On my other blog, I’ve been explaining that my WIP (Work in Progress) is way too high and what I’m doing about that. (Writers, this means all my work, not just my current writing project.) But I didn’t explain how my WIP got so high. I’m trying to fail to success.
I learned about this “fail to success” idea from my fiction teachers, Dean Wesley Smith, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch.
That sentence has several meanings:
- You can’t succeed if you don’t even try. (Do the work!)
- If you tried something and only got partway, you still accomplished something worthwhile. Learn from that and try again. (What small step did you take that you can learn from?)
- Who even cares if you try? Try anyway and learn from what you did. (See your reality. Learn from it.)
Their idea of “fail to success” means we must do the work and learn from it. Do this thing, making sure it’s the best you can do right now. Learn from what you did and do the next thing, not the same thing again. Do the next thing, incorporating what you learned from the previous work. (For my agile friends, yes, this is double-loop learning.)
The more we fail to success, the more we learn about our capacity and capabilities. We stretch our capabilities—which is how I let my WIP get so high.
That’s why I now have questions to see if I’m over-stretching my capabilities. (That learning thing coming back to haunt me.)
Questions to Balance Our Stretching with Our Failing to Success
Now, when people ask me to speak (or write), I might ask context-free questions, as in When Do You Go Meta?
But my high WIP is a result of my needs and desires to write more fiction and nonfiction, in addition to my consulting work. That’s where I’m struggling with balancing my stretching vs. failing to success.
I now ask these questions (as I bring my WIP down to normal levels):
- What will this work offer me, in my quest to stretch my capabilities? (I’m good at understanding what other people will get from my work. I have not yet practiced a lot to understand what I will get.)
- Is this work something I might like to do in the future? (If I don’t know, I might try it anyway and see if I can fail to success.)
- How will this work affect all the other work I have in progress? (Let’s look at all your WIP, Johanna, and see when it’s time to say No.)
You can see I struggle with the balance between doing things I already like to do (and succeed at) vs the things I want to practice and learn from. How can I work differently?
I want to do it all—even though I know that’s not possible. (Insert maniacal laughter here. That’s what Manage Your Project Portfolio is all about.)
I am sure I will lose my balance of stretching my capabilities with all my WIP for a good long time. But as I stretch and fail to success, I now have questions to help me decide.
That’s the question this week: What would it take for you to fail to success?