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Is it better to fail spectacularly?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- BubbleRings 2y agoHa, "burn the ships", I love it. Congrats, great blog and amazing running! I'm facing a huge moment soon where I will see whether I have made a big mistake that will result in the biggest fail of my life. But I'm still optimistic that it will be the biggest win of my life. My ships are burned!
- hasheddan 2y agoI appreciate the kind words! Best of luck on your leap of faith -- it takes courage to attempt it in the first place!
- marmaduke 2y agoWas your path towards the decision point a sudden one or a slow burn?
- BubbleRings 2y agoVery slow burn. I just kept “almost figuring out” the engineering problems and suddenly over 2 decades went by. Not the “fail big and fail fast” approach that the youngsters talk about these days huh?
- wsintra2022 2y agoIn the upcoming preview for Slow Horses new season. “At least my lot fail spectacularly, your lot just fuck up” - Jackson Lamb
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- gcanyon 2y agoShout out for Slow Horses, one of the best shows on TV. “So you're in charge of the rejects.” “They don't like being called that.” “What do you call them?” “The rejects.” -- Jackson Lamb
- croes 2y agoBetter than what?
- TomMasz 2y agoAt a company I once worked for failure was anything but a barrier to getting offered newer, bigger opportunities. Those who did well often get stuck in the same place without further advancement.
- blitzar 2y agoAhh failing upwards - seeing this concept up close and so often early in my career really messed with my head.
- xedrac 2y agoI have come to expect it in politics, but I was surprised to see it in engineering.
- adityamwagh 2y agoCan you share some examples?
- snovv_crash 2y agoIC has terrible technical skills --> make them a manager so they stop screwing up the codebase. Project is behind schedule because of mismanagement --> give them a bigger team because that's what they claim they need to get back on track.
- givemeethekeys 2y agoThen they move on to the next sucker, I mean, company claiming they were in charge of a huge team, so they deserve a bigger raise. Team size (the number of people under you) is a big determiner of compensation.
- netdevnet 2y agoEngineering has humans in it. Same as politics. All with human brains using the same architecture full of biases. It's not very surprising to be honest
- jeffreportmill1 2y agoThat may be the wrong question, though that might help avoid the sunk cost fallacy ("It's better to burn out, than fade away!"). On the other hand, sticking with things has its benefits, with an eye towards a pivot. The right question may have more to do with speed than scale. Best to try and find partners in your endeavor. Then you can succeed or fail twice as fast, and try more things. And have more fun along the way.
- ramenlover 2y agoAmazing story the climax to me felt like the moment just before …Go! in the cages. Congrats!
- 6510 2y agoMy best advice is to not listen to anyone, you know damn well what you should do. But since you've gone there... Marathoning... okay... stop looking at the ground in front of you and look at the horizon. This marathon is unimportant, the goal is much further away, think of the next race and the one after that. Where do you plan to go with this?
- butlike 2y ago"Oh that's a cool bird in that tree. Dang, they have an odd gait. Would my shoes have been 20% off at that other place? Oh I forgot to get shampoo at the store today." "Oh wow, the race is done. Fancy that"
- zero_shift 2y agoSo that's what it takes to run a sub 3hr marathon... Basically eight 20 minute 5Ks, back to back!
- have_faith 2y agoCool, now I just need to run one 20 minute 5k and I'll be on track!
- n4r9 2y agoA British Olympian recently performed this feat despite having a stress fracture in her hip: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0kj07d5gmzo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0kj07d5gmzo Some people seem to be built differently!
- butlike 2y ago> As I sit just under two weeks out from the race, I can’t help but think I haven’t done enough. I didn’t make enough sacrifices, I wasn’t disciplined enough in my training plan, I — the list goes on. Why do you have to sacrifice anything? The greats are great because they enjoy the activity and would probably be doing it if no one was around or cared that they were. Do it for the fun, not the glory
- 0xFF0123 2y agoWhile I agree with the sentiment, I doubt any of the greats would say their achievements hadn't required _some_ sacrifices
- IggleSniggle 2y agoIt really depends whether or not by "sacrifice" someone is just saying "opportunity costs." There are trade offs in all actions/inactions.
- wholinator2 2y agoWell i mean if your natural talents and interest are enough to get you to, say 5th place on some stage how likely are you really to just give up at that and not push to place higher, what if you got second and knew you'd have a chance again next year. I bet sacrifice could describe a lot of the consequences of attempting to place higher. Also, isn't literally every sacrifice just an opportunity cost? That kinda what makes it a sacrifice. Sacrifice your first born and give up the extra productivity possible. Sacrifice a lucrative but over taxing job and lose out on the money. Sacrifice a meal for someone and you go hungry. Sacrifice is always about the opportunity cost of the thing you're sacrificing. If it doesn't hurt, if it doesn't cost you something, it's not a sacrifice.
