The Up Side of Down

by Megan McArdle

Why do some failures inspire breakthroughs and others breakdowns?

Most new products fail. So do most businesses. And most of us, if we are honest, have experienced a major setback in our personal or professional lives. Drawing on cutting-edge research in science, psychology and economics, THE UP SIDE OF DOWN argues that failure is how people and businesses learn. But you have to learn to fail well.

Exploring her own experiences of failure – losing her job and sending CVs into a void, desperately clinging to a relationship that was clearly not working – McArdle shows how to recognize when you're in a rut and how to dig your way out and bounce back successfully.

Thought-provoking and inspiring, THE UP SIDE OF DOWN just might change the way you see the world.

Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Self Help, Psychology, Economics, Audiobook, Personal Development

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Megan McArdle is a journalist and writer based in Washington, D.C.. She writes mostly about economics, finance and government policy from a libertarian perspective.

Reviews

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I have to say I started it expecting a touchy-feely, "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade" tome full of inspirational stories and ten point lists of Things You Can Do To Turn Your Life Around.

Instead, the book turned out to be a thoughtful, well researched discussion of failure, from medical mistakes to personal job loss to the economic crash of 2008.

As it turns out there is a lot of useful information in this book. It's presented in such a way that you understand why you handled your own mistakes and failures the way you did, as well as offering advice that could help you change the way you handle things in the future.

There are times where I disagreed with McCardle's reasoning (cutting off employment benefits for example). She is a Libertarian blogger, so she does show her bias. But she makes her case without resorting to vitriol or disrespect.

I volunteer with an organization that helps unemployed people find jobs and I plan on donating my copy of "The Upside of Down" as a reference book.

[Joe Flood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Megan McCardle has failed. By her own admission, she has failed multiple times, from her love life to her career choices. Which makes her the perfect person to write the book on failure.

The Up Side of Down argues that we all must learn to fail a little better, a little faster and to, most importantly, learn from the experience. There is no growth without failure, whether we’re talking economies or individuals.

McCardle bolsters her case with examples from business, medicine, physchology and economics. Discussing everything from the learning styles of children to the Solyndra debacle, she offers a kaleidoscope-look at the varieties of American failure.

And she makes a really important point on failure – we’re a nation founded by people who couldn’t hack it in the Old World. It wasn’t comfortable lords who built this country but starving peasants willing to risk a sea voyage for the opportunity to start anew. These failures created the greatest nation on earth.

One of the best chapters in the book discusses the plague of long-term unemployment, a problem once unique to Europe that has become an American scourge. McCardle writes with great compassion about people who have been unemployed for longer than a year, and the cruelties of the job market that keep them that way. She likens unemployment to a dark room that you’ve stumbled into. The people who get out are the ones who keep moving, pursuing multiple opportunities in hopes that one of them will pay off.

The Up Side of DownMcCardle’s career illustrates this principle. An MBA who was jobless following 9/11, she (among other activities) started blogging, which led to positions at The Economist, the Atlantic and Bloomberg View. Blogging was just one of several different options that she pursued during unemployment.

It is to our benefit that she found success as a blogger. McCardle is one of the best explainers of economic ideas (far better than the needlessly wonky and overrated Ezra Klein). She takes the dismal science and puts it into terms anyone can understand, using examples from her own life.

For example, her desperate pursuit of a man who didn’t want her illustrates the idea of “sunk costs.” She had put in too many years to give up, having invested too much emotionally to just walk away. The failure was so devastating that she left NYC, moved to DC, and found her future husband – an example of the positive aspects of failure.

Interestingly, she cites surveys where many people cite failures – getting fired or divorced -as the best thing that ever happened to them. These calamities prompted people to try new things and find love elsewhere. We are “failure machines,” willing to try different solutions until we find the one that works. As Winston Churchill said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

We need more failures. Like Steve Jobs. Prior to the Macintosh, he failed with the Lisa, an overpriced personal computer that no one wanted. And before the success of the iPhone, there was the ignominy of the Newton. Jobs kept iterating, coming up with new ideas and new products, undaunted. Taking lessons from each failure enabled Jobs to find his way to success

McCardle discusses young journalists who sabotage their own careers by just giving up. So afraid of turning in a lousy manuscript, they write nothing. But a terrible first-draft can be fixed; one that doesn’t exist cannot. McCardle tells writers that they have permission to suck, realizing that this simple bit of advice is key to unlocking creative potential.

America needs to regain its taste for failure, something we have lost in the malaise of the Obama Economy. Risk-taking needs to be encouraged once again. Failures are learning experiences. Failures indicate confidence in the future – we’re willing to try new things, to make investments, to take chances.

“We have a strategic plan. It’s called doing things.” I love this quote by Herb Kelleher, founder of Southwest Airlines. It perfectly expresses the optimism and can-do nature of the American spirit. We’re going to keep trying things until we find what works. Even if that means failure. Especially if it does.

