James Clear: You should fail 10-20% of the time
Why you need to bomb sometimes: "Occasionally you will surprise yourself and the rest of the time you will learn."
If you’re never bombing, you’re doing it wrong. Author James Clear says you should fail 10-20% of the time.
Balancing success and failure is a tricky thing.
I'd say 8 or 9 times out of 10, you should be succeeding. Build momentum. Accumulate advantages. Feast on the feeling of success and let it feed your desire to do more.
But 1 or 2 times out of 10, you should be failing. Push yourself and reach beyond your current grasp. Force yourself to try uncomfortable things. Occasionally you will surprise yourself and the rest of the time you will learn.
Win enough to keep progressing. Lose enough to keep learning.
Clear also offers this advice on how to tell good stories: Write down one idea each day.
Most good material is forgotten.
Write down the funniest or most interesting thing that happens to you each day. Most days will be boring, but if you write something each day, then you'll have 5 to 10 entertaining stories within a year or two. People are sitting on more funny stories than they realize because they do not have a habit of capturing humorous things as they happen.
Write down one idea each day. Most ideas will be simple and uninteresting, but within a year you'll have a handful that are compelling and useful. Little bits of genius are bubbling up all the time, but you need a habit of recording your ideas in order to capture the good ones.
It's a myth that great storytellers only think of great stories or that insightful people only have brilliant ideas. But they do have a habit of capturing their experiences and insights, and the patience to filter the majority until the best remain.