HowToSucceed

Two big rules for doing well at almost anything:

Help other people help you. Don't struggle alone; we're all in this together. Did somebody assign you an impossible mission? Maybe they meant to request something different. The situation may have changed since you began. You may have taken a wrong turn. Ask early and often for clarification, suggestions, feedback, ...
Fail for a good reason. It's OK to crash and burn if you took a well-calculated risk and it didn't work out. It's fine to let a higher priority (e.g., family, health, spiritual obligation, etc.) preempt a task. But there's no honor in "I forgot" or "The time just slipped away from me" or ...

(see also OnFailure (13 Jul 1999), BennettOnLife (19 Mar 2000), DiffiCult (28 Jun 2001), EinBenStein (19 Sep 2002), ...)