Tim Ferriss Quote
How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favorite failure of yours? Many, many moons ago, I used to be a corporate lawyer. I was an ambivalent corporate lawyer at best, and anyone could have told you that I was in the wrong profession, but still: I’d dedicated tons of time (three years of law school, one year of clerking for a federal judge, and six and a half years at a Wall Street firm, to be exact) and had lots of deep and treasured relationships with fellow attorneys. But the day came, when I was well along on partnership track, that the senior partner in my firm came to my office and told me that I wouldn’t be put up for partner on schedule. To this day, I don’t know whether he meant that I would never be put up for partner or just delayed for a good long while. All I know is that I embarrassingly burst into tears right in front of him—and then asked for a leave of absence. I left work that very afternoon and bicycled round and round Central Park in NYC, having no idea what to do next. I thought I’d travel. I thought I’d stare at the walls for a while. Instead—and it all happened so suddenly and cinematically that it might defy belief—I remembered that actually I had always wanted to be a writer. So I started writing that very evening. The next day I signed up for a class at NYU in creative nonfiction writing. And the next week, I attended the first session of class and knew that I was finally home. I had no expectation of ever making a living through writing, but it was crystal clear to me that from then on, writing would be my center, and that I would look for freelance work that would give me lots of free time to pursue it. If I had succeeded at making partner, right on schedule, I might still be miserably negotiating corporate transactions 16 hours a day. It’s not that I’d never thought about what else I might like to do other than law, but until I had the time and space to think about life outside the hermetic culture of a law practice, I couldn’t figure out what I really wanted to do.
How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favorite failure of yours? Many, many moons ago, I used to be a corporate lawyer. I was an ambivalent corporate lawyer at best, and anyone could have told you that I was in the wrong profession, but still: I’d dedicated tons of time (three years of law school, one year of clerking for a federal judge, and six and a half years at a Wall Street firm, to be exact) and had lots of deep and treasured relationships with fellow attorneys. But the day came, when I was well along on partnership track, that the senior partner in my firm came to my office and told me that I wouldn’t be put up for partner on schedule. To this day, I don’t know whether he meant that I would never be put up for partner or just delayed for a good long while. All I know is that I embarrassingly burst into tears right in front of him—and then asked for a leave of absence. I left work that very afternoon and bicycled round and round Central Park in NYC, having no idea what to do next. I thought I’d travel. I thought I’d stare at the walls for a while. Instead—and it all happened so suddenly and cinematically that it might defy belief—I remembered that actually I had always wanted to be a writer. So I started writing that very evening. The next day I signed up for a class at NYU in creative nonfiction writing. And the next week, I attended the first session of class and knew that I was finally home. I had no expectation of ever making a living through writing, but it was crystal clear to me that from then on, writing would be my center, and that I would look for freelance work that would give me lots of free time to pursue it. If I had succeeded at making partner, right on schedule, I might still be miserably negotiating corporate transactions 16 hours a day. It’s not that I’d never thought about what else I might like to do other than law, but until I had the time and space to think about life outside the hermetic culture of a law practice, I couldn’t figure out what I really wanted to do.
Related Quotes
About Tim Ferriss
