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Whether we like it or not, we live in a world that is ruthlessly optimized to reward results. Nonetheless, failure is a part of everyones lifeand an essential part of achievement in fields ranging from sports to science. In fact, high achievers are those who fail more oftennot lessthan the average person. They take more risks, go outside their comfort zone, set more challenging goals, and engage more frequently and vigorously in improving their performanceand this is how they succeed. You cant lose if you never playyou also cant win. Runner-up But what about coming in second? Is there value to the near missto being so close to a win, but falling short? In education, being salutatorian is impressive. But it still means you miss out on the valedictory speech and its attendant scholarship. A high spot on the university waitig list rarely becomes an enrollment offer. In careers, the runner-up performer might earn a congratulatory email but not the promotion or hefty salary increase; the second-best job interview candidate gets little consolation from knowing they almost received a job offer but are still unemployed. Salespeople who hit 99% of their quota still forfeit the Hawaiian-vacation incentive and bonus. In research, the lab that publishes second loses the patent, the grant, and the headlines. And if you are the runner-up in a presidential election, theres at best a slim chance you can run again in the future, and your popularity may actually decrease after losing (in politics, this loser effect leads to a dip in confidence from voters, and theres often no time for a second chance). Near misses as opportunity And yet, near misses are not as disastrous as the above thought experiments suggest. Indeed, finishing a hairs breadth behind the winner still means youve outperformed almost everyone elsebe they hundreds of classmates, thousands of job applicants, or an entire electorate. Moreover, the person who edges you out isnt necessarily better on merit alonefactors like political currents, privilege, or just plain luck can tip the scales. Perhaps most importantly, coming up just short can serve as a springboard for growth, offering the chance to learn, adapt, and come back strongerprovided you choose to seize it. Heres why: Lessons learned First, while everyone prefers success to failure, it is often easier to learn from failure than from success. Success tells you that you are great; it is the socially accepted way to provide you with positive feedback on your talents, reinforcing your self-belief, and inflating your ego. While this sounds greatand without much in the way of downsidesuccess is also likely to generate complacency, overconfidence, and arrogance (its much easier to stay humble in defeat). Conversely, failures are opportunities to learn, especially when you see them as learning experiments that provide you with critical feedback on your skills, choices, and behaviors. As Niels Bohr wisely noted, An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field. In short, a near miss can act as an inherently, if brutally honest audit of your assumptions and strategiesuncovering blind spots that success tends to conceal. By forcing youor at least inviting youto diagnose exactly why you fell short, a near miss suggests you refine your mental models; rethink and tweak your tactics; and build new, better tested, decision-making muscles. Failing enthusiastically Second, failure increases the gap between your aspirational self (who you want to be) and your actual self (who you are, at least from a reputational standpoint). This uncomfortable psychological gap is only reduced through hard work, grit, and persistence, which together strengthen your chances of succeeding in the future. At the very least, they help you become a better version of yourself, even if you dont succeed in achieving a sought-after prize or goal. As Winston Churchill famously noted, Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. Importantly, near misses can be a powerful form of failure precisely because they hurt the most. Being so close to a success can reaffirm your determination and reignite your ambition. Every extraordinary achiever (across fields) differs from others in one important way: they are less likely to be satisfied with their achievements. Indeed, the most common reason people fail to learn from failure is that they are too wounded or hurt by their lack of success, to the point that it extinguishes their drive. In contrast, extraordinary achievers will not give up or let goeven when their failures are hard to digest. This ambitious mindset helps them seek to understand the factors leading to their near misses without getting deflated or depressed by them. Instead, it makes them even hungrier for