If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate. — Thomas J. Watson

If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.

Author: Thomas J. Watson

Insight: There's something counterintuitive about this that trips people up: most of us think success comes from playing it safer, from studying the playbook longer before we act. But the math here actually works the other way. If you're only trying things you're confident will work, you're probably not reaching far enough. The people who seem to succeed most aren't necessarily smarter—they just tried more experiments, and yes, that means they crashed more often too. The real friction point is emotional. Failure stings. It makes you doubt yourself, and that doubt makes you tentative next time. So we unconsciously start filtering for "sure things," which is how we end up doing the same safe moves everyone else does. Meanwhile, the people willing to double down on attempts—to send more pitches, apply to more jobs, have more difficult conversations—naturally encounter more success just by the law of averages. Here's the twist though: this doesn't mean being reckless. It means being strategic about which failures matter. A failed experiment with a new client approach is information. A failed conversation you were too nervous to have is clarity. The goal isn't to fail indiscriminately; it's to stop letting the fear of failure make you invisible.