The Up Side of Down is an overview of failure. We must embrace failure, treasure it, and, most importantly, learn from the experience. The secret to success is rooted in the hard lessons of failure.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

The thesis is useful. Failing is how we all learn. But we adults try to avoid failure, and without it, it's hard to be great. The problem with this book is that it meanders off on innumerable, only slightly relevant, largely libertarian tangents. She argues with 9/11 "truthers," extols the virtues of Hawaii's HOPE probation program, and encourages her husband to play video games when he gets laid off. Sometimes interesting, sometimes not. But definitely not paradigm shifting. But since it's better than Twilight, it gets 3 stars, not 2.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having been a reader of Megan McArdle for years now, I figured I would at least find her first book, The Up Side of Down to be enjoyable and compelling. Instead, it turns out that it's a fun, solid book on the virtues of failure and a solid look at failure in society and politics.

Extremely readable and peppered with both personal anecdotes and great examples throughout, it doesn't do much try to recommend a way out of failure, but instead talk about how failure is handled by different people, groups, and society, and how they've chosen to come out of it. It's an interesting read, and paced perfectly as to not have any specific topic overstay its welcome.

Simply as good as you'd expect from McArdle. Glad I picked this one up.

[Mander Pander · Rating 1 out of 5]

(Non-obligatory disclaimer: I won this book as part of a Goodreads First Reads giveaway. The publisher sent it to me in return for an objective review.)

I hope for many great things for Megan McArdle; if the events included in her book are unvarnished portrayals of her life, she has accumulated enough sadness and hardship already.
This is an abysmal book. My understanding from the cover is that it is supposed to be about taking the worst breaks and using them to create the greatest turnabouts. What I ACTUALLY got from the reading is that everyone will fail, (individually and at a corporate level), and most likely you will need to start over again and again, probably in a new direction and likely not knowing where you will go or if you will get the same level of pay again.

What is lacking and leaves the book unbalanced is the part where the reader gets useful, good everyday tools to actually make all these depressing life changes (failures/ breaks) into future successes. When I read this book I felt bad about myself.

[Book Shark · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success by Megan McArdle

"The Up Side of Down" is an engaging and interesting book on how failing can lead to success. With a good grasp of economics and the ability to relate her personal experiences into her narrative, columnist and DC based writer Megan McArdle provides readers with an interesting perspective of what it takes to prosper. This provocative 321-page book includes the following ten chapters: 1. Failure is Fundamental, 2. The Virtuous Society, 3. The Experimenters, 4. Accidents, Mistakes, Failures, and Disasters, 5. Crisis, 6. Admitting You Have a Problem, 7. Getting Unstuck, 8. Blame, 9. Punishment, and 10. Forgiveness.


Positives:
1. An engaging, well-researched, fun and illuminating book.
2. A very good topic, a libertarian spin on why failing well can lead to success especially in America.
3. McArdle is a very engaging and gifted writer. She has good command of economics but instead of boring the reader with dry facts she smoothly integrates personal experiences and interesting research into the mix.
4. The premise of the book revolves around learning to fail well. “Most of all, learning to fail well means overcoming our natural instincts to blame someone—maybe ourselves—whenever something goes wrong.”
5. Some practical advice that resonates. “Dweck encourages parents and teachers to praise children for their effort, rather than their intelligence, talent, or looks. She encourages schools to use language that emphasizes that success is a process and ability is malleable—and to teach the struggle rather than just the success.”
6. Interesting look at free markets. “Markets, it turns out, are not something that naturally pop into place as soon as you remove an obstructive government, like Athena springing full-grown from the head of Zeus. Nor are they some sort of machine that can be tweaked into perfection by expert planners. They’re more like a complex organism.”
7. The difference between a forager morality versus a farmer morality. Good stuff. “Forager values are focused on providing immediate social insurance: reciprocity and equality. Farmer values are focused on providing the incentive to produce for the future: proportionality and justice.”
8. Debunks some popular misconceptions. “People desperately want to believe that prediction is possible, if only you are sufficiently smart and well informed. We cling to this belief even in the face of massive contradictory evidence.”
9. Does a good job of differentiating accidents from mistakes. “The hallmark of an accident is that while there may be lots of things you could have done differently, there’s absolutely nothing that you should have done differently.”
10. There are some mind-blowing stats, “Our best guess is that nosocomial infections (sickness contracted as a result of medical treatment) kill about 100,000 people every year—about three times as many as are killed in car accidents.”
11. Some common fallacies are introduced. “Pretending everything is fine even when it’s not is so common that cognitive scientists have given it a name: the normalcy bias.”
12. A practical business view on risk. “But all this partisan bickering missed the point. They were essentially debating the question “Can the administration unerringly predict the future?” which has an obvious answer. What they should have been asking is “Did the administration use a good decision-making process?” And here the evidence suggests they did not.”
13. A look at the delusion of masses, groupidity. “Fundamentally, people are herd animals. We band together for safety. We look to other people to see what is dangerous, and what is not. This is an important part of asset price bubbles: it feels safe to herd into stocks, or flipping houses, and safest when the most people are doing it . . . even though this is actually when it is the most dangerous.”
14. A look at inattentional blindness and some fascinating examples. “Psychologists call this phenomenon inattentional blindness: the inability to see even important and startling things when we are too focused on something else.”
15. Confirmation bias and how to combat it. “The secret to catching your mistakes quickly is simple: treat outside information as if it were inside information. When someone tells you you’re off track, don’t look for reasons why they may be wrong; listen for reasons why they might be right.”
16. A fascinating look at unemployment. “What we have is our jobs, and to the rest of the world, in large part, our jobs are who we are. When we lose them, we’re cast adrift.” “The best way to survive unemployment is to adopt what you might call the Way of the Shark: keep moving, or die.”
17. The use of Bruce Hood’s wonderful book, “SuperSense” as part of her research. The illusion of control. Great stuff.
18. A great chapter on punishment. “If you don’t have an impulse control problem, the best way to acquire one is by becoming addicted to drugs.”
19. Great advice on how to punish. “In other words, simple, consistent sanctions and an emphasis on rehabilitation rather than retribution are curing the hardest social problem America has.”
20. Notes provided.

