Failing

Go watch this video. I can wait; we’ll talk when you’re done.

This (along with other recordings of the piece) fascinates me.1 There’s a lot going on here, but what really jumps out at me is how important the possibility of failure is to so many things I do.2 I’ve been hammered on from multiple angles about this. Improv is an obvious source, but it’s hardly the only one. Group Genius talks about how we have to have room to fail in order to innovate. Scrum is big on the notion of learning from failure to improve on it. Mindset (which has a lot currency at work due to our CEO mentioning it in his monthly letter) preaches the notion that difficult obstacles are an opportunity for growth. Csikszentmihalyi says that we do our best work and achieve flow when we have high skill and a challenge equal to it. Even my friend Ryan has gotten into the act, talking about the necessity of understanding your limitations and yet not owning them.3

So yeah, this speaks to me.4 What does it say to you?

1 Thanks to Albert for the tip. Yet another cool thing from The Trappist.

2 Years ago, an ex-girlfiend of mine told me during our breakup how frustrating it was that I would never really do anything that I wasn't going to succeed at. I take this realization as a sign of how much I've grown since then.

3 And no, I haven’t yet listened to the Radiolab episode about limits, but I bet there’s something there as well.

4 So much so that I found myself wondering if I could learn to play string bass just so I could see how badly I would fail at Failing. Or succeed at failing. Or I suppose that means I would have succeeded at Failing…

Comments

[Andrew Smith]

A piece like Failing is overfull with self-referential framing, making the audience think about several things at the one time, with the result that the piece seems extraordinarily difficult. It could be genuinely the case that the performer engages in strenuous mental juggling, or it could be on par with stage magic that it only appears to be quite so complex. I don't play the double bass, so I've no way of knowing.

For me, Failing makes the point that success and failure can be largely affected by perspective and cognitive framing. The relative proximity between the observer and the standards of success will influence the degree to which the observer perceives success. The feeling of success is affected by the perceived difficulty of the task, often more so than the actual difficulty.