You can try again

There are lots of good reasons things don't work the first time

We all love stories that hinge on a moment when everything changes. A kid picks up a basketball and it’s love at first sight. A novel idea comes to a writer in a flash of inspiration.

Such epiphanies make for good story-telling, but real life seldom works that way.

I know this is the case for me. I was on a podcast recently where the host asked when I knew I wanted to write about time management. The answer, honestly, was several years after I’d written my first book on the topic. I had been trying to get a book deal, shuffling through a variety of topics, and finally landed a contract to write a book called 168 Hours. That came out in May 2010. It got some good publicity, but it didn’t sell all that swiftly. So, when I wanted to write another book, my publisher and I came to the idea of writing about personal finance. I wrote a book called All the Money in the World, which came out in early 2012. That didn’t do all that well either. But around the same time, I wrote a short ebook on productive mornings called What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast. That did much better — and nudged me to start declaring myself a “time management expert.”

In retrospect, it seems obvious. At the time, not so much. I just had to keep trying things, figuring eventually something would stick.

Negativity bias

There are all kinds of things that might be worth trying again. The general consensus from nutritionists is that kids may need to be exposed to new foods a dozen times or more before they’ll actually eat them (and they still might not!). I love running, but I tried to become a runner multiple times before it finally took. It’s a well-known psychological phenomenon that people fixate on the negative. If 3 things go wrong and 3 things go right, we tend to focus on the ones that went wrong. But maybe the next time, 2 things will go wrong and 4 things will go right. The first experience wasn’t all bad, it’s just that parts were, and those were the parts we remember.

Plus, there are many reasons that things might not go perfectly the first time, but that you can’t do much about because you just don’t have enough experience. I have found this to be the case with IKEA furniture building. Just because your first shelf building experience felt long and painful does not mean the second will be. Indeed, it will likely be much better once you know what on earth an Allen wrench does.

And sometimes the explanation you assign for something not working well isn’t actually the right explanation. I have lost emails. When the person follows up, I remember that oh yes, I actually did want to do that thing. I’m glad they bothered to try again!

Try, try…some

Of course, there’s no reason to keep trying things forever. Time is finite. Energy is finite. And if the answer is a definite no, more trying is just annoying. But if it’s not a definite no, being open to possibility can lead to good things. My first date with my husband did not go well enough to suggest that we’d be married within 18 months. But the second date did. Good we tried again.

Today, think if there’s something you’ve tried in the past that you’ve just written off. Is it worth re-visiting? Why did you tell yourself that it didn’t work? Are there alternate explanations? If you tried again, what could you do to generate a different outcome? If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. But it might not hurt to try.