What is it?

Most of us like to focus our achievements, what we have done well, even the prizes and awards we have won, which provide a kind of self-validation when other recognize our skills.  But what we often ignore or skip over is what happens when things don’t go well, when we mess up, when we fail to achieve or accomplish what we had hoped to accomplish.   

The scientific method is in part based on failure, trying one hypothesis after another, dismissing those which don’t work and preserving those which do.  And as Samuel Beckett, the Nobel-winning playwright once said, “Try again, fail again, fail better.”

Resources for learning more

Resources for this topic, some hot-linked, others being readings, but this TED talk of Kathryn Schulz is the best quick single resource: http://www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong

These are also good:

Stuart Firestein’s Failure: Why Science is So Successful.  (Oxford: OUP, 2016).  Intro to p. 37.  Plus: https://hbr.org/2016/05/write-a-failure-resume-to-learn-what-makes-you-succeed.  

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/failure-in-science-is-frequent-and-inevitable-and-we-should-talk-more-about-it/. and 

https://www.princeton.edu/~joha/Johannes_Haushofer_CV_of_Failures.pdf. 

See also:

https://gentwenty.com/failure-resume/ and 

Edmundson’s Why Teach?, pages 85-95: “Glorious Failure” on writing a “ghost résumé” as well as Syed book: Black Box Thinking: Why Most People Never Learn from their Mistakes but Some Do.  (New York: Penguin, 2015)  

http://www.danpink.com/pinkcast/pinkcast-1-12-why-you-should-write-a-failure-resume/  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRoHBr8itPY  Elon Musk failure resume 7 minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YeWVy2UrnE Adam Grant on writing a failure resume 1.5 minutes

Time to get started!

Try your hand at your own failure résumé: By way of introduction here is what Tina Seelig says about writing a failure résumé:

I require my students to write a failure résumé. That is, to craft a résumé that summarizes all their biggest screw ups — personal, professional, and academic. For every failure, each student must describe what he or she learned from that experience. Just imagine the looks of surprise this assignment inspires in students who are so used to showcasing their successes.

However, after they finish their résumé, they realize that viewing their experiences through the lens of failure forced them to come to terms with the mistakes they have made along the way and to extract important lessons from them. In fact, as the years go by, many former students continue to keep their failure résumé up-to-date, in parallel with their traditional résumé of successes.

A failure resume is a quick way to demonstrate that failure is an important part of our learning process, especially when you’re stretching your abilities, doing things the first time, or taking risks. We hire people who have experience not just because of their successes but also because of their failures.

Failures increase the chance that you won’t make the same mistake again. Failures are also a sign that you have taken on challenges that expand your skills. In fact, many successful people believe that if you aren’t failing sometimes then you aren’t taking enough risks. Additionally, it is pretty clear that the ratio of our successes and failure is pretty constant. So, if you want more successes, you are going to have to tolerate more failure along the way. 

Now, having read some materials on the importance and embrace of failure, you might think it simple to write a failure résumé.  But, if you’re an explorer, given what you read, and your apparently more limited life experience, your list may not be as long as some from those people whom you read.  So you might think of the few places where something didn’t go right, and you put them on a little list and dash off this assignment; done.

Make it meaningful!

Take this opportunity to deep quite a bit deeper as you contemplate your failure résumé.  Yes, maybe make a little list, but it is the self-reflection on that list that is key to this assignment.  Would you make a list of notable, not just any old, but notable failures in your life, and after each one include a short section on what that failure taught you.  Again, even this format could be dashed off.  One can see the old pseudo-humble bit followed by how you turned this failure/loss/defeat into a ringing success, with the description full of clichés and “I’m still a winner” mentality.  Digging deeper, however, might expose some still raw experiences, and not yet fully understood truths you are still working out.  So we appeal to the more thoughtful you to think through what you might include, and what you have learned from doing a failure résumé.  And if you do this with care, this could be a significant piece of reflection, and not something you simply dash off. 

Some of you may have a longer list with shorter reflections, others the reverse; your call.