Why making mistakes is the key to a better working life

 
Yes, that headline is correct. This article really is about how to increase the mistakes you make — and do it deliberately. It may sound a stupid idea, but it’s not, I assure you. Making mistakes really is the key to a better life, at work and everywhere else.

Let’s begin with what happens when you try your best not to make mistakes. The only way that you can do this is by avoiding risks of all kinds. Typically, people with the goal of avoiding errors in mind either repeat whatever has worked in the past, or copy what worked for others, or both. If they can’t do that, they plan and analyze as much as they can to strip out the risks from their actions.

What’s wrong with that? Three things:

• It your actions are successful, they teach you nothing you didn’t know already. After all, all you did was repeat previous choices, yours or someone else’s, or take the action least likely to contain any risk. A lifetime spent choosing in this way will more or less leave you in the same place from which you started.
• If your fail — despite your efforts you make a mistake — you can’t learn anything from it either. What was once successful wasn’t this time. So is that a fluke or a sign of real change? You can’t tell.
• If your plans and analyses don’t save you, is that because they were faulty, the circumstances were not what you thought they were, or you just hung around analyzing for so long the opportunity of success passed. Who can tell?

Learning is based on trial and error, not trial and success

You always learn much more from your mistakes than your successes. If something works, you’re happy and start repeating it. You feel no need to look any further or consider whether you could have taken a different approach. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, as the saying goes.

But most progress depends almost entirely on people who are determined to fix what everyone else thinks isn’t broken. And the rest depends on people getting it wrong and setting about working out why and how to do better next time.

Take the cell phone. The first ones were so big and heavy that they were barely portable at all. Yet they worked. In theory, there was no need to change them. People did, because they were so big and clunky — and needed such massive batteries — that it was hard to judge them a success.

After a fairly short time, batteries were much smaller, the phones were totally portable, and the notion of a communication device anyone could carry in a pocket had been met. Time to stop, right?

Wrong. Those pesky people who insist on continuing to improve what already works well weren’t satisfied. Now we have ever smaller phones, that also include cameras and MP3 players and personal organizers. Apple produce the iPhone — another jump in design and functionality.

Is there no end? No, not if we want to continue to progress.

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