What is success?

My local newspaper seems to run a lot of stories on what the local schools are doing.

In almost every article, a school administrator will comment on how important it is to help these young people “be successful."

Funny thing is, they never seem to say what that means.

So what is success?

Put simply, success is reaching a goal.

If you don't have a goal, there's nothing to succeed at.

Of course, if you don't have a goal, you also can't fail.

What this means is:

You cannot have success without the risk of failure.

At the beginning of this week I sat down and wrote out some goals for the week. Mostly small things, but they were all things that I wanted to achieve.

Here's how I've done on a few of them:

• CiviCon North America 2025: Ensure our planning committee has the information it needs to commit to a city and dates in our meeting this week. SUCCEEDED.

• Jiu-jitsu: Record two sparring sessions, rewatch them, and note some things I could improve. SUCCEEDED.

• Personal health: Hit the gym for a good workout, 5 days this week. FAILED.

• Kids’ homeschooling: Catch up on my backlog of unreviewed kids' homework: FAILED.

You'll notice some of those are outcomes and some are just actions. But they're all things I wanted to achieve, and either achieved or did not, unambiguously.

Now nearing the end of the week, it's time to review and improve.

Where I succeeded, I'll:

• Celebrate. This is great.

• Examine my plan and how it worked well (or could have been even better).

• Consider whether (and how much) this success is based on good luck, and improve future plans to anticipate bad luck.

• Consider whether (and how much) to adjust this goal next time.

Where I failed, I'll:

• Lament. It's not the end of the world, but it sucks, at least a little.

• Examine my plan and where it fell short.

• Consider whether (and how much) this failure is based on bad luck, and improve future plans to better anticipate that bad luck.

• Consider whether (and how much) to adjust this goal next time.

Win or lose, the process is fairly similar: because I had unambiguous goals, I can see clearly where I succeeded and where I failed.

Here’s the thing:

Setting goals means risking failure, and that’s a little scary.

But aiming at success, and iterating on a process to improve my success rate, makes it totally worth the risk.

All the best,
A.