The First Pancake Manifesto: A Case for Public Failure

For those who flip first and figure it out later.

There is a universal truth, whispered in the hallowed halls of every kitchen, passed down like an ancient spell: the first pancake is always a disaster.

It emerges from the pan misshapen and confused, a lumpy, burnt-yet-undercooked creature. It resists flipping, defying the laws of physics and your dignity. Sometimes it lands on the pan’s edge like it’s contemplating its own life. Sometimes it just… folds in on itself, exhausted by the effort of being.

And yet, here’s what’s miraculous: nobody ever stops making pancakes because of the first one. Nobody sees that charred, malformed tragedy and decides, Well, clearly I wasn’t meant for this. No, we acknowledge the mistake, maybe laugh about it, and keep going—knowing that the next one will be better.

Which begs the question: why don’t we extend this logic to literally anything else in life?

The Philosophy of the First Pancake

We have been sold a lie: that skill must precede action, that we must be good before we are allowed to begin. That failure is not a necessary prelude to competence, but a public execution of our credibility.

Which is nonsense. The first pancake has to be bad because the pan isn’t hot enough yet. The batter hasn’t adjusted. The chef (you, me, humanity at large) is still calibrating. The system needs time to align before it can produce something worth serving.

This is true of pancakes. This is true of everything.

You cannot sidestep the ugly, awkward, wobbly-kneed beginning. No one emerges fully formed, like Athena from Zeus’s forehead, armed with expertise and a LinkedIn page full of perfectly formatted achievements. No—every painter has a stack of embarrassing early sketches. Every musician has a hard drive full of songs that never saw the light of day. Every writer has drafts that should never, under any circumstances, be read by another living soul.

The first pancake is a rite of passage, not a death sentence.

On the Fear of Flipping (And Failing Publicly)

The real problem isn’t failure itself—it’s the visibility of it. If we could fail in secret, without an audience, we might be bolder. But in the age of content, everything is performative. Every attempt at something new feels like it must be immediately presentable, packaged, and optimized for engagement.

We do not allow ourselves to flail, because flailing is unbecoming. We fear that if we are bad at something in front of other people, we will be marked as the person who tried and failed—as if the world is a courtroom and we are all on trial for crimes against competence. But here’s the joke: nobody is paying as much attention to you as you think they are.

Nobody is meticulously tracking your false starts, your cringey first attempts, your pancake-shaped failures. Everyone else is too busy worrying about their own. Your mortifying ordeal of being perceived is, more often than not, an illusion.

And yet, the cost of avoiding failure is higher than the cost of experiencing it.

The Opportunity Cost of Perfectionism

Economists talk about opportunity cost: the price of choosing one option over another. Every time we refuse to try because we fear looking foolish, we are paying a hidden price. The cost of never writing the novel. Never starting the project. Never sending the risky email.

Consider this: the average person has 13 ideas for businesses in their lifetime, but only 1 in 10 ever act on them. Which means there are entire parallel universes where people are thriving off ideas they never had the nerve to execute in this one. A graveyard of abandoned possibilities, all because someone didn’t want to be embarrassing.

But here’s the thing—life is embarrassing. Life is spilling coffee on yourself in a meeting. It’s waving back at someone who wasn’t waving at you. It’s telling a joke that doesn’t land. If you cannot stomach small humiliations, you will not get to the good stuff. The best lives, the most interesting lives, are built by people who were willing to be a little ridiculous first.

The First Pancake Manifesto

Be a First Pancake Person. The kind of person who understands that public failure is the down payment on success. That the only way to be good at something is to first be spectacularly, publicly bad at it.

A First Pancake Person applies for the job they’re under qualified for. They post the art that makes them cringe. They stand up at the roller rink, knowing they will probably eat the floor. They say, I don’t know how to do this, but I’ll figure it out.

Meanwhile, the Perfect Pancake People are still at the starting line, waiting for optimal conditions. They are researching pans instead of cooking. They are collecting information instead of attempting. They are waiting for the right moment, the right skill level, the right alignment of stars. But life doesn’t wait. Life is a little burnt around the edges. Life is a series of risks disguised as breakfast foods.

So let people see you try. Let them witness your first pancake in all its unfortunate glory. Because you know what’s worse than making a bad pancake?

Making no pancakes at all.

Buy or Sell? The Market on Failure

BUY: The first pancake. The necessary sacrifice to the gods of progress.

SELL: The belief that failure is proof you shouldn’t have tried. The only real failure is opting out.

STRONG BUY: Public humiliation. Cringe is temporary, but competence compounds.

In other words: turn the heat up. Flip something. Accept the mess. Your pancakes are waiting.