Finding something positive

We all hate when we don’t see the results we were hoping for. It sucks to follow a diet closely for months only to lose two pounds. It hurts to end a relationship that you have put years of time and effort into.

We hate wasting time. Life is so short.

But when something doesn’t produce like you were hoping it would, you need to do your best to salvage something out of it. Every situation that is negative has a positive element attached to it too. You just need to search for it.

As an example: I thought that the topic of website usability was the love of my life. I bought books, read everything on Jakob Neilsen’s website and got really into the whole “user first” thing. I wanted to have an usability consulting business eventually. I spent many hours working on a website talking about the topic. Then….

I totally lost interest. I mean, just thinking about this topic now makes me upset at myself for getting so into it in the first place. But I did learn some very valuable things. I learned what users like in a site and how to make it more effective. I also learned a lot of cool stuff in regards to CSS and HTML when working on the website. This will definately help me in my future endeavors. So thats my off the top of the head example of finding something positive in a negative situation.

There are certainly better examples than mine, and I’d like to read about yours in a comment below.

At the very least, you will learn not to do something again. It’s like putting your hand on a hot stove, it’s miserable but you (hopefully) won’t do it again. And that’s a good thing.