Failure Is More Interesting Than Success
Dyson: If you're experimenting, if you're trying to do something different, you're going to fail many times. You've got to bounce back from it.
If you learn that failure is so much more interesting than success — because failure, you question it. Why did it go wrong? And the reason it goes wrong is often very, very interesting. Where something works, you say — great, that works. You don't even stop to wonder why it worked.
Failure is more interesting than success. You question it. When something works, you don't even stop to wonder why.
5,127 Prototypes
Dyson: You don't get it right the first time. You don't get it right the second time. In my case — and I counted — it's 5,127 times.
That sounds like a struggle. It was a struggle. But actually it was a hugely enjoyable struggle. The debt was mounting. I had three children and a wife and a home and a mortgage to pay like everybody else. But I had a real point in life. A real aim. And I had to get there.
The failures were interesting — because I learned from every single one of them. Almost every single one.
5,127 prototypes. The debt was mounting. But it was a hugely enjoyable struggle.
What School Gets Wrong
Dyson: It always saddens me that school doesn't really teach that. At school or university, the thing is to be brilliant and get the answer right the first time. There are brilliant people who can do that. But for the rest of us — we're not brilliant. To get there, we have to strive and we have to go through failure.
You've got to enjoy failure. That sounds like a difficult thing to do. But you have to enjoy failure if you want to improve things.
There are brilliant people who get it right first time. For the rest of us, we have to go through failure.