This Year, Aim to Fail 100 Times
Getting rejected by a publisher and learning to rephrase my goals
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Happy New Year! May 2024 be your best year yet.
I’m excited that you’re reading the first issue of this newsletter for 2024 and I hope that we do greater things together this year.
You can read previous issues here.
I Thought I Was Going to be a Published Author
I spent a good part of my university days writing what was supposed to be my first published book- a Biology Dictionary for high school students. I visited libraries in different universities researching and writing like my life depended on it.
From my first to fifth year, I worked tirelessly on this book. I eventually completed the first draft before graduation. I was excited. Pumped. I was going to become a published author of a well-researched and written textbook.
After graduating, I wrote a letter to Longman Publishers and sent a draft of the manuscript.
I waited to hear from them.
Days became months and months became years.
After years of waiting, it became clear to me that I was rejected. So badly rejected that I couldn’t even get a rejection letter. 😭
So, I gave up.
Looking back, that was the wrong way to approach my goal of being a published author. I was hoping to be accepted. Imagine if I set a goal of being rejected by a hundred publishers!
Somewhere among those 100 publishers, someone might give me a “yes”; even if it’s a “yes but…”
Additionally, I’d have grown used to rejection that each one would hurt less than the previous one. This is certainly a useful life skill: “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck”
Set a Failure Target
If you’re like most people, you have written your annual review and set goals for the new year.
Goals like…
“I want to land a new job before the end of Q2”
“By Q3 2024, I would be a published author”
I support you and I’m cheering for you but I want to propose a new approach to achieving your goals: aim to fail more.
Let’s say your goal is to “land a new job before the end of Q3, 2024”. Some parts of that are within your control, some are not.
Rephrase the goal as “Get Rejected by 100 of My Preferred Employers”
This forces you to:
Define your 100 preferred employers
Send out 100 or more applications before the end of Q3.
Continue to apply for more positions with each rejection
With that volume of applications, you increase your chances of being invited to an interview.
The best part? You’re focusing on what you have control over: Your Actions.
For about 2 years now, I have been focusing on inputs rather than outputs goals.
For example, “Run a marathon” becomes “Run at least 3 times every week covering a minimum of 50Km”
Notice the difference?
Input is within your control. Output isn’t.
As I have stated multiple times, my goal for this newsletter is to publish 100 weekly issues before deciding whether to quit or continue. I have no open rate, click-through, or number of subscribers target.
None.
Nein.
Question
What are your top 3 goals for 2024?
How can you drive consistent action by setting a failure target instead?
Until Next Week,
With Love, Azodo.
PS: I’m experimenting with taking a 31-day social media break starting from Jan 1-31, 2024. I’ll let you know how it goes and if I learned anything.
I’m also using this period to focus on completing an interview book for Product Managers which I have been working on since 2022.
Wish me luck.
This post was inspired by this article
This is intelligent