victory, resilient, and focused on bouncing back stronger. Emotionally resilient Third, the way you respond to any form of defeat or failure, and especially the painful near misses, sends a powerful signal to everyone around youinvestors, bosses, or teammatesthat youre emotionally mature, resilient, and coachable. Humans have a general tendency to attribute their successes to their own talents and merit, while blaming others, or situations, for their failures and misses. Avoiding this tendency makes you an exception to the norm. This will be noticed and will impress others. While resilience is largely a function of your personality (the more emotionally stable, extroverted, curious, agreeable, and especially conscientious you are, the more resilience you will show), we can all work to increase our resilience if we truly care about achieving our end goal, by becoming grittier and harnessing whatever mental toughness we have. When you dissect a near miss with curiosity and humility, you demonstrate a growth mindset that invites collaboration and sparks confidence in your potential. Visible resilience often earns more credibility (and resources) than a flawless run, because it shows youre willing to learn in public. Over time, people who witness your thoughtful rebound become your strongest advocates, eager to back the next iteration of your vision. Life, despte how it feels in disappointing moments, is not a final exam but a continuous assessment; what matters most is not brilliant one-off successes but reliable, steady, determined excellence. As Aristotle pointed out, We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Greater legacies To be sure, theres no shortage of prominent historical figures who confirm how near misses and other kinds of failures in their early career stages were poor indicators of their actual talent and potential but instead unfortunate or unlucky episodes, uncharacteristic of their brilliance. Consider Roger Federer: after six runner-up finishes on tour, he finally lifted Wimbledons trophy in 2003 and would go on to amass 20 Grand Slam titles. The Netherlands of 1974, whose Total Football lost the final, rewrote soccers playbook. J.K. Rowling, turned down by 12 publishers, went on to sell over 600 million Harry Potter copies. Barbara McClintock, whose jumping genes work was ignored for decades, earned a 1983 Nobel Prize for the discovery. Meryl Streep, whose first Oscar nod in 1979 went unrewarded, has since racked up 21 nominations and 3 wins. The Beatles were rejected by Decca as yesterdays sound before selling some 1.6 billion records. And Alibaba, once dwarfed by eBay in China, now serves over a billion annual active consumers. Each of these (and many other) examples provide evidence that near misses can herald even greater legacies. Ultimately, the sting of almost is less a verdict on your potential than an invitation to hone it. Near misses arent life sentencestheyre signposts pointing to gaps in your strategy, fuel for your ambition, and a live demonstration of your character to the world. While it is tempting to ruminate about what could have or should have happened, the truth is we never know. We all indulge in counterfactual fantasiesthose what if spirals where we picture an alternate universe in which we married someone else, took the other job, or moved to that city. Psychologists call them sliding doors moments: innocuous-seeming forks in the road that, in hindsight, feel like cosmic turning points. But while its human to ruminate, its wiser to remember that were not omniscient authors of our own lives. The illusion of total control is just thatan illusion. More often than not, the best way to recover from regret or disappointment is not by obsessing over the road not taken, but by taking a different road. Que será, será. Life is less about scripting your destiny than adapting to its plot twists. In other words, how you react to failure matters, but failure is too brutal and negative a word for simply not getting what you think you preferred or wanted, especially when it may not even be what you actually needed or ought to have preferred. When we embrace each narrow defeat as data, not destiny, we are able to build the very habits and resilience that turn almost into subsequent undeniable success. As the saying goes, experience is what you get when you didnt get what you wanted. We add that experience can be more valuable than the objective success of getting what you wanted. In fact, enjoyment of objectives successes including of awards and victories, tends to be more short-lived than we expect. We need not define ourselves by our past and present achievements. Who we are also comprises our future self, including our possible selvesthe parts of our character and identity that are actually the only ones we can influence.
