At work, a big part of my job is coming up with (and implementing) new ideas.  There's always a way that we can manufacture our products more efficiently, with higher quality, or more safely.  This may mean purchasing a new machine or rethinking how we're using existing equipment.  The challenge of becoming better at what we do is what provides me with a job.

That sounds great, but I could also choose to look at it the other way.  For every ten ideas that I have (or, that we have as the case may be), there may only be one idea that gets tried and becomes a success.  While a 10% success rate isn't a very good percentage to be proud of, there's not a lot that can be done about it.  Some things just don't work out like you planned.  The only thing you can do is try and generate more ideas so that you have an improved chance of one of them working out well.

The notes I've been writing here work the same way.  For every ten entries that I make, maybe one of them has been worth reading.  That's not so bad.  Except for a few minutes of my time, I'm not out anything for the other nine that were flops.  And if one of them was enjoyed by someone (or better yet, if I liked it!), then the needle on the dial of goodness has moved however slightly in the positive direction.

Another good example comes to mind:  Robin Williams.  Any time he's on a talk show or being interviewed, he goes through a marathon of throwing out jokes one after the other.  It's nonstop, usually faster than you can even comprehend.  It's amazing how fast his mind works.  If you take any one of those jokes by itself, it probably wouldn't be that funny.  But the way he puts them all out there in such a short period of time, all you have to do is find one that's funny and you start laughing.  And he delivers the jokes so fast that in just a few seconds you've heard four or five things that have you laughing until tears come to your eyes.

The moral of the story is, "The road to success is a big joke."  No, no, no, that's not right.  How about, "When the going gets tough, do a comedy standup routine."  No, that's no good either.  Maybe this, "Success is made up of 90% failure and 10% jokes from a hairy comedian."  Oh well, I give up.  Maybe if I came up with ten morals of the story, one of them would be worth closing out this note.  How about....!