Question
How do you overcome the paralysis of inaction after experiencing multiple failures?
Answer
Seek solace and motivation in the bloody-minded, "nothing to lose" narrative.
This is easier to demonstrate than to describe: watch the scene in Cool Hand Luke where he keeps getting beat down and keeps getting back up, till he is bloody pulp.
Read Camus' Myth of Sisyphus
Sorta celebrate your own funeral before your next project. Japanese Kamikaze pilots did that. Suicide bombers do that. There is even a story from way back, in the Mahabharata, about a suicide squad that was tasked with the mission of creating a diversion designed to draw the best warrior on the other side, Arjuna, away from a key strategic encounter. They knew they'd get killed by Arjuna and were only buying time, so the night before, they celebrated their own funeral and marched into the battlefield the next day, prepared to die with honor.
If you are doing software, plan to throw one away.
Desperation is a source of power. Ask a more successful friend how they would execute your next idea. Chances are it will have overconfidence, risk-aversion and greed built in. Now think about how you would compete with that business/project by undercutting it with moves that successful people wouldn't try.
Go nihilistic/fight club. In the startup context, this works as follows: find a successful business, and for the sheer hell of it disrupt them by undercutting them or giving away for free something better than what they give away for money. Make absolutely no plans to be successful, merely to destroy the other. Destruction instincts take you to great places: in destroying another, you will destroy yourself and from the ashes, be able to come up with something greater.
Imagine you are going to live forever. Just as imagining you are going to die tomorrow makes you suddenly appreciate the good things in your life and how you love your family etc., imagining you are going to live forever has the opposite effect. It makes everything seem transient, unimportant and not a problem. It's the "don't sweat the small stuff" strategy in reverse: by making yourself "big" (eternal), everything else can be made to seem small.
This mental state gives you a certain precious detachment. You are going to be around through the rise and fall of future civilizations, past the end of the post-oil apocalypse. When you optimize over eternity, your immediate actions can be surprisingly effective against people driven by more mortal patterns of thought. A good example of this is the immortal guy in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who decided to use his immortality to go around insulting people, in alphabetical order. It's an absurd thing to do, but moving towards absurdity is a great way to succeed when everyone around you is doing non-absurd things.
Print out in large, bold letters the phrase: "THERE WILL BE BLOOD" and put it up on the wall.
At all costs, avoid the idiotic motivational drivel based on redemption narratives, "whatever doesn't kill me only makes me stronger" and the "perseverance pays" attitude. The nihilistic/bloody-minded narrative works far better in my experience.
This is easier to demonstrate than to describe: watch the scene in Cool Hand Luke where he keeps getting beat down and keeps getting back up, till he is bloody pulp.
Read Camus' Myth of Sisyphus
Sorta celebrate your own funeral before your next project. Japanese Kamikaze pilots did that. Suicide bombers do that. There is even a story from way back, in the Mahabharata, about a suicide squad that was tasked with the mission of creating a diversion designed to draw the best warrior on the other side, Arjuna, away from a key strategic encounter. They knew they'd get killed by Arjuna and were only buying time, so the night before, they celebrated their own funeral and marched into the battlefield the next day, prepared to die with honor.
If you are doing software, plan to throw one away.
Desperation is a source of power. Ask a more successful friend how they would execute your next idea. Chances are it will have overconfidence, risk-aversion and greed built in. Now think about how you would compete with that business/project by undercutting it with moves that successful people wouldn't try.
Go nihilistic/fight club. In the startup context, this works as follows: find a successful business, and for the sheer hell of it disrupt them by undercutting them or giving away for free something better than what they give away for money. Make absolutely no plans to be successful, merely to destroy the other. Destruction instincts take you to great places: in destroying another, you will destroy yourself and from the ashes, be able to come up with something greater.
Imagine you are going to live forever. Just as imagining you are going to die tomorrow makes you suddenly appreciate the good things in your life and how you love your family etc., imagining you are going to live forever has the opposite effect. It makes everything seem transient, unimportant and not a problem. It's the "don't sweat the small stuff" strategy in reverse: by making yourself "big" (eternal), everything else can be made to seem small.
This mental state gives you a certain precious detachment. You are going to be around through the rise and fall of future civilizations, past the end of the post-oil apocalypse. When you optimize over eternity, your immediate actions can be surprisingly effective against people driven by more mortal patterns of thought. A good example of this is the immortal guy in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who decided to use his immortality to go around insulting people, in alphabetical order. It's an absurd thing to do, but moving towards absurdity is a great way to succeed when everyone around you is doing non-absurd things.
Print out in large, bold letters the phrase: "THERE WILL BE BLOOD" and put it up on the wall.
At all costs, avoid the idiotic motivational drivel based on redemption narratives, "whatever doesn't kill me only makes me stronger" and the "perseverance pays" attitude. The nihilistic/bloody-minded narrative works far better in my experience.