‘You have to experience failure to know the sweet taste of success.’

That may be true, but no one wants to face the possibility or danger of failure that directly affects them in life. So everyone wants good results, whether they’ve prepared or not. If you keep preparing with a purpose, it will lead to good results when the opportunity comes; in the opposite case, good results won’t follow even when the opportunity arrives.

This book briefly touches on the reasons why good results, after all, fail to come.

1. Because you pursue perfection in your plans
2. Because of an all-or-nothing mindset
3. Because you set loose deadlines
4. Because of vague goals that aren’t expressed as numbers
5. Half-hearted verification
6. Because of the belief that you have to do it all on your own

It’s not that the items above are bad, but they can also be understood as something like ‘the kind of mistake that comes from leaning too far to one side and failing to see the whole picture.’

PDCA - Plan, Do, Check, Act - means setting a goal, testing it through every possible method, verifying the gap between the goal and the result, and based on the verification results, deriving improvements / figuring out what the best method is / further developing the best method you’ve derived. It seems like a good idea to understand it at that level and apply it in everyday life too. (But things in the world don’t always go the way you intend. haha)

Related recommended reading: Deep Work