I wrote a recent blog post that went from being a longtime draft, to finally being a published post. The idea was twofold: get a post out of my drafts already, and in doing so, teach by highlighting my failure. It’s weird, but it works.

It shouldn’t be too surprising that it works, however. Much of what we know can likely be attributed to either our own failure, or the failure of someone else, whether we know it or not. It’s not often we learn something new without some sort of mistake along the way. It’s just that the failure portion — how we potentially got to where we are, which ought to be success — isn’t always recognized, or acknowledge, or put forth as something from which others can learn, and actually see for themselves.

After my first, stupid draft turned post, post, I received the below Twitter comment. This was someone that noticed that through my failure, I was able to teach; I was ultimately able to succeed at potentially teaching those that read the post, by sharing what I had learned by failing.

This kind of post is important and awesome. We all learn every day, and even the best don't know Everything. Good job, @thetommymaynard https://t.co/oQTr1jKBSd

— Björn Sundling (@Bjompen) January 10, 2018

For as long as I can, I’ll keep looking over my drafts to see what else we can collectively learn by my failure. It’s how we get better at everything, because it’s not often that we understand everything the first time we learn it — depending on what it is of course. Accept failure, and learn from it. I’ll do the same and see what else I can share from which we can both learn something new.