Seth Godin on failure

Seth Godin's site still throws up some decent insights from time to time...

Here are six random ideas that will help you fail better, more often and with an inevitably positive upside:

1. Whenever possible, take on specific projects
2. Make detailed promises about what success looks like and when it will occur
3. Engage others in your projects. If you fail, they should be involved and know that they will fail with you
4. Be really clear about what the true risks are. Ignore the vivid, unlikely and ultimately non-fatal risks that take so much of our focus away
5. Concentrate your energy and will on the elements of the project that you have influence on, ignore external events that you can't avoid or change 
6. When you fail (and you will) be clear about it, call it by name and outline specifically what you learned so you won't make the same mistake twice. People who blame others for failure will never be good at failing, because they've never done it

I especially like 3.  Involving others is the first necessary step away from self-employed solipsism.