Step

17

Don’t wear a parachute¹

Key piece of advice. Don’t do anything to upset the apple cart. Don’t do anything different or new. Do zilch. Take no action. Zero. All failures know the easiest thing to do is to do nothing. However, if you do slip up, in terms of taking action, make sure that instead of small steps, you take gigantic leaps with the maximum chance of hurting yourself. Ignore the advice of William James who said, “What should be preached is courage weighted with responsibility.” Instead be reckless and self-destructive and never mind the consequences. Never do any kind of risk analysis before you try anything new. Just leap, willy-nilly, out of aeroplanes without the aid of a parachute. This will be very messy upon landing.

In this way, as soon as you don’t achieve the dizzy, significant heights you wanted (even though this is only your first time out), and rather than settle for average success, you can now easily justify giving up completely. “After all,” you can moan to your family, friends and colleagues, “I gave it my best shot at overnight success and look what happened. I crashed into the ground at 1,000 miles an hour and was dashed to a bloody pulp.” Adding, “Never again” (emitting a deep sigh of resignation is also a nice finishing touch). Talking of Pulp, don’t listen to Jarvis Cocker, their former lead singer, who said, echoing the sentiment of many other people before him: “It took us 12 years to become an overnight success.”

Organising a massive cock-up, of your own making, every now and again, without, of course, taking any personal responsibility for it, is a great strategy. You’re sure to put people off the scent that, in reality, you are a major coward with such little self-esteem it could easily be contained in a thimble.

“Organising a massive cock-up, of your own making, every now and again, without, of course, taking any personal responsibility for it, is a great strategy.”

If jumping out of planes, even with a parachute, seems too scary, use this as a convenient excuse not to jump out of planes at all. In fact, if you can convince people how dangerous doing anything new is, like changing jobs or starting a business, you won’t even have to go to the airport.

¹ See Disclaimers at the back of this guide.