CV of Failures (… Learnings)
The Premise
When Johannes Haushofer (Assistant Professor of Psychology & Public Affairs at Princeton University) posted his CV of Failures in April 2016, it instantly became a point of discussion. His CV of Failures was inspired by a 2010 article by Melanie Stefan (Lecturer at School of Biomedical Sciences at Edinburgh University) where she suggested that keeping a visible record of your rejected applications can help self and others deal with setbacks.
Haushofer explained the reason why he shared the piece, “Whether it is a successful individual or a large company, most of what is tried fails, and a number of unsuccessful attempts ultimately leads to the success. Still no one talks (or likes to) talk about failures, and the things that are usually made visible are successes.”
His attempt to “balance the record” was mostly met with enthusiasm; people termed it as ‘inspiring’, ‘brilliant’ and ‘beautiful’. A few, of the opposing view, argued that “only successful people” can afford to share such CVs.
Why Should You ... Care?
So, are you ‘successful’ or a ‘work-in-progress’?
Are you a PDD (Public Display of Despair) person or only a PDJ (Public Display of Joy) person?
In both cases, a CV of Failures is worth the effort, and everyone must try to write it. Don’t just list the failures, but also what you learned from those unsuccessful attempts.
Trying new things, without fear or losing hope, is a great quality to have, something that should be written, and talked about. It shows versatility, highlights your journey and projects you as a bold, risk-taker. The piece might also prove as the best self-help literature to read in not-so-good times.
My Top 3 ...
The following are my top 3 failures, in the recent past:
- Not a 9 (PM) to 5 (AM) e-commerce seller but a Weekend seller on Amazon India platform, all thanks to Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) facility. Among the barracudas having big pockets and influence, surviving and scaling up isn’t easy in the virtual market. I sold nutritional products and am presently waiting (in the hibernate mode) for the time, the market turns into a level-playing field. GST, coupled with court mandates that e-commerce marketplaces cannot themselves participate as sellers, will surely make a big, positive impact for the SMEs in e-commerce. Cloudtail (Amazon) withdrawing from some best-selling categories and WS Retail (Flipkart) leasing their warehouse space are good, initial signs. I once sold a good number of products (though in only a few categories), and have learned a lot about e-commerce, online selling and customer service.
- Started Trivia News, an Instagram-based content curation service (https://www.instagram.com/trivia_news/) that presents small screengrabs of interesting news articles from around the World (https://whattrivia.blogspot.in/). The blog is something I created for people who don’t have Instagram accounts and is dynamically linked to the Instagram account (through IFTT, so whatever is posted on the Instagram account, is automatically updated on the blog). I haven’t worked on it, for some time, as I need to decide the direction, the experiment must take, and whether some or all aspects of it, can be automated. During the tenure, I learned a lot about social media, user experience, and trending hashtags. Trivia News may look in the Instant News domain, like Inshorts (formerly, ?News In Shorts), or the newly funded Awesummly, but it is more about personalized curation, which is both its strength and weakness.
- Rejected at ET’s Power of Ideas, The Vault (ET Now), and Your Wish is my App (NDTV) business idea contests, in later rounds. These contests rightly look for established businesses (with one or two clients) or at least at someone, who (may be pre-launch but) has a prototype ready. I write to them with paper ideas (ideation stage), as it helps me practice some persuasive writing (while applying and answering their listed, focused questions).
Go, pick your brains … Dish out those failures!