Negatives:
1. As an engineer I do take a slight offense to, “We are good at engineering problems because they’re easy. We think that they’re hard because most of us couldn’t do the math, but here’s the evidence that they’re easy: we’ve solved them.” The fact that we have solved many problems doesn’t mean they are easy; many engineering problems have in fact not been resolved. I understand where McArdle is coming from in the sense of complexity and the need to experiment but…
2. I disagree with the following statement, “The financial crisis happened for the stupidest reason imaginable—no one thought that housing prices would fall as much as they did.” No, the financial crisis happened because of greed. Many books on this topic, “The Monster” by Michael Hudson provides the most compelling reasons I’ve read.
3. Dick Fuld did end up with a golden parachute.
4. “People tend to feel that if we are declaring bankruptcy so often, it must be a sign that something is very wrong. But it is actually a sign that something is very right.” I understand her point in the context that our accommodating bankruptcy rules allows the American entrepreneurship to flourish but an exaggerated point for effect more than anything else.
5. No formal bibliography.
6. Lack of visual supplementary material.

In summary, this was a fun and provocative book. McArdle is a very engaging writer, she’s not afraid to share her personal experiences and along the way provides many compelling arguments in support of her thesis; failing well can lead to success. She also brings a lot to the table; many interesting examples from many walks of life are introduced in this interesting book. As a progressive I find some of her libertarian views causing a fair degree of cognitive dissonance but in a good way. I don’t agree with all her views but I respect that she has put a lot of thought into them. A very good book, I recommend it!

Further recommendations: “Contagious” by Jonah Berger, "Outliers: The Story of Success” and "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell, “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman, “Lean In” by Sheryl Sandberg, "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change" by Stephen R. Covey, "The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business" by Charles Duhigg, "The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It" by Kelly McGonigal Ph.D., "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking" by Susan Cain, "The One Thing" by Gary Keller, "Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work" and "Switch" by Chip and Dan Heath, "Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success" by Rick Newman, and "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us" by Daniel H. Pink.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

McArdle has a wonderful and enjoyable style of writing. She's a practiced raconteur which is always a blessing when reading a book. Furthermore, I could see myself hanging out with her and truly enjoying a conversation, because her interest and mine are closely aligned, as are our viewpoints.

Unfortunately this book doesn't quite live up to its promise. On the final page of the book, I finally understood the title - which if you think about it, likely meant there were often times where I was wondering why I was reading what I was reading, "Why am I reading about Dick Fuld right now?"

I'm tempted to give this two stars, but I won't because I think many of my issues were that I was previously familiar with a lot of the content. For example, in the opening chapter she discusses Carol Dweck. In a later chapter she discusses Bruce Hood. For what it's worth, Dweck's Mindset is perhaps the most important book of its kind in more than a decade. Hood's SuperSense was nothing but a pleasure to me. I highly recommend both books. But how do these works fit into theme of "failing well is the key to success?" I can't really tell you.

One of the ways I rate a book is by how much I can cull from it. With The Up Side of Down, I was introduced to a few new interesting views, and for those reasons I give this three stars.

I hope McArdle continues to write. She has a gift for it. Her distinguishing feature is her finance background coupled with her writing skill. That's a rare combination that I hope she's able to cultivate further.

If you are interested in reading about how failures bolster success, I highly recommend Nassim Taleb's Antifragile where he can explain why a disaster such as the Titanic sinking wasn't a loss of lives, but a saving of lives.

