Weekly Musing #20 Do you (really) learn from your mistakes?

Imagine wrapping up a project that you poured heart and soul into, only to realize it didn’t go as planned.

You tell yourself you’ll learn from this experience, but will you really? How many of us keeps saying we’ll learn from our mistakes, only to find ourselves in the same mess again and again?

The art of learning from your mistakes is all about learning how to make better choices.

One mantra we often repeat to ourselves and others is, ‘Learn from your mistakes,’ along with, ‘Every failure is an opportunity to learn’.

Easy to say, and in today’s growth mindset obsessed world, the right thing to say.

But to be honest — how many of us make different choices after a mistake? It’s one thing to acknowledge that you’ve messed up; it’s another entirely to change your course of action in the future. After all, most probably we’re talking about actually changing a habitual way of doing things.

I know for a fact that even though I am willing to learn and change, I am still my old self doing things in my stupid old self’s way.

And then we find ourselves saying “if I were to do it all over again, I’d do it exactly the same way”? Which only really implies that we will happily keep making the same choices that lead to the same mistakes all over again.

Learning from a mistake is one thing.

But learning isn’t the same thing as choosing to do something differently, those are two very separate things. Just because I rationally know I should do something differently doesn’t mean I will.

Old habits die hard and people hate to change.

Learning from a mistake is one thing, but using that new knowledge to actually change your ways and habits is a different beast all together

The learning from mistakes is a big enough step for most people. Most often it’s too big a step as well. Most people never take time to reflect over past, finished (or crashed) projects, relationships or ventures, but instead rush headfirst into the next one, without any debrief or evaluation of the one they just left behind.

Ok but for arguments sake, let’s say that you actually did take time to evaluate the project. How did you evaluate it? If it was a success, I bet you didn’t spend too much time on the things that went wrong, or could have gone wrong, but instead looked more at the KPIs that show how well it went.

And if you were lucky enough to have a failure on your hands, did you spend time analysing what went wrong? (and P.S. did you wait until it failed to evaluate?)

Most people live by the words of Billy Connelly “- If at first you don’t succeed, stop, and hide all evidence you ever tried” and would rather forget about the mess they got themselves into and just move on. If nothing else just to avoid further embarrassment and loss of face.

But fine, let’s say you took time and you evaluated, looking for and finding things that went wrong or didn’t work, great! You’ve just complete a third of what you need to do, step 1.

Step 2 is to understand those misses; is there is lesson to be learned?

If you reach step 2 you are doing really well, However you haven’t come to the most important part yet.

Most people consider themselves finished at step 2 and start talking about the importance of learning from mistakes, growing as individuals and how grateful they are for being so humble to be able to admit their own mistakes.

And then a new project, relationship or venture comes along, and every thing starts all over again, and soon enough, we find ourselves in exactly the same situation again, having made exactly the same mistakes again and regretting the same things again.

So what am I trying to say here?

I’m saying that you need to separate the ending of one project and the start of another, learning from your mistakes isn’t good enough.

You need to actively change your behavior as well, and that’s usually the hardest part of all.

Here’s are the steps in order:

1. Don’t wait until a project crashes or fails, continuously evaluate, practice “Stop, Reflect, Act” on a regular basis. That will make it easier to wrap up and come to conclusions quicker at the end or in the possible event of a failure. It also makes it easier to make micro-corrections during a project or finding the courage to pull the plug a lot sooner than you might normally do.
2. Then when finished, start by making a full rundown of what happened, what went wrong? what could you have or should you have done differently? Was it a lack of planning, or perhaps you were triggered by a specific emotion? Identify the root cause and address it. This goes for successes as well, what went very right, and why? and what could have gone wrong, and why? The beauty of post-failure evaluations is that hindsight, as the expression goes, is the only exact science in the world 🙂
3. Then turn all of the points you have listed into learnings; What can you learn from each and every one of those mistakes you made.
4. And then finally, and this is the most important step, write down what you will do differently next time you start a project. Yes, write it down and keep it in your “What I have learned from my mistakes” handbook. How else are you going to remember what you are supposed to be doing differently? Don’t trust your memory and please don’t trust your own judgement, since that’s probably what got you into the last mess.
5. And then we come to the big shift, next time you start a new project or venture, make sure to go back to your notes in your “What I have learned from my mistakes” handbook, and reflect on what you want to do differently this time around, and actively try to change how you do things.

After all, it’s not so much only about learning from mistakes in projects past, it’s also about adjusting, changing and shifting into new behaviors when starting the next one.

Get that handbook started today “What I have learned from my mistakes that I am going to consider when starting my next project”.

And make sure to comment on this article, I look forward to the discussions 🤓🌞