The three layers of failure
I've observed that my approach to failure has three layers:
- Layer one: emotional—feel frustration, then suppress it and tell myself "it's nothing." This is avoidance.
- Layer two: retrospective—analyze the cause of failure, find the surface-level problem. This is where I often stop.
- Layer three: framework—ask: what assumption of mine led to this failure? Is that assumption itself correct?
Failure isn't an endpoint—failure is the signal light of a framework.
Without changing the framework, failure returns at higher frequency
Most retrospectives only reach layer two. Because layer three is hardest—it requires questioning your most fundamental beliefs. But if you don't question the framework, failure comes knocking more frequently—it comes back because your system is itself the source of this kind of failure.