Author: Megan McArdle
Published: Viking Penguin, 2014
Started: 1/21/15
Finished: 1/30/15
There is so much to say about The Up Side of Down, but I will keep it short. Failure plays a role in success. It's a truth we all know, but are afraid to admit. It's a lost art in schools and it's why we have this new form of parenting taking over to ensure kids won't fail. Now, not a lot of people like failure, but is important in the learning process. Megan McArdle cites research studies done on students of all ages, businesses, law firms, colleges, etc. and the truth is incredible. Most successful businesses are successful through failures.
It boils down to risk taking. Many people are afraid to take risks, because taking a risk could end up in failure. The problem is risk taking is valued in society. When we don't take risks, we never fail, and without failure or mistakes we never learn from them. It's the reason the light bulb was invented, the automobile, the most recent iPhone. This books ties directly in with Mindsets by Carol Dweck PhD. It's a great read for parents, educators, and business people. We need to instill the idea of failure as an event and not a label into the generation we are raising. We need to embrace the role failure has on success, and teach people how to recover from it.
I recommend this read to a lot of people who are interested in failure and success. I have recommended it to a lot of people so far. Some chapters get pretty dry depending on who is reading it (an English teacher reading about stocks is tough). The one thing I will warn about is the amount of typos within the text. Hopefully this gets fixed in the next publication. At least every 3 pages there is some sort of error and it gets kind of annoying. The content is great though.
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