Something nobody tells you when you start: the best competitors aren’t the ones who fail the least. Often, they’re the ones who attempted the most problems that didn’t work out — they’ve just got more attempts stacked up behind them.
Why Failing Fast Beats Failing Slow
There are two ways to approach a hard problem: sit there thinking “let me see if the perfect solution comes to me before I write anything down,” or just try something, see what happens, adjust, try again. The second way fails faster — and that, contrary to how it looks, is an advantage: every failed attempt tells you something about the problem you didn’t know five minutes ago.
“A failed attempt isn’t wasted time. It’s information you didn’t have five minutes ago.”
What a Mistake Teaches You (That a Correct Answer Doesn’t)
- It shows you which paths DON’T work — and in a problem with many possible paths, ruling one out fast is as valuable as getting it right.
- It sharpens your instinct for the next time you see a similar problem.
- It forces you to understand the problem better, because to know why something didn’t work, you first have to understand what you were actually trying.
The Most Common Mistake Isn’t Failing. It’s Quitting.
Failing once doesn’t stop anyone. What does stop people is reading that failure as a sign that “this isn’t for me” — instead of as an expected part of the process. The students who progress the most aren’t the ones who fail the least. They’re the ones who try again the moment they realize something didn’t work, without getting stuck in the frustration.
How to Apply This to Your Training
- Set a time limit for “just sitting there thinking without writing anything” — then try something, even if you’re not 100% sure.
- Write down why it didn’t work for every failed attempt, not just the correct final result.
- Count your attempts, not just your successes. A problem that took five failed attempts before the sixth one worked isn’t a four-time failure — it’s a solution with a track record.
Not even the greatest talent in the history of mathematics was spared from filling notebooks with attempts that led nowhere — just like Ramanujan. If he wasn’t embarrassed to fail while building something enormous, there’s no reason you should be either.