The art of the pivot, or how to fail yourself to happiness

I have always been a planner. I’m the type of person that starts planning the next holiday the moment I arrive at the beach. I don’t know why this is, maybe it’s a misguided attempt to soothe crippling existential anxiety.

By age 10 I had my life mapped out. I wanted to be a scientist. I was fascinated by chemistry and rather good at it, so I headed to university fully expecting to love it. Then I ran face first into the brick wall of organic chemistry. The sum total of my talent and effort resulted in, at best, mediocrity.

So I pivoted. I switched over to nanoscience and then a PhD in microfluidics. I was finally an ‘actual’ scientist. After four years, having accomplished a fraction of what I set out to do, I was left holding a handful of mediocre papers, with a unique proficiency in sitting alone in a dark basement generating tiny oil droplets with virtually no application.

I followed this up with a postdoc, and quickly learned that the reality of early-career research, a cycle of precarious short-term contracts, was incompatible with the life I wanted to build. My ‘perfect plan’ for a career in academia shattered.

I pivoted again, this time into a spin-out. I loved running the business, the investor conversations and the ego-boost of being a chief executive. Six years later, I learned that focusing a business entirely on selling heavily regulated medical devices to the US may not be the best plan in an age of unpredictable foreign relations and tariffs.

So, that plan failed too, and unlike the last failure, this one showed me that even when you think you’re on the right track, the universe doesn’t care and will gleefully throw a spanner in your works. But, after some lengthy moping and post-mortem soul searching, I reached an uncomfortable truth: I am exceptionally good at failing.

Turning failure into success

It may sound defeatist, but actually I think it’s my greatest professional asset. When you strip away the ego, both research and entrepreneurship ultimately boil down to a series of failures, with each failure providing a new data point. My career has followed the same logic: plan, try, fail, learn, repeat.

Every failure has acted as a filter, cutting away what didn’t suit me and clarifying what did. I was slowly gravitating toward a role that finally aligned with my actual strengths and values, while constantly accumulating new skills and experiences.

I now find myself in technology transfer where I get to directly apply what I’ve learned from my failures to help scientists do amazing things with their research, and while I still sometimes mourn the road not taken, it feels like I may have found a career that fits me perfectly.

If you’re currently staring down a plan that has stopped making sense, consider these three lessons I have learned along my journey of failure:

Don’t fear failure. Sticking to a plan that isn’t working for you, just because you can’t face the idea of failing, is a recipe for misery. The trick is identifying this as early as possible. Be honest with yourself when you ask the question ‘Am I enjoying this?’ If not, welcome failure as a boon companion. Fail fast, fail often. Then brush yourself off and carry on.

Do a post-mortem. After a plan fails, critically evaluate everything. Was it the plan that was wrong, or your execution? What could you have done differently? Would you do the entire thing again, or something completely different?

Try to detach your identity from your plan. You are not defined by your qualifications or the role you currently hold. Failing at something does not make you a failure – it’s what you do after that defines you.

When we’re young, we are conditioned to view our careers as a linear road, but it turns out real life is far messier. It is a series of iterative experiments, of bruised egos and incandescent successes, it is messy and fluid, and never stops taking you by surprise. Sometimes you have to pause and ask yourself: ‘Am I still heading in the right direction?’ If the answer is no, proudly and boldly step off your road and onto a different one.

I’m definitely not done failing at things, and I have accepted that I probably never will be. But the new plan is to be less attached to my plan, and more comfortable with the process. To accept that I’m not done failing at things, but that each failure pushes me forward. Maybe not where I thought I was going, but perhaps towards where I need to be.