I’m seeing a lot of articles around lately suggesting that failure is not only inevitable, but that it’s a good thing. That’s a load of crap.

An example from this today…

“Let’s start a company, let’s watch it fail, and then let’s start another one.”

My goodness, if you’re planning to just sit and watch it fail, perhaps you shouldn’t be starting a company in the first place.

I suppose what most of these folks mean is that we shouldn’t be afraid to fail. I get that, but that’s not what they’re saying. They’re saying it’s good to fail. It isn’t. That’s why it’s called failure. “Don’t be afraid to fail” is good advice. “Fail early, fail often” is terrible advice.

Thomas Edison is supposed to have said (after creating many non-working light bulbs,) “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Who here thinks he wouldn’t have preferred getting it right the first time?

Please don’t encourage people to plan on failing early, or often. People are going to read it wrong and think that it’s okay to make half-assed attempts at everything and then hide behind the idea that it was simply an early failure.

Try really hard right from the start so that you won’t fail. If for some reason you do, try again. And learn from it of course, but don’t pretend failure was the plan all along.