Chapter 10. Failures: The Encyclopedia of Mistakes

 

FAILURE IS LACK OF SUCCESS.

 
 --COLLINS COBUILD, ENGLISH LANGUAGE DICTIONARY

The Encyclopedia of Mistakes

I fail often and in many different ways. To use a cliché: I could fill a whole book on failing. Imagine a large, black leather-bound dictionary: The Encyclopedia of Mistakes – a systematic run-through of the nature of defeat. There are so many different sorts of mistakes: small, big, acceptable, unacceptable, instructive, unnecessary, one-offs. Blessing-in-disguise mistakes, all's-well-that-ends-well mistakes, wrong-decision-at-the-last-minute mistakes, devastating mistakes, unnoticeable mistakes, mistakes with immediate effect, mistakes that are discovered long after the event. There ...

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