4 important reflections about mistakes
Mistakes are how we human beings learn
Some years ago, a friend told me:
“Making mistakes is how we human beings learn.”
I spent some of my early life trying to avoid mistakes at all costs and then became frustrated when I inevitably made them. I have failed in love, at work, with my family, with friends.
Of course, this was terribly arrogant of me, counterproductive, and a difficult way to live.
It was arrogant because to never make a mistake basically means to be perfect. Obviously, neither I nor any other humans are perfect at all.
Avoiding mistakes is counterproductive because reduces your opportunities to learn. The goal isn’t to avoid mistakes. The goal is to learn and live an enjoyable life.
The easiest way to avoid mistakes is to do nothing.
Being frustrated for mistakes is a difficult way to live because it means either doing nothing with your life or beating yourself up for your entire life. Neither is particularly good for you!
After so many years, of my many mistakes, I’ve come to the following reflections on making mistakes:
1) Again, don’t focus on avoiding mistakes. Instead, focus on not repeating mistakes.
To make a mistake the first time is to learn. To repeat a mistake is just stupid. Please, don’t be stupid.
2) When you make a mistake, forget beating yourself up. Instead, focus on the lesson. What was wrong in your understanding of the situation, rationale, or your process? Skip the self-criticism, just fix the f**king problem so you don’t repeat the mistake.
3) Focus on reducing the cost of making mistakes. When mistakes have very little cost, go make many of them and learn a lot from them.
Athletes do something called “practice” before the Olympics. It allows them to make their mistakes when there is no consequence to doing so.
Tech companies have something called A/B testing where they can take an idea and test it on a small scale before attempting a big rollout. The purpose of an A/B test is to make mistakes and learn from them… cheaply.
4) After all, I still believe it is far more cost-effective to learn from some else’s mistakes than from your own.
Yes, “mistakes are how we learn,” but who said it had to be our own mistakes?
This is why I keep learning and reading as much I can and part of my salary goes to buying books for my Kindle library — it’s an investment that always returns.