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E-Commerce
A few weeks ago, I finally paid for ChatGPT Plus. It started with a simple goal: I wanted to create a personal archive of my published articles, but wasnt sure how to begin. That led to a long back-and-forth with ChatGPT, where we built a Python script to scrape my author pages, download the content, and format everything cleanly. By the time I hit the free usage limit, I was too invested to pause or switch to another chatbot. So I upgraded. In hindsight, the money ($20 per month) was well spent. For one, it worked: I now have a folder on my computer containing more than a decades worth of articles. More importantly, this was the moment that AI tools clicked for me. I’ve had little success using them to write, and often recoil at the images they churn out. When I ask ChatGPT and Google Gemini for factual information, they’re liable to get the details wrong on all but the most widely understood topics. But in this case, ChatGPT saved me days of tedious workand opened my eyes to what else might now be possible. (The idea of creating code without knowing how to code has even been coined vibecoding by Andrej Karpathy.) If I could use AI to build personal Python scripts, what other plugins or extensions could I try next? Web extensions, plug-ins, and more Unlike my colleague Harry McCracken, I’m not using AI to dream up entirely new apps. I already have too many apps from actual professionals on my phone and computer, and I don’t trust AI (or myself) enough to compete with them. What I’ve really gotten into, though, is using AI to extend and improve the software I use already. For instance, I take notes and draft stories in Obsidian, an app that’s endlessly extensible via user-created plug-ins. I’ve always dreamed of a quick note plug-in for Obsidian that matches the simplicity of Google Keep, but have yet to find anything that works. After a few hours of vibecoding, I finally built the plug-in myself. Now, through Obsidians right sidebar, I can view all the notes from any folder in a card-based layout and edit them directly from the sidebar. The plug-in also lets me pin notes to the top, create new notes with a single click, send notes to an archive folder, and search with real-time results. It even works in Obsidians mobile app, with the quick-notes view just a swipe away. I’ve also been tweaking some existing plug-ins for Flow Launcher, a free Windows app for executing quick actions from a command bar. I took a plug-in for window management and added some new sizing options, and I modified a browser history search plug-in to make it work with my current browser (Floorp). AI tools are also useful for creating browser bookmarklets, which are special kinds of bookmarks for doing things like decluttering web pages and speeding up videos. I already wrote an entire article about that, but now I’ve created an additional bookmarklet for downloading YouTube videos. This works by connecting to a local Python server that silently processes video links and sends them to my Downloads folder. In all cases, the process was the same: I would tell ChatGPT exactly what I was trying to make, and asked for clear, step-by-step instructions on how to make it. I’d follow the instructions, compile the code, and go back to ChatGPT for fixes or refinements. Some assembly required I dont want to oversell vibecoding as an effortless activity. Each of the above projects took hours to build, as I inevitably fall down a rabbit hole of tweaking, clarifying, and troubleshooting. Thats partly because AI can be as unreliable in coding as it is in other endeavors. ChatGPT has a habit of confidently declaring that its produced working code, only for errors to appear when compiling or running it. Ive spent hours feeding it error messages, trying to get it to recognize basic syntax issues or missing functions. On several occasions, Ive had to abandon a chat entirely and start a new one after the code modifications veered too far off track. Even when everything is working properly, its easy to fall prey to scope creep. You might think its simple to add a new feature or tweak the design, but those changes can easily turn into additional hours of refining and fixing. (In fairness, this happens in actual software development, too.) And while you can accomplish a lot without formal programming knowledge, youll still need a solid grasp of how file systems work and some basic sense of what code should look like. ChatGPT might ask you to replace one snippet with another, or mistakenly claim its providing full code when large portions are missing. Being able to spot when AI is about to screw up can go a long way. Take some control back One last disclaimer: I’m not nearly confident enough in what I’ve created to share it with the world, as I’m sure other folks would run into bugs or ask for features that I’m thoroughly unqualified to address. I also wouldn’t suggest vibecoding anything that handles sensitive data or important personal information. But for the things vibecoding is good atsmall, personal utilities that no one else would want to makeit’s immensely satisfying and even empowering. As Techdirt‘s Mike Masnick recently pointed out, lowering the barriers to software development is a great way to push back against enshittification by major tech companies, whose products inevitably get weighed down by the need to scale and extract more money from captive users. To that point, you don’t even need AI anymore once the vibe coding is done. Having built what I need for the foreseeable future, I cancelled my ChatGPT Plus subscription after a single month’s payment.
