Failure as a Win

1. Trailer: So, this class on failure as part of the creativity and innovation series which is something we really believe in here at Skillshare. As we build a site as we work on your classes, your marketing plans, failure is really how you learn. It's how we learn to grow, how you keep becoming better and move towards where we want to get to. This class itself might actually fail and I think that's something that's exciting and we're really looking forward to seeing what the class does and learning from that. The project is a failure resume, so this is a list of all your past failures, but it's really more than just the list. It's really acknowledging what you learned from your failures and how you can move forward. So, it's identifying those patterns and learning from those. Main skill for the class is really becoming comfortable with failure and how do you really embrace failure as part of your creative process. The fact that you're failing is actually a good sign. Right? It's a great sign. It means that you're taking on new challenges and it's an indication that you're looking for better results. You're actually trying to do something new. 2. Innovating with Failure: So, this is a class about failure and how failure is really part of the innovation process. The main skill that we're really going be talking about is, how do you become comfortable with failing? So, we're here at the Skillshare office today in New York City, and I'm Ethan. I work on the education team as a designer. I'm really working with teachers to craft their content and design the curriculum. We've embrace failure at Skillshare. It's part of our process where they are working on a new feature for the website, and new marketing tactic, designing content, this class as you see it, might actually fail. We're actually thinking that it will fail and we'll learn from that. No one likes to fail, I think that's something important to realize, but in order to get to where we want to be, whether that's to start a new bakery, start doing hand lettering as a new part of our freelance career, to start a business, to become a stop motion animator, whatever that thing is that you're looking to become and to work on those skills, failure is how we get there. It's part of that process. So, here is how this class works. You got to do the project. This class is all about learning by doing and you will get a lot more of this class. So, this is really just a quick five minute or so class to really get us inspired and get in the mindset of being comfortable with failure. So, it's not a how to guide, it's not a tutorial. We're just walking through some concepts to help get you on your way. So, what is the project? The project is a failure resume. So, this is a list of all your past failures, but it's really more than just the list. It's really acknowledging what you learned from your failures, and how you can move forward. So, it's identifying those patterns, and learning from those. So, how do you actually go about doing the project? You can do it now, you can do it before the class, after the class, there is no order to it, it's just one step. You don't have include big failures that can be small things. It's can be personal or professional. So, it's really up to you to decide how you want to craft and present your failure resume to the class. So, we have two lessons for this class. The first one is about how do you find failure? One question we set out to answer is, is failure a process? We figure out that, it's not linear, but it's rather a cycle. It's something that keeps happening, it's an iterative process because failures, you keep learning from them and then you fail again. You can't force failure to happen, right? So, we're not setting out to fail for failures sake. You're actually setting out to succeed, and then you come across failure as part of that process. This, I think it's important to talk about when this happens. It doesn't happen when you're solving the same problem over and over again, or you're doing the same thing. But actually happens when you stretch your skills, when you take risks, when you experiment, or when you accept a new challenge because you're being challenged to do something new with your creative skills. The second part is how do we push these boundaries? So, the fact they are failing is actually a good sign, right? It's a great sign. It means, that you're taking on new challenges. It's indication that you're working on and you're leading up to creating better things in the world for yourself, for others whatever projects are working on. The next failure that you're going to do is going to be worse. They're just going to become bigger because you're tackling bigger and tougher problems. The way to get more success, I think is really to have more failures because you learn from those. I mean, this is something that we really just have to be comfortable with. I think you can become comfortable with failure when you realize that it actually leads to more success and leads to better things for your projects. As you're becoming comfortable from it, you're going to learn from it, right? You're not going to keep doing the same thing over and over again, you rather get to see those patterns. We can be open to seeing those patterns and you're going to talk about those patterns whether you're working with the team, with a client, I think it's about communicating your failures and understanding them. All this pushing the boundaries is about this is how we keep innovating, that's how we keep pushing ourselves to do better things in the world. There's a bunch of ways you can really approach this project and the challenge for the class. There isn't a right way to do it. We're just going to share a couple of quick examples with you. You just write it out. If you're a designer maybe you're a going to design your resume, you can film a quick video and post that, you can actually make it part of your portfolio. It's a project on your portfolio page of how you failed or what projects you failed on. You can add it to your LinkedIn as a custom section. There's really no right way to do this project. For me my failure project is in this class, you can see how I put it together and just think it's important to see that the progression, see that timeline of your failures. So, you got to share it. This is really a class about sharing what you failed on and allowing everyone else in the class to learn from your failures, so that we can all learn from each other and become better. I think that's also we're talking about how do you respond to someone else's failures, right? Because it's really a project goal, we're going to see everyone's failures all out in the open. I think there's really two ways that we can help each other out. One, is to help people identify the patterns. What are they failing on? What patterns are they seeing in their failure resume? And then to help them understand their path forward. Where do we go now? What boundary do we push next? What's the next big problem that we want to solve that might be something new? We probably will fail or not but that's part of it. What do we want to challenge ourselves with next? So, imagine you went to a job interview with this failure resume, what would happen? What would that conversation be like?