure than working on what I’m trying to accomplish. Then I look back after getting it done and wonder why I was so scared to try and fail. Whether it’s my imposter syndrome, anxiety, ADHD, or Chinese immigrant mother-instilled self-doubt, I’m constantly trying to bury or run away from my fear of failure. It’s exhausting. What if I could reduce its burden? Today, I discuss my strategy to redirect the energy I spend worrying about failing and to living a more fulfilled life. I’ve done this by reframing failure from individual events to daily practice.

🦊Story - Failure is a daily practice to be celebrated

Failure is a basic part of life. Every day you are constantly failing at something. Getting your kid to school on time. Publishing a newsletter in a target time of 90 minutes. Responding within 24 hours to a job-related email. Those are just some of my failures in the last 6 hours. Despite your life being the one you have the most control over, it’s probably the thing you feel like you fail at the most. If I can’t handle my personal life, maybe I could have fewer failures in my professional life. Probably not.

No matter how much you prepare and plan, you are going to experience repeated failure in your professional life. Think about a product or business you own. Think about all the people and dependencies that have to succeed in order for it to not be a failure. Some factors you can control but most you can’t. You’ll fail. Your product will fail. Your edge case planning will fail. You can’t avoid it sometimes.

You will fail every day but each failure brings an opportunity to try again. Your ADHD likes for you to forget that last part; the ability to try again. ADHD anxiety loves to tell you all the ways it could go wrong if try again. While its partner, ADHD rumination reminds you how you felt the last time you felt failure, over and over. It’s a duet of ADHD self-doubt that becomes louder in your head than in reality. They’re objectively wrong though. As long as you are alive, you have another chance to try.

I have been thrown out like this before. I don’t recommend it. Image of fighters at Ratchdamnum stadium, July 2009

Framing failure as a practice allows you to conduct the energy of failure anxiety and rumination into doing what you actually want to do. In my case, it’s finding a job. Instead of paying the emotional and physical cost of lack of sleep due to late-night career anxiety, I remind myself that I am going to fail more than I am going to succeed at finding a job. I am going to embrace that have more job rejections tomorrow than I had yesterday but, I’ll be one application closer to a job. I only need one job. So why should I care if I have 100 failed applications?

Instead of focusing on the daily events of failed job applications, I focus on the practice of failing at a job search. That practice includes searching, networking, and developing myself for the right job. All things that get me closer to my goal and give me energy. I get energy from talking to and learning the things I want. I choose to fail every day and I don’t let my fear hold me back. I’m choosing to possibly fail with this story and format. I won’t know now until I try though and I choose to find out.

✨Conclusion

In embracing failure as a daily practice, you free yourself from the burden of anxiety and self-doubt. Recognize that failure is a crucial part of life and that each failure presents an opportunity to learn and grow. By reframing failure, you can channel your energy toward pursuing your goals without allowing ADHD or the fear of failure to hold you back. Choose the path of resilience and progress by turning failure into a daily habit. Hey, maybe if you fail enough, you could get something into the Museum of Failure.

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⏭️Next Week

The Stories and Strategies of the Practice of Failure in product management and ADHD.