Failure is a Good Teacher

When you start out making electronic projects, stuff is going to get broken, fried, melted and destroyed. Phil Torrone (Adabot on Ask An Engineer) has affirmed this - stuff is going to break, things are going to go wrong. That's just collateral damage on the road to victory.

What's your objective in doing a project? Is it purely to "scratch an itch" - fill a need, or something deeper, more long-lasting? Either way, you're going to have to keep driving yourself to achieve your objective. There'll be blind alleys, red herrings and ignorance to overcome, but you can do it if you keep trying.

And you'll learn things you never knew about. In fact, you almost can't help but learn new things, as long as you keep going.

Here's a video of geek god Jeri Ellsworth telling you to "Fail and Fail Often":



If you watch the video all the way to the end, you'll see a key point being made: be open to the unexpected results. Jeri had a failure that she set aside for awhile, then revisited it. She was open and aware that there was new data in the "failure" that she could use, turning it into a "win".