About this quote

Trying things that matter will break things sometimes. When you trip, you get concrete information you can use to improve. Treat mistakes as experiments: note what failed, pick one small change, and try again. That way the pressure for perfection drops and real progress starts to show.

When to use it

• At our product demo the prototype crashed and I told the team, 'Good — it's broken because we tried something new; let's log what failed and fix it tomorrow.'
• After flubbing a class presentation I reminded myself of Gaiman's line and said, 'Okay, I learned where the explanation fails — I'll practice that section and present again next week.'
• When I fell trying a new skateboard trick I shrugged and thought, 'If I'm landing on my face, I'm trying something harder than before,' then filmed the attempt to spot adjustments.
• I misallocated part of our rent budget this month; I told my partner, 'We messed up the math — let's adjust the plan and set a reminder so it doesn't repeat.'