Many of you may have heard of Esther Dyson, who is well-known for her investments in technology firms and being a bold and creative voice. Esther also just spent the last six months in Russia getting cosmonaut training, and is looking for financing to fund a space trip. I also just learned that she is quoted on the refrigerator magnet above.
As regular readers of this blog know, I have a bit of an obsession with failure — although I would much rather talk about it than do it. My main motto (stolen from Diego Rodriguez) is failure sucks but instructs, but we also had a great discussion and debate a few months back called Eleanor Roosevelt vs. Randy Komisar on Failure. I contrasted, and then we debated a bit, between the Roosevelt quote: ""Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself" versus Komisar's argument that although there is value in learning from others' failures :"the only way to really, really get your money's worth, is to do it yourself" because "nothing else creates that hollow feeling in your stomach."
Dyson's refrigerator magnet adds an essential point to the debate — if you keep making new mistakes, odds are you are learning new things. If you keep making the same mistakes again and again, it is a sign that you are stuck in a destructive rut. You can buy it here.
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