- treflop 2y agoYou can’t go back on some sacrifices. e.g. if you overtrain or don’t wait long enough after an injury, you may permanently damage something forever. Speaking from personal experience and knowing a lot of people who have done the same. There’s also some documentaries about athletes doing it and losing it all. Go the extra mile but don’t look back and have regret about that one time.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- 23B1 2y agoYes and besides its rude to keep adventure waiting.
- youoy 2y agoRun to fail, run for success, run to waste time, run for fun. I don't care. You can live every experience while running, that's the beauty of it.
- bee_rider 2y agoI’ve noticed that I take much bigger “risks” on really meaningless projects, and get more interesting outcomes as a result. That’s my gut take here as well, I guess he did a slightly riskier marathon strategy, but in the end nobody cares about his time other than himself, and even there, there isn’t any downside to missing it other than that he might feel slightly bad about his performance. But, I also can’t help but wonder if the world would be a better place if we did all our projects like hobby side projects, rolled the dice, and failed spectacularly where it matters. But, what to do about self driving cars?
- jacobr1 2y agoIt is all about variance. Higher variance activities have both more potential upside and more potential downside. Risk management is all about figuring out how to improve average upside. In investment, that probably means placing a variety of bets. In one's personal life, nearly everyone I know has a story about how they benefited from being talked into trying something they wouldn't have otherwise presumed interest in. Be that a hobby, a blind date, a job, going to talk/meetup. Even just listening to a song/album.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- legacynl 2y agoYes, it's better to fail spectacularly, like in the case of Lane-merging on the highway, parenting your children, or when cooking for an allergic friend. /s
- TheRealPomax 2y agoWhat would be a spectacular way to fail a marathon, though? Because you can aim to win, but pretty much all versions of "not winning" are just... not winning? That's not particularly spectacular. Maybe accidentally forgetting you're in a marathon and bootstrapping a billion dollar startup sometime between starting and forgetting to finish?
- ChrisGammell 2y agoSpontaneous combustion, for sure
- legacynl 2y agoThere is no way to spectacularly fail a marathon. Hell even if you didn't finish in the alloted time you still did something healthy. The author is just trying to inflate his personal goal, to achieve some self set time, big enough so he can turn it into a self serving post that he can post to HN. I don't really blame the author to be fair, nowadays this is kinda the thing people do, but I do get tired of the constant hyperbole.
- travisjungroth 2y agoIt’s spectacularly failing at his goal of under 3 hours. It’s not an objective, absolute measure. It’s a subjective, relative one. I’m guessing he’d consider finishing with a time of 3:15 a spectacular failure.
- julianeon 2y agoThere is a disconnect between what most people imagine spectacular failure to be (probably something publicly humiliating and/or financially ruinous) and this, where even a spectacular failure when running a marathon wouldn't be noticed unless you told other people about it.
- TheRealPomax 2y agoSpectacular failing doesn't need to be humiliating or ruinous, but it does need to be a spectacle. An incredibly obvious, public showing of failure that needs no additional explanation for people to recognize it as such. Even if the additional explanation makes it even better. This is just "failing a personal goal", sans spectacle.
- pazimzadeh 2y ago> My pre-race fueling strategy of not increasing the total intake, but trying to eliminate everything but carbs seemed to pay off. I felt like I had plenty of energy, and my stomach felt good the entire race, which is extremely rare for me But maybe eating just carbs led to low minerals, hence the cramping? You could try to bank by eating oysters and a potassium supplement two days before?
- hasheddan 2y agoGood suggestion. I think that my pre-race fueling strategy was better than previous races, but certainly lots of room for further improvement!
- canucker2016 2y agoI think your insecurity about your race plan is from lack of confidence in your ability to run the full 26.2 miles at a given sub-3 hour pace. Looking at your Strava workouts, your long runs were at a much slower than marathon pace, and very few of those runs were over 16 miles. If you want to run the full 26.2 mile marathon at, say, 6:45/mile pace, then you should be able to run 22 or 20 miles, averaging 6:45/mile. You can start at a shorter distance, say 12-16mi at a slower pace, and work up to 20mi+ at or close to race pace. You can play around with planning a race plan with these race simulation workouts, i.e. all miles at race pace or half distance at race pace+5secs, last half at race pace-5secs, etc. Also check into marathon training plans for ideas of how to progress and schedule workouts until race day.
- ebiester 2y agoIt all comes down to the consequences of failure. If failure means homelessness, avoid failure. If failure means you lose your one chance in your life of completing a marathon, be conservative. If the difference between failing and succeeding is minimal in your life, burn the bridges! This was not his first marathon, and even if he bonked, he'd likely still be able to finish it, albeit slowly.
- wing-_-nuts 2y agoThe question of consequences is real. I graduated in 2008 at the beginning of the great recession, and I watched some of my classmates go off and do startups. I asked them 'Dude, what if you fail?!' and one of them just shrugged his shoulders and said he'd move back home with his parents, and get a job at his dad's company. No big deal. That's when I realized it was much easier to take those risks when you knew you had a safety net to fall back on and you didn't have to worry about winding up homeless sleeping under an overpass.