[Kevin Modlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Upside of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success by Megan McArdle is a wonderful book that, as the title explains, shows that making a mistake isn't always bad. The real mistake is failing to learn from the experience. McArdle's blog on Bloomberg often looks at current economic events in a way that dissects the issues insightfully. In the same way this book looks at everything from bankruptcy, business cycles, failed movies, criminal probation, and hospital diagnosis, to poor reporting,
She makes a point that the US bankruptcy system compliments the social stigma of bankruptcy by a code that is less punitive than some. This she believes encourages risk taking and entrepreneurship. She also cleverly points to past relationships and compares them to the GM bail out with the underlying argument that, in both cases, individuals were too guided by past achievements to understand changes.
As McArdle points out, “A resilient society lets you fail, and even lets the failure sting, but only for a moment. Then it helps you get back on track, and everyone reaps the benefit.”
Her insights are both honest and well-reasoned. Much like writers such as Gladwell and Taleb she is willing to question conventional thinking in an insightful and approachable manner that is tangible. Admirably she does not distance her life from examples of personal and professional mistakes and what she learned encourages all to look within themselves to help explain our world. These qualities make for an excellent read and I look forward to diving into her next work.

I received this book through Goodread giveaway program First Reads.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Megan McArdle has always impressed me with her writing. She has a talent for looking critically at social issues and dispelling the dogma or knee-jerk thinking too often associated with public policy. So it did not surprise me that I found The Upside of Down so engaging and enlightening. Megan's insights are applicable to so many facets of our lives - parenting, education, careers, public policy (in many areas), financial management, self-analysis - I am hard pressed to think of an audience that would not benefit from reading this book.

Ultimately, Megan makes a compelling case for our society to gain a better awareness of the value of encouraging constructive failure. She does a laudable job of contrasting societal differences between the US and Europe, even providing anthropological context (that in and of itself prompts the ideologue to question basic notions of fairness and justice!). She then shows why the US experience and tradition is better suited to the encouragement of a dynamic and optimistic society.

As I finished The Upside of Down I had a long mental list of friends and family to whom I will recommend it. Well done, Megan! You must have worked very hard and diligently to produce this fine book (notice I compliment your effort, not your natural talent!).

[Natalie K · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had an interesting premise and great introduction that intrigued me. Unfortunately, it did not live up to its promise. It seemed like the author really, really wanted to write a book because she was at a certain stage in her career and felt that as a journalist, it was time to write a book. So, she took a bunch of articles she'd written—good articles, I might add—and strung them all together in one book. Though she intended to have a clear thesis, the thread was lost more than a few times.

If someone gave this book to you, do read it, as there is some interesting information. But if you're considering buying it, save your money, spend it on a different book, and just go read a bunch of the author's old articles, because that will probably be enough.

[Emily Slomski · Rating 4 out of 5]

McArdle has crafted a narrative which tells an important story. This book's thesis is that failure is the most effective path to success. She proves her point through personal accounts, case studies of business, governments, and organizations, and through statistical data. This book was fun to read and I learned an interesting fact every few pages. Most importantly, it has changed the way I view my past experiences and will shape my future perspective as well. This book comes out in stores in February and everyone should at least give a read.

[Bimal Patel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book as a gift from goodreads giveaway and absolutely loved reading it. The author presents a completely valid and yet unacknowledged viewpoint in today's world. It does take multiple failures to eventually achieve success. If by any chance you enjoyed reading the book called Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, then you will enjoy this book as well.

[Eugene Kernes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Failure can be a wonderful learning mechanism. It informs what decisions are wrong, and how to reconsider them. Failure is difficult to accept as a positive outcome, especially when failure comes without a lesson. Society tries to create systems to prevent failing because failing feels bad, but that also prevents learning. Failing can be due to good decision making, such as taking a risk. Risks such as tying things differently. It’s not possible to avoid failure when trying to succeed. Failure is part of the process but it is not about failing for its own sake, as what matters is how to fail. Failing early and often, rather than failing in a catastrophe. Failure can be embraced, and seen as a learning opportunity.

Failures are not accidents. Accidents are coincidences which could not have been anticipated. There was no error in judgment, as no decision or action should have been done differently, even if they were available. Mistakes are errors in judgment but when no major problems occur in the aftermath. Errors that can inform of what could have become a terrible situation, and potential preventative measures to be taken. Safety nets turn failure into mistakes. Failure is relative to alternative outcomes that could have prevented the problematic outcome. Failure is when the safety nets do not work. Complex systems have a variety of interactions that can be unpredictable and unexpected which will cause failure that are not the fault of a decision, person, or procedure.

