Failure Resume gives you a tool. Little Failures gives you a habit.
The first book is something you do once, deliberately. You write the failure resume. The work happens in a single act — important, foundational, but discrete. Once written, the resume stays. The voice has been named.
Little Failures is what you do every day after that. It does not assume you have done the failure resume — but it works better if you have. The daily failures are smaller, more numerous, and harder to catch. They are also where most of the actual learning happens.
You can read Little Failures cover to cover in a weekend. That is not what it is for. The book is structured to be done — three minutes a day, every day, for as long as you can keep showing up.
The book lends itself to four weeks of practice. Read a section. Do the work. Come back the next morning. The plan:
Every little failure belongs to one of six categories. Knowing which one is half the practice.
What you missed because you weren't there. The meeting you nodded through. The person who needed you to look at them. Easiest to catch in retrospect, hardest to prevent in the moment.
Right move, wrong moment. The honest feedback delivered at the worst possible time. The big idea raised before the relationship was ready for it. The apology that came a week too late.
What you knew to do and didn't do, or did badly because you flinched at the moment of doing it. The hard conversation you softened. The price you didn't ask for. The hand you didn't raise.
The call you got wrong. Not for lack of information — for thinking the wrong way about what you had. The hire that looked right on paper. The deal that the gut said no to.
Where you stopped caring before the work stopped needing you. The last 10% you didn't finish. The follow-up email that didn't get sent. The thing you wanted to be done with before it actually was.
What you didn't know about yourself until the failure showed you. You are not the person you thought you were — better in some places, worse in others. The deepest of the six. The slowest to learn.
Most days have at least one. Many days have several. The practice is not to fix them all. It is to see them clearly enough that the next day's version doesn't come as a surprise.
The practice operates at three speeds — and you need all three for it to hold.
The first thing, before email. Write down one or two little failures from the day before. Name the Fall. Don't analyze, don't fix — just catch. Three minutes is enough. Two is enough on a hard morning.
Once a week, sit with the week's catches. Look for patterns. Not for the worst one — for the recurring one. The Fall that keeps showing up. That's the one that wants attention.
Every three months, read everything. The longer view. What changed? What didn't? What got named that you couldn't see before? This is the cadence that turns the practice from a habit into a tool for actual growth.
For the reader who wants more than the morning catch — or who is between cadences and wants something to write to. Pick one, write for fifteen minutes, stop.
For the morning catch
For the Sunday read
For the quarter close
Little Failures works in groups, but differently than other books. The practice is private — the catches go in your own notebook. The conversation is about the practice, not about the catches themselves.
The book is the introduction. The practice is the work. littlefailures.org is where the daily prompts live — a free four-week protocol delivered by email, with the Six Falls explained and the cadences set up. You can do the practice without the book. You can read the book without the practice. But the two together are the point.
And once Little Failures has become a habit — once the morning catch is automatic and the Sunday read is part of the week — the next question becomes: what is all this practice for? That's the question All-Ready answers.
The companion practice
You don't need to wait for the book. The Little Failures practice arrives free, by email, in four weeks. The morning catch, the Sunday read, the foundation for the quarter close.
Begin at littlefailures.org →