When I was between jobs and applying to new new ones daily, I maintained digital sticky notes on my laptop with info on my progress on each potential position, to stay organized.

Then, whenever a job didn’t pan out, I’d delete the note for that opportunity.

I’d leave the blank spaces generated by the vanishing jobs to remind myself of the failure — the more blank spots, the worse I’d feel, and the harder I’d work.

Then, one day, the notes spontaneously rearranged themselves, shuffling around randomly and moving out of order, obliterating the empty spaces.

I know it was a bug, and I should probably complain to Microsoft or something, but I also take it as a lesson: don’t concentrate on failure. What’s the point? Be aware of your failures, certainly, but for every success, a thousand failures may lie behind it —and what good is it to tell yourself over and over that you’ve failed in the meantime? It’s only the success that matters. As long as there is still life in your body, no one can tell you that you won’t get that success someday. So why not focus on that potential? That’s my new plan, anyway.

Ok, postscript here — I’ll never do away with a focus on failure entirely, and I don’t think I should. Failure is a great motivator, when harnessed correctly. Many innovators have used failure to spur them to greater heights.

But there’s one important caveat in all that — not one of them cared more about the failure than about the success. The failure was an propellant, urging them forward, but success was the reason they kept trudging day after wearying day, until finally they got what they wanted (usually).

Use failure, but don’t let it consume you. If success is what you want more than anything, only success should consume you.