Every Mistake is a Step Forward

I recently came across that old Steve Jobs video again, the one where he says you can’t connect the dots looking forward, only backward.

I’ve seen it a bunch of times, but this time it hit differently. I was reflecting on the last couple of years, and for the first time, things actually started to make sense. The dots lined up.

Every day we make decisions. Some turn out great, others don’t. But there’s always something to take away from them. Over time, I’ve realised that most of the time, you don’t really know what the right decision is in the moment. You just choose something, act on it, and understand it later.

That’s where I’ve come to rely on instinct.

Not in a vague way, but in a very real sense. If something doesn’t sit right, it usually isn’t. You can rationalise it, people can convince you otherwise, but somewhere you know. And in my experience, that feeling tends to be right more often than not.

At Immutly, we started out as a B2B enabler, offering APIs. Somewhere along the way, we felt the pull to go deeper and build a full product, a Digital Product Passport. The market wasn’t really ready, especially in India. But it felt right, so we went ahead.

A year after we shut it down, there are now 7+ startups in India building Digital Product Passports. We were early, maybe too early, but not wrong. Looking back, that decision makes a lot more sense now. At the time, it was just something we felt strongly about and chose to act on.

That’s the thing. You don’t always know where your decisions will take you. But you keep moving, trusting that they’ll lead somewhere meaningful, even if you can’t see it yet.

One thing that’s helped me a lot through all of this is journaling. Every morning and night, I try to write down whatever’s on my mind. Decisions, ideas, thoughts, anything. It sounds simple, but over time, it’s made a big difference.

Writing doesn’t always help in the moment, but it helps later. When you go back and read what you were thinking, you start seeing patterns you would’ve otherwise missed.

After we shut down Immutly, I wrote one line in my journal: “Be kinder to myself.”

But I didn’t follow it. I spent most of that year blaming myself for everything, what went wrong, what I could’ve done differently. The usual spiral.

Then one day, I came across that line again. It hit me. The answer had been there the whole time. I just wasn’t paying attention.

Since then, I’ve been trying to live that more consciously. Not just for myself, but for others as well.

And it’s made a difference.