Yes, it’s OK it took me 5,127 attempts to make a bagless vacuum

When you start off, you have to deal with the problems of failure. You need to be thickskinned, to learn that not every project will survive.

I’m thinking about how many people were one or two iterations away from the right formula, but lacked the conviction to stay the course, the understanding that minor, subtle, successive changes can drastically influence outcome. I’m thinking about how self-doubt makes more people abandon a vision than competition or lack of funding ever will.

When we’re focused on first-order outcomes, we look for the instant success, the instant best seller, the instant fill-in-the-blank. We search for shortcuts, life hacks, and advice from self-proclaimed gurus. We “applaud the wrong things: the showy, dramatic record-setting sprint,” Chris Hadfield writes, “rather than the years of dogged preparation

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The best way to fail at inventing something is by making it somebody’s part-time job.