Even though it's a necessary part of learning and getting better, failure can hit us pretty hard. Failure, however, is an essential component of improv comedy, and approaching failure like it's just part of a scene in your life can help you take it in stride.

 
Whether everyone is on your case, you aren't feeling motivated or you just feel like you suck at something, we all feel a little discouraged from time to time. This proverb reminds us that difficulties are to be expected.

Ask anyone how long a typical workday is, and they'll probably say eight hours. How did that become the standard? Is eight hours beneficial for productivity, or should we rethink that number? The team at social sharing app Buffer investigated.

Surfing is a challenging sport that requires perseverance and risk. Srinivas Rao, writing for productivity and ideas blog the 99u, found it to be an apt metaphor for the risks we need to take in life. You never know where the waves will hit and when you'll ride them or be crushed beneath them. Still, surfers keep trying because they know the rush of success.

First impressions are difficult, and you really only have a few seconds to make them. Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of sites Reddit and Hipmunk, suggests that the trick is just giving a damn.

After a long day at work, the last thing we want to do is go home and work on something else. It can be tempting to just fall down on the couch, order a pizza and then stumble off to bed, but doing that means you never use your free time to learn a new language, read a good book, start your own blog, or work on any of the personal projects that you're passionate about. So how do you resist the temptation to do nothing when you're not working? Here are some tips.

In an age where it's easy to find all the answers with a quick Google search, there's something to be said for having a go yourself. Even if you eventually resort to the infinite wisdom the internet, at least you got the cogs in your head turning... not to mention how good it feels to figure something out on your own, especially when you know it's within your reach. It's an emotion physicist Richard Feynman knew all too well -- in fact, the joy of discovery was one of his main motivations.

This quote originated from theorist Jason Randal during a talk at The 99 Percent Conference. Chances are you're not bereft of hopes and dreams, but you are perhaps without a means to achieve them. Everything starts with a first step, and generally that first step isn't as hard as it seems.

We've talked about times where you should say no, but it's just as important to learn to hear others say no to you in the right light. Chase Jarvis explains that hearing "no" doesn't have to be a blow to your self-esteem or your ego. Instead, let it be a driving force to push you forward.

In this short talk, writer, speaker and creative professional Scott Belsky discusses what he calls "idea plateaus" — the inevitable doldrums that follow the high you feel after coming up with a new idea — and how to avoid them.

One of the toughest aspects of staying productive is overcoming the ups and downs of motivation. Spending 10 minutes getting organised in the morning, then 15 minutes again in the evening, can help even out your daily go-get-'em energy.

It should come as no surprise that money is a pretty powerful motivator for workers, but an article by researchers at Harvard Business School says it takes more than cash to keep employees happy and productive.

While you not think it from the size of the blogosphere, many people find it hard to get motivated to write regularly. The One Hundred Words A Day Blog has one simple idea: anyone can post to say that they've written 100 words that day. (That might not sound like much, but do it every weekday for a year and you'll have half a novel.) Whether the time taken posting to the blog might be better used to write another 50 words, it's a motivational technique worth considering if your ambitions keep dying whenever you get near the keyboard. One Hundred Words A Day