The Power of Making Mistakes

Seth Godin posted about an article about Jeff Bezos in FastCompany talking about his view of making errors really. It includes a very nice quote (not sure if from Seth or Jeff):

_If someone dissuades you from trying, you can hardly blame them for the failure that doesn’t happen, right? If, on the other hand, they egg you on and you crash, that really puts a crimp in the relationship…_

That’s a very important aspect of making errors really. At a recent residential school about creativity I saw a speech of John Cleese about mistakes. In it he talks about the importance of making mistakes, about the importance of moving forward and you can’t stumble if you are not moving. So not making mistakes is the easiest if you just don’t move. The end result is rather useless though. For example, I could tell you it is now between 2am and 9pm here where I am. I would be 100% sure to be correct. It’s useless though. Saying it is 8:42, has a huge amount of error potential, would be a lot more useful to you though. That’s just one example of the many he gives in the speech. He argues that we need to find a way to make mistakes without hurting the ego, because that is the really hard part. You might make it no problem that small mistakes are made, but still the ego will very likely be touched. You just need to find another word for “small little mistake that is really no problem when corrected early and provides a great resource for learning”.