Speed Up the Rate of Failure

In 2026, I want to give myself a new principle called “Speed Up the Rate of Failure.”

Back in 2015, when I was a freshman at NTUST, I was a complete programming beginner. I joined a computer club project to learn backend development. One of the tasks was to install a native Linux distribution on a virtual machine, and I kept failing. During a weekly meeting, my senior mentor asked me how many times I had failed so far. I said seven times. He told me that my failure rate was too slow—some other members had already failed more than fifteen times and were still keeping at it.

Some people might dismiss that kind of comment, thinking, “If the mentor just taught step-by-step, wouldn’t we avoid so many mistakes?” I’m not here to debate whether that teaching style was right or wrong. What I want to say is that his perspective completely shocked me at the time. I had never thought about failure from that angle. I would stop after a few failures and sink into frustration, doubt, and low spirits. Others might endure twice as many failures before reaching that point. Maybe that’s one way to quantify resilience.

In the end, I dropped the club project in 2016 because I was about to fail calculus XD. But that sentence stayed with me all these years, and recently it has resurfaced strongly in my mind. The reason is that I’m currently going through a lot of failures and feeling deeply discouraged. The sense of shame isn’t pleasant at all.

I got married in 2024 and rented an apartment. In 2025, our child was born, but our landlord raised the rent and told us we had to move out in six months—he refused to renew the lease. Our landlord isn’t easy to communicate with; he had verbally promised we could stay long-term, yet now he’s treating us harshly. This has caused us enormous stress and pain. We also didn’t apply for rental subsidies—one reason is that the landlord wouldn’t allow it, and the other is that I’m not eligible. Due to certain circumstances, my parents bought a property and put it under my name, so technically I own a home and don’t qualify for government assistance.

We did the math on the marriage-and-childbirth rental subsidy: if I didn’t have a property in my name in 2026, we would receive NT$7,200 per month. But because my parents’ house is registered under me, the subsidy I can get is NT$0.

This makes me feel like a complete failure—frustrated and stupid. That old house (which isn’t even worth much) is in my name but doesn’t really belong to me, yet it causes me to bear higher rent every month while I have to support my child and wife. It’s been very painful.

Yet in the midst of prayer, God reminded me that He has always been protecting me. If the landlord hadn’t asked us to leave, we wouldn’t have researched the subsidies so thoroughly. Or if I had panicked earlier because of the “新青安政策” and impulsively pushed my wife to buy a house (very likely beyond what we could afford), the whole situation would have become far more complicated and painful.

We can’t predict housing prices or policy changes—we’re limited human beings. It’s like the greedy algorithm: constrained by time and information, we can only seek a locally optimal solution, never guaranteed to be globally optimal.

God reminded me that even so, He has continually watched over our family. Just like the lyrics of the song Way Maker, God is always at work. So I don’t have to be crushed by failure.

Failure comes in many forms: missing opportunities due to ignorance, wasting a boss’s time because of carelessness at work, or making wrong decisions out of anxiety. These failures produce an uncomfortable sense of shame. I want to reach an understanding with my shame—it’s okay to feel it for a little while, but not too long. Then keep moving forward. Even if I fail and feel ashamed again, I need to pick myself up quickly and continue.

Speed up the rate—or rather, the frequency—of failure. In an ideal world, I could let go of perfectionism entirely and accept that failure, ignorance, and shame are normal, and there’s no need to stop walking because of them.

On January 2, 2026, because it was a holiday in China (we have many Chinese clients), I had a chance to chat with one of my bosses. During the conversation, the topic of housing and renting briefly came up. He shared some excellent perspectives that are worth recording and reflecting on.

Compared to many other countries, Taiwan is actually doing quite well. Even though the rental subsidy doesn’t apply to me, we don’t have to view these things with cynicism or resentment. This kind of bitter, world-weary attitude is something young people—and especially someone like me—really need to avoid. With limited information and a tendency to get emotional, we either end up blaming others or falling into self-pity.

He also gently shared a bit about his own life: he has two children, one of whom has autism. He pointed out that Taiwan’s social support in this area is actually quite good. Looking at long-term care and the national health insurance system, the government isn’t as bad as people sometimes make it out to be. Yes, the health insurance system has serious structural problems, but we do enjoy relatively high-quality medical care.

Finally, he offered a thought that really struck me: “The challenges God gives us are ones He believes we can handle.” I’m not sure if my superior is a Christian, but in that moment I immediately expressed my full agreement.