How to Fail

December 28th, 2008 by Kevin Ngo

Question: Why did you decide to read a post on how to fail? Seriously, are you that successful to the point where you need some failures in your life to make you feel more human? Because if that’s the case, you’ve come to the right place.

After you finish reading this, you will finally be able to join in the many conversations about who’s life sucks more than who’s. No longer will you be the one people hate on in order for them to feel better about themselves. Yes, once you apply these secrets on how to fail, you’ll be amongst the many, part of the clique, and will finally have a normal and average life just like everyone else.

Let’s jump right into it shall we?

52 Tips on How to Fail

  1. Set vague, none measurable, out of sight, rigid goals that have absolutely no deadline
  2. If you don’t accomplish a goal after the first few tries, give up.
  3. Actually, just don’t set any goals.
  4. If you do something over and over and it doesn’t work, keep doing the same thing.
  5. Don’t ask for help, life is a solo project.
  6. Don’t write a plan, you might succeed. Just take random actions in different directions.
  7. If you do write a plan, don’t follow it.
  8. Surround yourself with failures so they can rub their mentality and habits all over you.
  9. Choose a job you hate but love to complain about and do it until you retire.
  10. Complain about everything, the more the better.
  11. Spend, spend, spend. Savings are for the paranoid.
  12. If you have to put in too much time and effort, don’t even bother.
  13. Lie to the person in the mirror everyday.
  14. Put your hopes and dreams in the lottery. You’re guaranteed to win if you play enough.
  15. Learn as little as possible.
  16. If you accidentally learn something valuable, don’t use it. Know it, but don’t apply it.
  17. Procrastinate on the important things, but at least occupy yourself with a lot of unimportant things. This is about how to fail, not how to be the biggest failure. That would be trying too hard.
  18. If it’s something you think only an idiot would do, then by golly, do it.
  19. Keep dwelling on past mistakes and past failures.
  20. Focus on what’s wrong about your life.
  21. Blame everything on something or someone else.
  22. Always wait until everything is perfect before taking action.
  23. Go through life thinking life owes you and bitch and complain until you get what you want.
  24. Say one thing, do something else.
  25. If it sounds too good to be true, do it!

  26. I would like to take a brief half-time break on how to fail and tell you about an amazing opportunity to make an incredible amount of money with hardly any work on your part whatsoever. You can retire by next month and never have to work another day in your life. All you have to do is pay $199 and sit back and let the system do all the work for you. Money will come to you so easily you’ll kick yourself for ever working so hard. Hurry, limited time offer.


    Not into money but need to lose some fat around the belly? Perfect. Have I got the product for you! Say NO to exercising and spending all those minutes at a stinky gym. Say NO to healthy eating. Those boring methods are the thing of the past. We’ve developed a machine that will get you in the best shape of your life. It only takes 5 minutes a month and you can eat whatever you want. Fried chicken, french fries, lard, you name it. Heck, you can go to a farm, jump on a cow and take a bite out of its juicy behind if you want to and you’ll still have the perfect body in no time. All of this for only 3 easy payments of $19.95! But if you order in the next 7 minutes, we’ll make 1 of the payments for you. You can’t lose!

    Sorry for the interruption, going back to how to fail…

  27. Buy the above system and/or machine while supplies last.
  28. If it’s dishonest, unethical, or just plain wrong and you know it’s wrong, do it anyway. Or, let someone convince you it’s okay. Before long, okay will become right and you can sleep like a baby at night.
  29. As often as possible, join debates about who has it worse. Do your best to win.
  30. Take as much as possible.
  31. Give as little as possible.
  32. Go through life thinking you’ll live forever. You can always do what you need to do today tomorrow.
  33. Despise anyone who is successful, talented, or has more than you in anyway.
  34. Keep thinking that the world is out to get you.
  35. Don’t ever finish what you start.
  36. Think negative. Talk negative. Be negative.
  37. Always look on the dark side of things.
  38. Dwell on past failures constantly to lower self esteem and confidence.
  39. Think of all wealthy people as crooks.
  40. Water down everything. Don’t call yourself fat, say “big boned”. Don’t call yourself poor, say “spiritual”. Make it okay to stay the way you are, that way you don’t have to do anything.
  41. Read, watch, and get involved with the things that failures read, watch, and get involved with.
  42. Look for the wrong in everything you come across.
  43. Hope that others around you fail so you won’t feel inferior.
  44. Be skeptical about anything and everything. Become totally closed minded.
  45. Focus of what other people think of you and act accordingly.
  46. Try to please everyone.
  47. Always do what most people are doing without question.
  48. Don’t ever do things that scare you.
  49. Always do what’s comfortable. Build a way around your comfort zone.
  50. Don’t listen to successful people, they don’t know how to fail.
  51. Try to accomplish as many goals as possible all at the same time.
  52. Spend all of your time planning and talking about the plan but don’t actually do anything.
  53. Take this list seriously and actually do follow everything it says.

There you have it, a list of how to fail. I could add more but if you got to #34 and followed it, you shouldn’t have gotten this far anyway. So now that you learned all of this, go out and do it. Wait, but that would contradict #16. Actually, come to think of it, since you’re an incredibly successful person who’s only reading this post on how to fail to fit in with the average person and become more human, just stop what you’re doing and do the opposite.

Let me make sure I’m making myself clear to you Mr. Successful. If you want to know how to fail, just do the opposite of what you’ve been doing to become successful. Once you achieve on failing and want to go back to being successful then just do the opposite once again.

Now if you forget how to do that, just take this list and do the opposite of what it says. But do that only if you what to stop being a failure and fitting in with the majority of the people you see around you. But seriously, why would anyone want to do that? Isn’t being unsatisfied like everyone else fun? At least you have lots of companions.

Well, whether you follow this list on how to fail and succeed in failing or do the opposite of it and fail at failing (becoming successful), I hope you enjoyed this post. If you didn’t, let me know and I’ll change it however you want me to. Oh wait, that would be doing #45. Sorry, I don’t plan on being a failure, so if you don’t like this post, too bad.

Until next time…

Love Life. Do Good. Live Well.

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How to Make Excuses

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5 Comments

  1. Rohit September 23, 2010
  2. son February 21, 2011
  3. Guest September 7, 2011
    • Kevin Ngo September 7, 2011
  4. Aks October 10, 2011

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