You should be failing more. Here’s how to do it.

A primer on “productive failure”

We live in an era of rampant and rising perfectionism—one that stifles risk-taking and fuels a paralyzing fear of failure. But avoiding failure can stunt growth and diminish your quality of life, because it is often by failing that we learn in the most powerful ways.

Of course, it needs to be the right kind of failure. Rank humiliation probably isn’t the best teacher.

The academic and author Manu Kapur has coined the term “productive failure.” He argues that learning how to fail well is a crucial skill.

Here is Manu’s three-part process for getting into your “failure zone”—the optimal space for learning something new:

1. Push just past your edge. Pick something hard enough that your current skills won’t quite get the job done. When you try and flail—that’s not failure in the bad sense. That’s the signal you’ve entered the zone where real learning happens.

2. Expect it to suck (a little). Struggle, frustration, the urge to quit aren’t bugs in the system. They’re features. If you’re not bumping into your limits, you’re probably not learning much.

3. Contrast your attempts with expert feedback. Trying and failing isn’t enough. What flips failure into insight is comparing your rough attempts to how an expert does it. That contrast helps you see what actually works—and why your version didn’t.

For more on how to fail better—and why that might be the fastest route to real growth—check out today’s episode of 10% Happier with Manu. We talk about designing the right kind of struggle, how to turn frustration into insight, and what failure can teach you that success can’t.

Paid subscribers also get a companion meditation from our August teacher of the month, Kaira Jewel Lingo. It’s all about how to sit with discomfort and uncertainty—two things that tend to show up when you’re pushing your limits and trying something new.

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Episode cheatsheet

The big takeaway

Manu Kapur, creator of the “productive failure” model and author of Productive Failure, breaks down why seeking out (the right kind of) failure is crucial for learning deeply and building resilience. Instead of dreading or avoiding mistakes, Kapur argues we should design experiences that ensure initial failure in low-stakes environments—because failing, reflecting, and then encountering the right solution supercharges our understanding and creates real mastery.

Fail better: how productive failure unlocks true learning

Key takeaways:

• Learning through failure: We learn more deeply when we try, struggle, and initially fail, then compare our efforts to the correct answer, rather than being told what to do from the start.

• Curiosity as a learning engine: Productive failure ignites curiosity, making us emotionally and cognitively primed to absorb new information.

• Not all failure is equal: Only low-stakes, early-stage failures in safe environments fuel learning—high-stakes failure (surgeries, final exams) are a different story.

• Normalize the struggle: If it feels too easy, you’re not really learning; productive struggle and reflection are the hallmarks of deep skill-building.

6 ways to use failure as a superpower: