Failure
Written By; Ian Clayton
Edited By: Merielle Donaldson
“Confidence does not come from an expectation of success; it comes from a comfort with failure.” - Mark Manson
Have you failed? I have. A lot actually. Especially since embarking on this journey into this career. I could easily fill up a thousand-word blog post detailing only half of the mistakes that I have made over the past two-and-a-half to three years. But I have learned a lot through that failure; in fact, the majority of my knowledge and skills have been developed though broken parts and send backs. A good shop or employer will take the steps necessary to try to minimize failure through training and mentorship, but from what I have seen in this industry, unfortunately that doesn’t really happen.
“Move fast and break things.” - Mark Zuckerberg
If you want to get to the top of anything in life then this is the mentality you need to ingrain in yourself. The best way to get proficient at anything is to just do that thing, and do it a lot. But you have to remember that whenever you start something new, whether it be a career, skill, or hobby, you won’t be good at it - to expect that you will be is simply unrealistic. When I first began in the automotive industry, I knew that welding would be an essential skill to learn in order to be successful, so I bought a welder and pulled pieces of scrap metal out of the bin at work to practice on. A few weeks ago, as I was cleaning out the garage, I came across some of those scraps and was amazed at how far my welding skills have come since those first pieces. Now yes, there was a welding course taken in that time, but the vast majority of the improvement came from practice. This past week I handled a side job that involved welding and I was very pleased with how it came out, as was the client. My point is that the good welds I did on my side job wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for the hundreds or thousands of practice welds that I did previously.
The difference between the world in which Mark Zuckerberg operates and the world in which we operate is that when mistakes are made in our world there is a cost associated with said mistake; you can’t just click a button or rewrite some code to correct the mistakes. The same goes for the welding example - we don’t have scrap vehicles that we get to practice on and fail on. In the example I gave above about my recent welding job, I was able to use some scrap pieces of metal that I had at the house to practice on before I made the actual weld for my client. But as auto techs, we don’t have practice vehicles that we get to hone our skills on (which is exactly the sort of thing we should have access to in school if you ask me - see my previous post about schooling for more on that). No, our failures happen in real time and there is a very tangible cost associated with it. Parts will be broken and jobs will take longer than expected and it will be extremely frustrating, but the knowledge gained from these failures will turn into wisdom.
Failure is an inevitability in life. No one does everything perfectly all the time; people make mistakes and that is what makes us human. It’s learning from those mistakes that makes us better humans. Failure is unavoidable as a technician, and it will cost time and money (hopefully you’re not on flat-rate), but learning from those failures will make you a better technician. The next time you are presented with a similar problem, you won’t make the same mistake. Don’t get discouraged by your failure. Just come back stronger the next time around.