Only Show the Wins

And the difference between failing at something vs. being a failure.

Hello hello!

I’m back in Bangalore after a loooooong break.

I was home for all of July and most of August, and honestly, I didn't feel like coming back. However, I didn’t want to touch my emergency fund, so I had to return to work. Gotta earn a living to get that GT 650 and a Garmin Fenix.

So, a few new things are going on: new inbounds, new work, a new routine, and new goals.

And with new things comes a familiar old feeling I’ve been working with my whole life. Let's get into it.

The Fear of the Public ‘Fail’

So, here’s the thing. I have this habit of keeping many parts of my life private, especially the new stuff. Super private.

Almost nobody knows where I lose. You probably know I have a channel that got a silver play button recently, another with 200k followers, that I worked with Windsurf, kilometres I ran this week, and about the things I make.

But you don’t know about these:

• I lost a deal with Ather.

• I lost a deal with Ultrahuman.

• I couldn’t ship a product I worked on for almost a year with a team.

• I struggled to get international clients.

• My Twitter has been stagnant for months.

• I wasn’t able to crack JEE/NEET.

And honestly, that last point is exactly how it all started.

It was my life's first real failure, and not like I just prepared for a few months and failed. It was years. 3 years, to be exact. What happened after, and how I reacted to it, is something I'm still trying to unlearn.

I prepared for JEE and NEET from 2017 to 2020. I wanted to get into a top government college because that’s what you do. Full coaching, 18-hour days, doubts, tests - I did it all, and I was doing well.

But on the day of the exam, I couldn’t perform (well). I got somewhere between the 93-95 percentile. Not bad, but not good. And, that triggered a chain reaction.

The questions, the looks from everyone... it was all so public. All I could think was, how can I fail?

Ever since then, I have done all the hard work in private. Fail in private, win in private. It’s been peaceful.

But this exact thing is now holding me back. I see people half as skilled as I going places. Why? Because they don't care about failure or reputation. They're loudmouths just throwing darts all the time. And I'm still in my room, wanting to be low-key and do my thing, which is completely wrong for getting promotions, deals, or users.

Life as a Game vs. Life as an Experience

For the longest time, I’ve been treating my life like a game to be won, not an experience to be lived. In a game, there are clear wins and losses. You make the wrong move, you’re out. There’s no grey area.

After that exam experience, I unconsciously made a rule for myself: only show the wins.

And for a while, it seemed to work. I got good jobs, earned good money, and worked with cool people. But this "protector" part of my brain has started holding me back. To level up to build a personal brand, to take bigger risks - I have to be willing to be seen trying, and maybe even failing.

Failing at Something vs. Being a Failure

But enough about the problem. Who am I if not my solutions, right? And I think I stumbled upon an insight that might actually fix this for me: I’ve been confusing failing at something with being a failure.

When a project I’m working on in private doesn’t work out, it’s fine. I just see it as an experiment that didn't pan out. But when it’s public, it feels like the failure becomes part of my identity. I worry it will dilute my reputation and make people think I’m not competent.

BUT WHAT REPUTATION? I’M LITERALLY A 24-YEAR-OLD KID.

Logically, I know this is ridiculous. Nobody cares that much, and any embarrassment is temporary. But the fear is deep-rooted. It's not about the failure itself; it's about the shame of being perceived as a failure.

So, I’m trying to reframe this.

I'm starting to think of everything as a small project, not a final verdict on who I am. A job is a project. A YouTube channel is a project. A relationship is a project. They aren’t me. They are things I do. Some will work out, some won’t, and both outcomes are just data for the next experiment.

It's a small mental shift, but it feels like it could change everything.

I’m not sure I can break out of this mindset overnight; it's been my default for over 5 years. But just seeing it clearly for what it is feels like the first real step.

And yeah, telling you all about the new work and the marathon I'm training for this month before it’s "safe" that feels like a pretty good place to start.

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What I'm Consuming

So, instead of just sharing a few random articles, I want to talk about a couple of writers whose work I've been learning a lot from lately.

1. Cate Hall

   I’ve been reading a lot from Cate Hall lately. She writes about similar things to me, but just... way better. Two of her articles are my absolute favourites right now.
   

   The first is about how to get good at things, especially for someone like me who jumps between so many different interests every month.
   
   Her answer is simple: mimicry.
   
   Think about how a child’s learning curve is so much steeper than an adult's, and it's almost entirely because of mimicry. They don't know the alphabet, but they know how to say "papa."
   
   If we could just apply that to the rest of life - learning to drive, fight, run, or even build a product - it should work out just fine.
   

   The other one is called “50 Things She Knows.” And, I loved it because I’m a sucker for a good listicle. No other reason.

2. Catherine Jue

   Catherine is an engineer and a YC-backed founder, and she mostly talks about her experiences with software and whatever else she’s up to.
   

   The article of hers that really is my favourite is fast. She made this point that while software needs to be fast as a baseline, everyone is just asking for more features and flows and discounts.

   Fast is fun. Fast is magical. Fast signals simplicity. Fast is relative.

   This is something I obsess over, too.

   
   My first piece of feedback for any product I'm involved in is always, "How can we slash a few more seconds off this?"
   

   And not just in software but in life too. If I get the requirements for landing page copy in the evening, I’ll have a vibe-coded landing page from an AI builder and a full copy doc ready for the team by that same night.

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And that's it for this month.

To close things out, here’s a verse I’ve had on repeat:

“Winning not enough for me, I like to be petty bout it; drop a number one, when it's done, I just forget about it... ahhhh you think you know what happened cuz you read about it ahhhh gimme head and don't get in yo head about it. Crisp Nike Forces, the only time I force it; I told her get a bag, and some shoes, and some more shit she heard I got a girl, and I bought her even more shit, don't tell me what you heard if you can't tell me who the source is. Ahhhh”

Until then, keep working toward whatever you want, relentlessly.

— Tushaar