How to Fail at Everything You Do

So we all know that are untold millions of ways to succeed in your career and life in general, but success only comes after a multitude of mistakes that may not have occurred had you known what NOT to do. Sometimes to succeed you must first know how to fail. By following this list of behaviors you are guaranteed to fail every time in everything that you do. Go ahead, give it a whirl. You, too, can be the failure you’ve never dreamed you could be.

1. Do you already have an end goal in mind for that new project that you want to fail? Scrap it, forget it. A great way to fail is to have no idea of where you are headed when you start. Don’t see the puzzle as a larger image waiting to be constructed, but as a collection of isolated pieces that have no relation with each other. The more you visualize your goal, the lesser you chances at succeeding in failing and the only “goal” here is to fail.

2.Never do your homework. Why study the behavior of an investment before sinking funds into it? Why tempt success in such a way? Failing is about being as little informed as possible about your endeavors. No research. No reading. No preparation. Ever.

3. Failing well also involves ignoring your costs, be it money, time or effort, from the get go. Failures have no need for initial assessments and should jump head first into everything they do. You’ll find out what you did wrong later once you are neck deep in failure. Remember: no looking before leaping.

4. Don’t worry about getting a head start on your tasks, always wait to start until the last minute. It is much easier to fail when you procrastinate until the deadline before starting to work. Better yet – procrastinate, but be sure to let the task hang over your head, stress you out, and make you entirely unproductive for weeks.

5. Who needs organization skills? Not a failure, that’s for sure. Organization is a habit for successful people. Make your life as cluttered and disorganized as possible. Keep everything in the most secure depository on the planet, your brain. Or, better yet, write everything down on 1,000 Post-It notes and keep them tucked away in forgotten jacket pockets, lint traps, and junk mail piles. Just make sure you never have a clue what needs to be done and when it needs to be completed.

6. Keep to yourself. You can fail at everything all by yourself. Never ask for help for anything. Why should you? You already know everything better than anyone else. The more you have to accomplish the better you can fail at all of them.

7. You know what they say: go with your first guess. That means the first idea that comes to mind is the best, right? Just let your mind run where it may and whatever happens to come out is good enough. Brainstorming is for suckers.

8. Let’s talk about constructive criticism. That’s the kind of thing people need only when they can’t do something right, by themselves, the first time. Dismiss assessments, ignore feedback, and never listen to customer complaints. They just don’t understand that you know what they want better than they ever could.

9. Finally, if at first you don’t succeed, quit. After all, you can’t succeed if you don’t try. Something is only worth doing if it works the first time through. The more you try something, the more likely you will eventually succeed, so never try anything a second time; you’re just tempting fate.