There is a lot of valuable information that can be gained from failure, which should not be dismissed. Failing is constructive when it comes from taking appropriate risk, not risking too much, and not for its own sake. Manageable risks enable learning. It is impossible to know if a decision is good until it is put to the test, as in put to the trials of reality. But hindsight makes it easy to believe that predictions can come about from reason. People want to believe predictions are possible because they are a cure for failing, but no matter how informed or smart an individual is, predictions in many cases are not likely. Experts appear to be better predictors because successes are remembered, while mistakes are not. The many successful scientific and technological ideas that work now, came about through various iterations of terrible ideas.

Growth mindset people tend to see challenges as opportunities to learn. While fixed mindset people see challenge as a signal to seek less demanding tasks. Those in the fixed mindset not only avoid harder tasks, but they can deliberately hamper their performance with excuses against doing the tasks.

Failing well means learning from mistakes. It inspires change in what is being done. What is needed is to understand the mistakes that lead to failure. Some mistakes need punishment. Other mistakes were random coincidence from which no decision could have been known beforehand to prevent the outcome. Failure can happen spontaneously, not because of malicious intent. Sometimes there is someone to blame. Other times blaming others prevents learning about what happened, such as random coincidence. People have a hyperactive agency detection system which them to see intention rather than coincidence. People think they have more control over their lives than they actually do, its called the illusion of control.

Success teaches as well, but can also teach bad lessons. If prior success was based on natural talent, it can teach the qualities are based on intrinsic value, rather than the development of skills. Rather than telling people how good/bad they are, its best to emphasize the process of the learned or developed skills. Emphasizing the effort rather than intellect, talent, or looks. That skills and ability come about through struggle, rather than from a lack of trying.

Parents and schools have been trying to take failure out of the learning process. Without failure, there is no need to develop the emotional attitude to overcome the fear of failure. Students usually see the best works produced, not the various terrible earlier drafts. As the struggle is not seen, the impression created is that being good at somethings means not creating bad stuff. There is a problem with teaching when no matter the performance, everyone succeeds. It prevents learning from failure. Being overly protectives means preventing others from learning.

What makes homo sapiens successful is their ability to collaborate on massive projects. Successful groups talk and communicate their values. Communication brings about a culture which can either enhance prosperity, or inhibit it. No matter the intellect of any given individual, it is through collaboration can they be succeed.

Different cultural rules develop based on the risk of failure. Hunting is a risky endeavor in which skill was not the only factor to be able to eat, as what was needed was luck that the animal would show up. Sharing reduced the risk within the variance of food supply. Cultures that had a stable food supply did not need to share. Foragers and farmers have different values because their risks are different. Foragers needed an immediate social insurance so developed values of reciprocity and equality. Farmers need to ensure future productivity so developed values of proportionality and justice. The way those values come about in 21st century politics is by seeing income as hard work or luck. Seeing income as earned through working hard, politically would mean favoring lower taxes and reduced safety net. Seeing income as luck, politically would mean favoring redistribution and making sure everyone pays their fair share in taxes.

Markets are not just a set of formal rules, as they are also composed of informal rules. Those informal rules work if they are aligned with the risk environment. Both sets of rules determine what the appropriate actions are. Appropriate actions are easy when they are rewarded, while difficult when they are not. Swift and consistent punishing allows individuals to known what the inappropriate behavior are. Sporadic punishments can reinforce inappropriate behavior. Lack of punishment teaches that violations carry close to no risk. Forgiveness is needed to move forward. But too much forgiveness invites further transgression.

Experimentation’s limit is the complexity of the gargantuan number of interactions that could occur. Experience helps with similar types of decisions, but innovative policies require anything but similar types of decisions. Public policies rarely have experimentational foundations. To be effective, experimentation needs to be tested over multiple times, which often results in failures. An experiment failing does not mean that the experiment was wrong. Depending on how the experiment is structured will determine what information it can explain.

It is wrong to assume that someone can take all the risk out of the system. The closer the assumption is to a riskless system, the worse the outcome because people will not be prepared for failure. Problem with safety nets is forgetting that they are there. That mistakes have been made, but are not identified. Mistakes are usually identified when there is a failure.

People sometimes pretend that everything is fine even when everything is not fine is called the normalcy bias. People have a strong inclination to behave in their normal manners when things are clearly not normal. Taking a risk can lead to failure or success, but it is a problem when the failures proceed with escalating commitments.

Failures can be prevented by spotting the mistakes and correcting them. But it is hard to change decision making. Change is difficult when historically there have been a lot of success using the same decisions. All this makes new policies not perform well under old rules based on well-established mind-sets. Difficult to change when the brain is invested in commitments which makes it hard to let go. Rather than try to refute ideas, the individual will recruit evidence to prove an idea correct. Confirmation bias causes people to support wrong ideas, but it also creates a person willing to contradict the idea. Diversity of views facilitates alternative views that prevent being captured by a particular idea.

