A mistake studied carefully can teach more than a success never examined.

CREATIVITY

WHAT THIS MEANS

Failure demands explanation and so it gets examined; success gets attributed to skill and then filed. This is why people often learn more from a bad outcome than from a good one, and why repeated success can leave someone with confident theories they have never checked.

After something goes well, spend ten minutes asking what actually caused it, including luck and other people. Would it work again, and what part was you. That review is uncomfortable in a mild way and it is where most of the transferable knowledge lives.

A QUESTION TO SIT WITH

What recent mistake have you not yet looked at closely?

MORE IN LEARNING & CURIOSITY

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