Why Dumb Happy Accidents are Everything

👋 Hola dumdums,

What if I told you that some of life's biggest breakthroughs happened because someone messed up spectacularly?

The ⚡️Pacemaker was invented when a researcher used the wrong resistor. 🟨 Post-it Notes were born from a failed attempt at super-strong glue. And the 🍪 chocolate chip cookie? Well, that's today's deliciously dumb story.

Here's the thing about mistakes: they're not failed attempts at being right—they're accidental discoveries of something different.

A word so rare and bizarre it sounds like something you’d yell during a botched spelling bee. (Pronounced: You-kuh-TAS-truh-fee, if you feel like testing your friends’ poker faces.)

🧙 J.R.R. Tolkien, the same guy who gave us hobbits, rings of power, and the eternal reminder to never trust a guy named Gollum, coined this gem. It’s his version of taking “catastrophe”—a disaster that ruins everything—and flipping it into something unexpectedly good.

Tolkien officially debuted this brainchild in his 1939 essay On Fairy-Stories, because why wouldn’t a guy who spent years dreaming up Middle-earth also invent his own literary jargon? For Tolkien, eucatastrophe was the secret sauce of a perfect fairy tale: that gut-punch moment of joy when the impossible becomes possible, and the audience goes from “Oh, we’re doomed” to “Wait, what?!” He called it the “consolation of the happy ending,” which is a fancy way of saying, “Give the people a reason to cry in a good way.”

Consider this . . .

It’s 1938, and you’re 🍪 Ruth Wakefield, owner of the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts. You’re mid-cookie mode, whipping up your famous chocolate butter cookies, when disaster strikes: no baker’s chocolate. Your pantry, however, offers a consolation prize—a Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate bar.

You think, No big deal. I’ll chop this up, toss it in, and it’ll melt right into the dough. Cookies saved. Genius intact. Except, plot twist: the chocolate refuses to play ball. Instead of melting into the dough, it holds its ground, scattering like tiny edible rebels throughout each cookie.

And there it is—your eucatastrophe. What should’ve been a cookie catastrophe (choco-blasphemy!) becomes chocolate chip greatness. One “oops” later, you’re inventing America’s favorite cookie, exchanging the rights for a lifetime supply of chocolate from Nestlé, and becoming the accidental architect of an entire industry.

Fast forward a few decades to 🍪 Christina Tosi of Milk Bar fame. While the world’s pastry elite were out there measuring flour with surgical precision, Christina took the Ruth Wakefield approach: embrace the oops. Corn flakes in cookies? Sure. Cake scraps turned into truffles? Why not. Her desserts weren’t just “wrong” by traditional standards—they were gloriously, deliberately messy. Now she’s running a dessert empire, proving once again that sometimes a kitchen fail isn’t a fail at all. It’s just the next eucatastrophe waiting to happen.

The Museum of Failure

And for all those spectacular failures that end up in the catastrophic pile, they may still find redemption in 🇸🇪 Sweden, where there's an entire museum dedicated to failed products.

• 🏢 Architects: Design a house starting with the roof

• 🧑‍🏫 Teachers: Let students write the tests

• 🧑‍🍳 Chefs: Cook every ingredient at the wrong temperature

• ✍️ Writers: Write the last chapter first

Real-world examples of profitable mistakes:

• 🛢️ WD-40: Named because the first 39 formulas were "wrong"

• 💊 Viagra: Originally a failed heart medication

• 💦 Play-Doh: Started as wallpaper cleaner

• 🫧 Bubble Wrap: Failed wallpaper design

The Beautiful Mistake Toolkit:

✓ Embrace imperfection as innovation

✓ Document unexpected results 

✓ Ask "What else could this be?" 

✓ Share your "failures"—they might be someone else's solution

Thanks for embracing the power of contrary thinking with me today!

SHARE YOUR BEAUTIFUL MISTAKE: Reply with a time a mistake led to something better than your original plan. Best story wins a “Failure Resume” template I use with Fortune 500 companies AND a signed copy of "Dumbify"!

Stay wonderfully wrong, David

P.S. Know someone who needs permission to embrace their mistakes? Forward this email—sometimes the wrong way is the right way forward.