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago[flagged]
- sombrero_john 2y agoDig a little deeper into your dataset and you will find that the reason these people didn't end up homeless is because most of them have well-off / supportive families, trust funds, or Ivy League degrees. That said I agree that people give in to fear too much, which prevents them from taking risks.
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y agoHomelessness is not happening. If you have the skills to even attempt a startup, you can for sure get a job.
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- rqtwteye 2y agoI think people are using the word "fail" a little too much. Not getting your marathon time may hurt your ego a little but ultimately it's not a big deal. I would use the word "fail" for things that have real consequences.
- eddd-ddde 2y ago"Fail" is by definition to be unsuccessful on one's goal. It can literally mean my cake burned in the oven or my company loses millions of dollars. Consequences are irrelevant.
- TacticalCoder 2y ago> I think people are using the word "fail" a little too much. The issue is when it's combined with "spectacularly". As in: "I spectacularly failed at boiling my eggs. I let them boil for 7 minutes instead of 6 minutes 30. What a spectacular fail". But nobody gives a flying f--k about my failed eggs.
- Xymist 2y agoI would envision a "spectacular failure" at boiling eggs to mean the pot boiled dry and the eggs caught fire, burning down your kitchen.
- margalabargala 2y agoI interpreted the "spectacular" part of the fail a bit differently. The author had options to either 1) try for right at 3 hours, and either succeed or fail, or 2) push harder, get a much better time, and perhaps succeed but risk putting himself in a state where he did not finish at all. The failure to finish at all due to the extra reach is the spectacular fail referred to.
- imetatroll 2y agoI agree. Fail only applies when talking about losing your ability to house, cloth, and feed yourself (and your family). Otherwise, it is just play-acting at failure.
- renewiltord 2y agoTerrific blogpost. Enjoyed reading.
- anothername12 2y agoIn life, I can’t even manage to fail spectacularly. I get more of a like warm limbo of misery
- Kon-Peki 2y agoNot sure I understand the "qualifying time" aspect. Does hitting 2:55 guarantee you entry into the Boston Marathon, whereas achieving the "cutoff time" gets you into the lottery for one of the remaining spots?
- ErikAugust 2y agoThey call that a "BQ" or Boston Qualified. But it actually doesn't guarantee you entry because for that age group (Male 18 - 30?) there ends up being too many qualified entrants so they have to shave down the actual time required for entry. When I was running, it was 3:05 for example but you had to run a <3:03 to make it in.
- Kon-Peki 2y agoSo this is what confuses me. You can look at the most recent results. There were 14578 male finishers in the most recent Boston Marathon. 7000th place was 3:29:24. 14000th place was 5:29:37. How do these runners get into the race if they needed to go 3:03:00 (or whatever the current number is) to qualify? I'm clearly missing some piece of important information!
- agundy 2y agoBoston has two modes of entry, qualifying time or meeting a fundraising goal of something like $5,000. I suspect 5:29 runners are fundraisers.
- Kon-Peki 2y agoAh, I see. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any official information about the second mode of entry. I assume that this is intentional.
- canucker2016 2y agoI don't know why they don't distinguish entrants who are fund-raising versus time-based qualifiers. If you ran a marathon sufficiently fast to get under the qualifying time, that doesn't mean that you are required to run THAT FAST on race day for the Boston Marathon. Some runners try and run fast on race day and discover that their body has hit the "wall" and are forced to run slower, walk for much of the remainder of the race, or worst case, drop out. Qualifying times for the Boston Marathon are different for older age groups. Older runners can get into Boston with a much slower time than someone in their 20s. Then there are years where it would require super-human effort to get close to a qualifying time (i.e. 2018, year of heavy rain and wind, see https://runningmagazine.ca/sections/runs-races/japans-kawauchi-wins-boston-marathon-spectacular-upset/ https://runningmagazine.ca/sections/runs-races/japans-kawauc... )
- king-wavy 2y agoGreat blog post. Congrats on the PR! While it's true that no one cares more about your marathon time than you, it still feels like a tremendous victory when a new one is achieved, and likewise, oppositely when an attempt is failed. There are not many serious consequences when failing except maybe a temporarily bruised ego and trying even harder on the next build.
- madmountaingoat 2y agoI believe the article misses the point of the saying. It's not really about failing but rather about committing yourself to the objective. If you know in your heart you gave something everything you had, and you still fail, well that's spectacular or glorious failure.
- metalman 2y agosometimes failure is not an option my horse needed hay,so I went to a buddy place,kinda coolsl spot(I think) not home went where he might be and told him and his wife that there dogs say hi,went back a few days to get hay and chatted about things snd the dogs,and only later thought about,who do can I talk to that would be able to enjoy the idea of walking up a long drive way knee deep in snarling pitbulls stopping to talk to them and pat them on the head which of course messes with there minds,no one home ,and walk back out with the same escort my favorite wasn't there,as he was still healing up from trying to eat a porqipine whole,lovely bruser,half piti and half coyote its not a marathon,except in the sense that life itself is a relay race different batons is all