Does trying to get everything perfect before you start slow you down?

Rabbi Landau answers by comparing two approaches to building rockets. SpaceX keeps blowing rockets up, and to the untrained eye that looks like failure. Meanwhile, other agencies “spend years perfecting every bolt before launch. Takes them way longer, costs way more, and the progress is much slower.”

The difference, he explains, is what each explosion gives you. “Every explosion is data. Every failure shows exactly where to tighten up next time.” Getting it perfect first means waiting longer to learn what only trying can teach.

In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that, in the parable, the company that launches again and again treats every explosion as “a store of data.”

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

Perfecting everything before launching is slower and costlier than learning from quick failures.

Deepest human truth

Every failure is information that points to where to tighten up next time.

More questions from this teaching

• Is failing more often actually the fastest way to succeed?