Although the central theme of the book is failing, all the lessons appear like pieces of a puzzle that do not come well together. A concluding chapter that brings together all the takeaways, and how they fit together, would have enhanced understanding. What is also problematic are the examples. Although important and do highlight key aspects of failing, they seem to have pieces missing. Hard to generalize the examples provided. There also seems to be inconsistency in some of the claims made such as the negative aspect of having to constantly give feedback at a work place, even though feedback is part of the learning mechanism as well. A part of the book deals with the importance of communication, well, feedback is communication that helps establish appropriate behavior over time to build the appropriate cultures.

[Juliana Knot]

Picked this up because I like the author’s other journalistic work. Enjoyed this too. Appreciate it was more case study-focused than motivational speech

[Haris · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Up Side of Down is a tour of failure: failure in love, business, and policy. The message is simple: making it easy to recover from failure is a good thing for the world, and especially the economy. She sprinkles stories of her own personal lows into discussions of policy issues that deal with failure, like bankruptcy, welfare reform, and probation for criminals. It’s not a self-help book, though it does remind you to learn from failure and move on rather than let it cripple you. Instead, it’s a sophisticated analysis on why allowing a fresh start is a good thing, and how rules need to be structured so that a clean slate doesn’t encourage reckless behavior.

There are two challenges to striking this balance. First, it’s easy to go wrong and end up with rules too tight (which cripples dynamism) or too loose (encouraging reckless behavior without consequences). Second, it’s difficult to overcome our feelings of justice and retribution when we design rules that permit people to walk away from debts or mistakes without fully paying for them. McArdle tackles real-life versions and argues that, ultimately, we’re better off being rich than being right.

Even though it covers complex and varied policy questions, the writing makes it easy to follow – McArdle is a master of starting any issue at a point everyone understands and guiding you from there to her conclusion. I may have a head start from reading her writing over the past decade, but I think most readers will find the issue easy to follow.

Highly recommended, and probably belongs on every decent college or prep school reading list. This is a good mindset to have.

[Joy · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's more to "learn by failure" than the canned nonsense about how we need to get back up on the horse.

This is a book about how essential it is for individuals, businesspeople, and citizens to analyze--really look at--the things that don't work, or didn't work . . . in our jobs, our family lives, and in the policies our leaders pursue.

Ms. McArdle does a nice job of distinguishing the mind-set about unsuccessful enterprises here in the U.S. (where having been part of a start-up, even one that no longer exists) is a resume-enhancer, versus some other countries (where having seen your business go under can be a badge of shame, or the source of decades-long insolvency).

The book displays the adroit weaving back-and-forth between personal and economy-wide wisdom that one can see in McArdle's columns. A charming book about the truly lifegiving aspects of "creative destruction."

[Jeff Keehr · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a disorganized book, but in spite of that I enjoyed it. She begins by talking about how we need to make smart mistakes in order to grow and learn. By smart, she means that taking crazy risks and losing horribly is not a formula for improving your life. But planning and hard work will pay premiums if you take a calculated risk. This is what small business owners do. She talks about a lot of topics and I often don't see how the topics are connected but she still pulls it off. She mentions Dave Ramsey, which is funny because I just read something about him in another book. Ramsey's seminar helped her and her husband pay off their debts and save a down payment for a home. She is a good writer, which is probably why the book works.

[Xindi H · Rating 2 out of 5]

Picked up this book at random at my local public library, as I'm sort of in that phase of life when nothing seems to go right. The topic of failure is broken down nicely, with the first half of the book focusing on how failure should be viewed and the second half on how to deal with failure. It's not as instructional as it sounds, as several chapters each discuss almost exclusively one recent social/economic event, which is often only loosely tied to the topic that the chapter is supposed to be about. I did enjoy the writing style, and I appreciate the academic experiments and findings incorporated in the book, but overall the book seems to me a little inadequate at delivering what is promised.

[Joe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Something about this book just wasn't enjoyable for me. I wanted to like it and was interested in learning more about risk-taking and removing stigmas from failure in order to better understand paths to success, but..I dunno...I just wasn't feeling this book. It started out strong, but with each of the following anecdotal tales she relays I was getting taken further and further away from what I was interested in. McArdle's very unbiased and her stories/explanations/explorations come from a wide variety of places and fields of study, which kinda left me entertained but nowhere closer to understanding what I taught I was learning.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Economics slanted psychological biases. Narrator sounds like Kaname Tsunemori from anime Psychopass, which deals with themes of free-will and determinism in a political context.

The book discusses failling heroically in about ten different contexts, two of them are nursing and car-manufacturing.

Most interesting sentence in the book:

"Most of the time you can get away with launching a terrible product, or with not washing your hands, but one time in a thousand, you will kill a person, or a company."

Finished 10:44 AM.

