Failure isn't always a bad thing. Setbacks are a natural part of life and occur every day. They help us find the right ways to do things next time. However, it's very important to understand the difference between unsystematic failures we don't have to worry about much and systemic failures that require fundamental changes in our behavior.
If we don't change the behaviors that lead to systematic failures, we will fail again and again. Art Markman, professor of psychology and marketing at the University of Texas, writes about it in an interesting article on the Harvard Business Review website.
What is the difference between unsystematic and systematic failures?
An example of an unsystematic failure may be when you miss a call with a client because of a sudden important meeting. Another time you may miss a meeting because of another more urgent matter. That's an unsystematic failure too. The cause is usually the fact that we have too little time, energy or money to do everything we want to do at the moment. These failures help us find the right balance between what we want and what is realistic.
Systematic failures occur when we can't achieve a certain goal in the long term. Depending on what we are trying to do, systematic failures are usually caused by a combination of the following three factors.
1. We naturally prefer short-term needs to long-term goals. We simply focus on what is urgent and postpone long-term goals. People who are able to meet their long-term goals schedule regular blocks of time to focus on these goals.
2. We tend to do the easiest, not the most important things first. Our working environment plays an important role here. For example, when our e-mail is always on, we respond to unimportant messages instead of working on an important presentation. Our working environment should be structured to constantly remind us of our priorities.
3. We feel the need to work more hours in order to get more work done. That's wrong. We should make better use of our normal working hours.
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