How to Never Fail

This is the commencement address that I recently gave at Woodside Priory. Perhaps you or someone you know might find it valuable.

How many blog posts can explain how to avoid failure for the rest of your life?

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Giving a commencement address is the pinnacle of one’s career. It is truly an honor and something that you cannot buy.

That’s why you never see venture capitalists give commencement addresses, but I digress. Thank you for selecting me.

Consider the people who have given commencement addresses this year: Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Sheryl Sandberg, Seth Meyers, Spike Lee.

Barack Obama spoke at Rutgers. If you were more lucky, you saw Michelle Obama at Jackson State—behind every successful man is an amazing woman!

We are late in the graduation season, and much wisdom, platitudes, and truisms have been uttered. Hard work. Honesty. Challenging the status quo. Fulfilling social responsibility. Fighting climate change.

Been there, heard that.

This presents a big challenge for me. What can I tell you that hasn’t been said? What can I do in ten minutes? What can I say that might impact your life?

These are the kinds of goals you should set for yourself when you accept the honor of making a commencement address. I’ll be brief because many of you are using iPhones, and your battery is probably about to die.

I am going to provide what no commencement speaker has done this year. Maybe no commencement speaker in the history of commencement speeches.

Ready? I don’t hear you…

I am going to explain how to never fail-the other F word. The F word that’s probably more disturbing to you and your family than the profanity F word.

Yes, that’s right: How to never fail. The vast majority of people think that the opposite of success is failure. They are wrong. In the real world, the opposite of success is not failure, it’s learning.

No matter what you study, do, or try to do for the rest of your life, I want you to strive for only two possible outcomes: success or learning.

Failure, as the saying goes, is not an option. Failure is off the table. As long as you remember this, you will never fail.

Failure only occurs if you are not learning. Let’s use a sports analogy. Suppose your team loses a game, but it learns how to play better the next time. Then it hasn’t truly failed. If it doesn’t learn how to play better, then it has truly failed.

Or in business: our friends down the road in Cupertino provide a great example of the opposite of success.

? Lisa. Lisa was Apple’s first graphical user interface business computer. Introduced in 1983. Steve Jobs was kicked out of the Lisa Division in 1982. It never achieved critical mass, but the lessons learned from it about graphical user interface and WYSIWYG lived on in Macintosh.
? NeXT Computer. Steve’s next project. Shipped in 1988. It should have been called “Never” not “NeXT” because it too did not achieve critical mass. Apple bought NeXT in 1997, and its software became the basis of OS X.
? Newton. Newton was Apple’s first attempt at a PDA. Born in 1993. Killed in 1998. It was not successful but it created an awareness inside Apple that eventually led to the iPod which led to the iPhone which led to the iPad which led to world domination.

In academics, there are two kinds of people. First, let’s say you’re an over-achiever. 2400 SAT. 4.2 GPA. High rigor. Your choices were Stanford, Dartmouth, and Yale though Facebook and Google wanted you to skip college and come work for them.

But because you are so good at some stuff, you don’t go outside your comfort zone. You don’t try new things. You don’t take chances because you don’t want to risk your “perfect” record and your self-image.

You avoid challenges. You don’t work hard. You only do what comes easy. You define yourself as “smart” not “hard working.” You think your “intelligence,” although high, is fixed.

This causes you to stop learning and growing. This is a fail!

Let’s say you’re not an over-achiever. God-help you, you didn’t start violin lessons at two, you didn’t build a school in South America, you didn’t start a non-profit, and you didn’t win a spelling bee.

Failure is also when you don’t go forth and take risks. Not because you’re afraid of tarnishing your record but because you don’t think you can succeed. You see your world as limited and your potential as constrained.

This is a total bummer because it represents lost and unrealized potential. I’m asking you to remember one thing for the rest of your life: always be learning. Always be growing. Education is a process, not an event. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. It’s a lifestyle, not an exercise.

Build a wall around failure and keep it out of your life—somebody should tell Donald Trump this is the only appropriate time to build a wall. If you want to learn more about this subject, Google “Carol Dweck” to read about what she calls the “growth mindset.”

Now whip out your phones and launch Snapchat. In less than ten seconds, I’m going to repeat this message, so you can send it to everyone you know.

Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Ready?

The opposite of success is not failure. It’s learning. As long as you’re learning, you’re not failing. This how to avoid failure for the rest of your life.

I like you guys, so I’m going to give you one more piece of advice. No other commencement speaker said this too. Here’s the advice:

Live off your parents as long as you can.

Don’t post this because my kids might see it!

My theory is that your parents and grandparents have worked hard to provide you to receive a great education. Don’t deprive them of the satisfaction of seeing you take advantage of their efforts.

Take time off. Travel. Live outside the Valley. Outside the US. Outside your comfort zone. It’s a big world. I don’t know anyone who says, “I should have started working sooner.”

In the long run, you will be a better person for this experience.

Congratulations to you all: students, parents, siblings, family, teachers, and administrators. You did it.

Live long and prosper.

And remember the big picture: the opposite of success is not failure, it’s learning…ideally on your parents’ dime!

How many of you saw the White House Correspondents’ Dinner? This is inspired by Barack Obama. I have just two more words to say, “Kawasaki out.” (I dropped the mic at this point.)