[Jens Fiederer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is significant on both a personal and a public policy level, with the emphasis on the personal. Good anecdotes and lively presentation make the point that the ability to recover from failure allows people to take the sort of risks that improve society as a whole.

Recommended theme song:

Tubthumping by Chumbawamba ("I get knocked down, but I get up again...")

[Bett Correa-Bollhoefer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was expecting another book but what I got was also good. Megan's voice carries an almost unrelated group of topics which all touch on failure. She does draw lessons on how we can use failure to reach success, but the reader must focus very hard to turn the ideas into topics we can apply to our own lives.

[D · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting look at the recommended way to fail well: Quickly and with resilience.

[Sandra Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, this was a pretty good book. McArdle makes a good case for all the reasons why learning to fail well makes us more successful in the long run (a big reason is all those lessons we should - and if we don't, then we've failed at failing - learn from falling flat on our faces).

One of the things that she does an excellent job of addressing is the Millennial problem of not being allowed to fail at all for the first 25 years (or however long Dad and Mom let you hang out for free in the basement and play video games all night and sleep all day) of life and then suddenly hitting the real world with totally unrealistic expectations and being completely unequipped to either succeed or fail on your own.

I had two problems with this book, though.

One was McArdle's own inflated opinion of herself (I'm an MBA and I know economics better than anyone else, so therefore, I have all the answers and I'll argue you down until you agree with me), which is off-putting for an otherwise sensible book. Oh sure, she seems to be self-deprecating at times, but then immediately she turns around and tells you why she's right and everyone else is wrong. I got tired of McArdle inserting herself into the narrative when it wasn't about her at all.

The second problem was with the next to the last chapter where McArdle asserted with absolutely authority that there isn't a root cause for every single problem/issue/situation that exists. Instead, some things are just random and out of thin air (I would be one of those people that she would try to shout down into silence because I disagree with her on this one - that, by the way, is a character trait she reveals about herself throughout the book and it's not flattering because none of us is right all the time about everything: in fact, the very opposite is true).

This is a superficial assumption on McArdle's point that is erroneous.

She would have been on much more solid ground had she understood and acknowledged that roots causes are not always obvious. They may be ancient. They may be complicated and complex. They may have morphed so much over time and through complication and complexity that they don't even look like they did initially.

But it doesn't mean root causes don't exist for everything. To suggest - or assert, as McArdle does - otherwise is arrogant ignorance.

[Leslie Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

This wasn’t exactly the book I was thinking it was going to be. It’s much more a sociological study of “failure” than a personal self-help guide. There are definitely things to be learned at the personal level but overall, it seemed like a number of connected essays than a cohesive work. I found myself putting it down after a chapter and losing the train of thought by the next chapter. It’s a fine book, just not particularly engaging for me.
I did have a few points that seemed of relevance to me:
The Normalcy Bias:
“That’s the normalcy bias: acting as if things are fine even when they quite obviously are not. There are many evolutionary theories for why this might be, none of which are very satisfactory. What is clear is that even in the most extreme circumstances, when it is very, very clear that things are not normal, people have a very strong propensity to act as if they are. … People who take a moment to think through a disaster plan before something terrible happens (a fire, a break-in, a medical emergency) are more likely to execute it. But while there are ways to accelerate the process of adjusting to the new normal, there are also a bunch of mental brakes that show things down. And the longer you have to get used to the old normal, the more powerful those brakes tend to be. … Lots of people do nothing, but there are also plenty of people who do something – but not enough. They take inadequate half measures until they reach a crisis point: the moment when it is no longer possible to pretend they are facing anything except imminent doom.”
“Most failures start with small mistakes—choosing a route that dead ends at a cliff. But most failures can be avoided if people simply recognize early on that they are on the wrong track. The tragedy is that so many of them could have ended there if the people who made the mistake had just been able to admit that, okay, that wasn’t such a good idea. Instead, too often, they close their eyes to the yawning gap in front of them. Or worse, they open up the throttle and try to get up enough speed to jump the canyon.”
“The dot-com crash gave me a chance to observe who survived and who didn’t when the chips were down. Huge numbers of my friends from business school and the IT field were laid off. Some were out of work for a very long time; some never really recovered. And when it came to who flourished and who didn’t, there was one defining characteristic that set them apart: either they flailed, or they failed. The people who did the best were the ones who had four irons in the fire and three backup plans and never stopped trying something to keep going. These plans weren’t clever or glamorous of even particularly realistic—I’d never have guessed that my blog would ultimately save my career. But the people who weathered the storm had a lot going on. The people who went under were waiting for something to happen. The best way to survive unemployment is to adopt what you might call the Way of the Shark: keep moving, or die.”
“There’s a very common cognitive bias that the psychologist Ellen Langer has dubbed the illusion of control: we think we have more influence over events than we do. … The illusion of control is generally classed as a “positive cognitive bias,” because it actually makes you feel better about things… The cumulative effect of feeling in control can be powerful. … What actually predicted how long you lived, the Whitehall researchers discovered, was how much control you had over your workday, and how much opportunity you had to develop skills.”

