A book review of Fail Fast, Fail Often: How Losing Can Help You Win by Ryan Babineaux and John Krumboltz

I read Fail Fast, Fail Often as an ebook over 2 weeks during work hours. Turns out I had already partially started the book as an audiobook, but for some reason I strongly preferred reading it on page in my laptop, so that's how the book went.

I freaking love love love this book and need to keep it around me all the time. It talks about the importance of failure in self-growth, and how people who don't understand the importance of failing and learning from your failures don't fully comprehend the concept of growth and challenging oneself. Never define 'not succeeding as a personal failure', the authors say, frame it as a learning opportunity. Maybe it was a market research, perhaps it was a discovery about oneself or somebody else, perhaps it was a 'sample test' for future challenges. Failures hurt and hinder our progress only when we treat them as personal failure and total loss, and not something that can be learned from and leveraged to greater good, towards one's goals, the authors argue.

There's a tonne of small hints and tips here and there, on how to reframe different kinds of failures, how to 'redirect' the disappointment and negative energies into positives ones, how to pick oneself after falling, and examples of so many people who 'failed' over and over again, and never saw those occasions as failures of one's self but as learning opportunities.

The first 3/4ths of the book are incredible, and the last ten percent is just mehhhh. It was as if the authors were told by the editors to provide some general self-growth points and they came up with a bunch of advice for people interested in helping themselves. But no matter, the good parts are so very good it doesn't matter.

One thing I'll say is that many people seem to be inspired by this sort of books, apply it to their jobs or companies at an organizational level and use the advice given here as a sort of 'defense'. The actions of those people are not a reflection of this book, because the message and the ethos of this book is pure and makes sense, but only applied to a personal context. The authors are not organizational psychology and productivity experts, they're more interested in individual growth.

I found this book super duper helpful, would strongly recommend it to everybody. I give it 9.75 out of 10 stars, only because giving 10 out of 10 would put me in a tight spot with future ratings.

I need to order a physical version of this book like yesterday.