Fail Happily

Failing happily isn’t easy to do. But in an industry where failure occurs on a daily basis, it’s more important than ever.

To fail is inevitable. We all do it, on varying scales. You might make a tea when someone wanted a coffee, or you might present 3 months of work that gets totally canned in the space of 3 minutes. Each time you fail you learn a lesson. Some big, some small. It depends on the size of the failure.

Being in a creative team, you are constantly open to failure. This requires a strong drive to pick yourself up and go again. Failure by failure you can begin to lose that drive. Failing happily becomes more important than ever at this stage.

The desire to get work out after multiple failures can lead you to force things. You ignore previous mistakes and blindly crash through work. Which inevitably leads to more failures.

Failing happily is the most important lesson I’ve learned in my short year in the industry, and it was not an easy attribute to learn. It took a whole new attitude (which I’m still working on).

Look to those around you when you fail. Collectively, there’s hundreds of years of experience in your office, use it. It may just take some outside advice to see everything a little clearer. This worked for me.

The ability to fail happily will drive you to greater things. You let go of the past mistakes which allow you to move forward. It doesn’t mean you forget the mistakes you made, instead they form a new platform to leap off into what might be glory – or, just another happy failure.

Written by Joseph Moloney, Creative at Now

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