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E-Commerce
When we hired a Gen Z marketer, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. We expected fresh perspectives and a new approach to marketing, but as an older millennial, I didnt expect just how foreign her methods would feel. Our company is an AI-powered platform that helps small and medium-size businesses find top part-time professionals through network-based recruiting. As we grew, we realized we needed someone who truly understood how younger audiences communicate and consume contentnot just to market the product, but to shape how we tell our story in a changing world of work. For decades, marketing has been about connecting emotionally with audiences. “Hit the pain points,” they say. But now? Were living in a completely different world where short and authentic is king and Gen Z speaks an entirely different language. Try making sense of phrases like: Touch grass? I AM the lawn. Delulu is the solulu. Slayed so hard I need a rest day. I need a dictionary to decode this. Worse, I cant even evaluate the creatives our marketer brings to the tablethey’re so removed from my understanding of what works. It’s a puzzle. But what is also true is that we needed someone who gets it. In the same way that you need the right tech stack to build a successful product, you need the right people to resonate with your Gen Z audience. Heres what I learned about how marketing has changed from our Gen Z marketer. A Gen Z style ad for Intech. The rule of TikTok Theres a general rule when it comes to social media platforms teenagers dont want to hang out where their parents areor geriatric millennials. Instagram was built to solve a specific problem: sharing lifes moments in a simple, visually appealing format. It worked because millennials wanted to embellish their life. But that’s a negative vibe for Gen Zs only authentic content ethos. TikTok is different. It doesnt solve a problem, it is more of a content playground where attention grabbing creative content rules. TikTok is not about functionality but about the thrill of discovery. The same goes for YouTube Shorts. Micro-trends dominate One of Gen Z’s most defining traits is how quickly they move through trends. On Instagram, an ad can last for weeks before losing steam, but on TikTok, youll be lucky if a trend lasts a couple of days. Gen Z’s world is about micro-trends, and staying on top of these can feel like a full-time job. Remember that trends are not created by companies they are created by young people themselves. Advertising itself has become decentralized, and it cant look like advertising at all. A millennial style ad for Intech. Thats so me If you try to replicate Gen Zs style or worse, imitate them as a millennial or older marketer it comes across as inauthentic, and that’s a surefire way to alienate them. Gen Z has a radar for fake, and they’ll call you out for it. The content that grabs their attention is fast, compressed, and utterly focused on authenticity. Whether its meme-based or pure user-generated content , if its relatable, theyll engage. Furthermore, Gen Z is rejecting traditional advertising which paints a picture of a happier, more beautiful, successful life. For them, its about identity. If your content doesnt make Gen Z say ‘Thats so me,’ then its not worth their time. This could be a video of someone fake-smiling through a Zoom meeting while their laptop teeters on a stack of laundry, a meme about overthinking a simple text message for 15 minutes, or a skit that dramatizes the emotional rollercoaster of getting ghosted after a job interview. The goal isnt polished perfection – its emotional accuracy, humor, and the unfiltered truth of everyday moments. Let Gen Zers lead the way As a founder with over a decade of marketing experience, I’ve come to accept that I cant speak to younger audiences the way fellow Gen Zers can. Before, our marketing used to follow a classic structure: brand-building business-to-business positioning: thought leadership, long-form content, product launches, and sales enablementall based on the pain solution offer formula. It was clear, structured communication that worked well for a more traditional audience. After a Gen Z marketer joined the team, everything shifted: we stopped explaining the product and moved away from polished, heavily branded materials. Instead we prioritized native, meme-driven, user-generated, and highly contextual content. The goal wasnt to convince anymore, but to resonate instantly to make the audience say: Thats so me. Our marketer launched TikTok-style videos that used humor to show what it feels like to be stuck hiring from outdated platforms. She created Instagram Reels featuring mock text threads between overwhelmed founders and the dream hire who finally gets it. She even turned real user feedback into memes that felt like inside jokes for our audience. In the new approach, pain points are barely mentioned at allits all about cultural relevance and emotional recognition. At the same time, our return on ad spend jumped from around 30% to 120%. If your product targets Gen Z, or if you want to stay relevant in a future where Gen Z will be the dominant workforce and consumer group, you need to let them take the reins. Their instincts for trends and authentic content are unmatched. They understand the pulse of whats current and know what will resonate with their peers. If you want your marketing to succeed, you need to follow their lead.
Category:
E-Commerce
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