[Ghizlane Eddiba · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've learned a lot reading this book. I understood other cultures, I understood some human behaviors, I understood why failure is a most for success. but I did not like that the author gave large parts of her book to the examples that will explain her ideas. These examples could be shorter.

Some of the key elements I've taken from the book:
Failure is the result of doing something very right: trying something that you've never done before.
We have made it impossible for children to fall very far- and in so doing, we have robbed them of the joys of climbing high.
the riskiest strategy is to try to work yourself into a position where you can't fail.
We should encourage people to fail early and often
How did the kindergartners beat the engineers? They just dove in and started creating, discarding anything that didn't work.
The people who were planning weren't learning. The people who were trying and failing were.
it's about being able to kind of fall down, dust yourself off, get up and move on.
the pain of failure is a sign act you are trying hard enough to improve.
whether you are more fixed or more a grower helps determine how you react to anything that tests your intellectual abilities. For growth people, challenges are an opportunity to deepen their talents, but for fixed people, they are just a dipstick that measures how high your ability level is.
Our educational system is almost designed to foster a fixed mind-set.
The reason we struggle with insecurity, is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else's highlight reel.
Today's new graduates are often very hardworking, but only when given very explicit direction. And they seem to demand constant praise.
Unlike wealthy kids, poor kids are given lots of chances to fail. What they're not given are the chances to recover.
Most products fail, so do most marketing campaigns. Most firms fails too. Markets take all that failure and turn it into information: this works, that doesn't.

[Dustyloup · Rating 3 out of 5]

Books constructed from multiple articles typically fall flat for me, but the writing was good enough that despite the trying to hard to have a narrative thread that ties these disparate topics together and despite the author's libertarian, rah rah capitalism and America perspective, I liked it.
It was interesting to look back on things like the financial crisis or the 9/11 truther movement through the lens of cognitive bias. Not that it was totally new to me, but it's interesting given the serious political mindset divide today between left and right.
If you're looking for a self help book or a how to guide, well, this isn't one but it is... If you can extrapolate, you can see how the brightest minds still end up making mistakes and that is ok to make them yourself, perhaps it will even be the best thing that happened to you as long as you keep moving forward.
Some reviews complain that she didn't give concrete advice about how to move on from failure, but she gave a concrete recipe for slogging through unemployment based on sales rep strategy and it's actually pretty solid advice that could be applied to "down" situations like losing a spouse or dealing with an illness.

[Kira Huiqi Ho · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many books nowadays like to talk about people’s journey to success, and people overcoming great odds to get to where they are.

Megan McArdle chose a different approach instead. She talked about the importance of failure in her own personal journey to a better “woke”-ness.

The book started well, and the first few chapters were enlightening. There were certain concepts I previously had a general idea of, which the author articulated beautifully, and helped me to understand them better.

But somewhere around the middle of the book onwards, it got draggy. The author’s candour and refreshing examples, unlike other books of the same genre that tended to repeat the same examples over and over again, kept the book readable.

I’m not sure if I would have articulated it otherwise, but overall, I enjoyed reading this book. I would highly recommend it to peers for fresh perspectives and as a tool for personal reflection and growth.

[Mary Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is book is a weird mix of self-help and policy/systems. The self-help portion I don't exactly need, in that I've already had the lessons from failure -- McArdle is absolutely correct that having a failure can absolutely get you unstuck (unfortunately, it took 9/11 to shake me out of the delusion that an academic career was a good idea for me), and that sunk costs are really difficult for individuals to ignore.

But the part I didn't exactly expect, though I should have as a long-time reader of McArdle's columns, was a consideration of systems of failures, which is a huge professional interest to me. I work in the insurance industry, and I'm particularly interested in solvency regulation. I've seen different approaches to regulation and oversight, and I've been thinking about systemic risk and financial stability. The book helped me think about it more, though I didn't expect that coming in.

[Ronell Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a huge fan of Megan McArdle's writing, I was excited to see a new book from her. It's my first book of the year, and It'll be hard to beat.

I'm a huge fan of writing that does at least one of two things:

1. Forces me to rethink what I thought I knew, or
2. Shares new information on topics that we should all be paying more attention to.

This book does both. She sprints out of the gate with excellent, personal, heartbreaking stories about her own failures, then goes on to share how many of the most important discoveries come about after someone experienced failure but refused to quit. Think Steve Jobs or Thomas Edison.

In fact—or incredibly—she makes a strong case for the necessity of failure—that is, something we learn from instead of punishing.

After reading the book, which contains anecdotes and data to support her points using areas as disparate as bankruptcy, homelessness, and incarceration, I'm a believer.