The Art of Making Mistakes
May 13, 2015
By Leslie Pitner, DDS
My uncle, a research chemist, shared a book with me recently called Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein – Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe. Author Mario Livio chronicles the mistakes made by some of the most brilliant scientists of the 19th and 20th centuries. Livio’s mission is to show that making mistakes is essential to progress in science as people struggle to figure out the unknown. And each of the mistakes he highlights laid the groundwork for later essential discoveries from the structure of DNA to advances in astrophysics. Reading the book led me to reflect on the importance of mistakes to learning and succeeding in our lives.
Most of us are so afraid of making a mistake — just the thought fills our minds with the what-ifs of how people will see us, and the awful fallout we will have to endure. But what would happen if we turned our fear of mistakes on its head and decided to deliberately court failure?
An article in Harvard Business Review has documented the lasting value of making deliberate mistakes in business. For example, back before AT&T was declared a monopoly and broken up, they were required to supply phone service to anyone – even if the person was a poor risk to pay. The riskiest customers were required to pay a deposit to get service. Then AT&T decided to make a deliberate mistake — they offered service to poor-risk customers for no deposit — in order to learn what would actually happen. With the information they gained as a result, they were able to create a better service model that increased their profits by $137 million each year thereafter.
Even with big money involved, organizations have the comfort of spreading the risk across many people. What about individuals who decide to make more mistakes? Are they crazy fools, or crazy like foxes? Jason Comely is a freelance IT consultant in Ontario, Canada, who decided to seek out rejection every day. His wife had left him and he was shell-shocked by life until he realized most of his problems stemmed from one huge but simple fear: Jason was afraid of life. More specifically, Jason was afraid of being rejected by other people.
So he decided to make mistakes at a ferocious rate – to experience rejection at least once every single day from someone! Rejection became Jason’s personal game and a mantra of sorts, and he discovered to his surprise that actively searching out rejection felt both liberating and empowering to him. He conquered many of his fears rather quickly and developed a toughness for taking bigger, wiser risks. He also found that he learned from real mistakes in his life much more quickly. His experience was so positive he even created a deck of cards for other people to use called the Rejection Therapy Game (www.rejectiontherapy.com).
Mistakes don’t have to be terrifying. Most of the actions and events we label failures are often just mistakes on the road to growth if we keep on traveling the road. And if you want to grow faster, then deliberately courting mistakes will help you learn very quickly – much faster and with less stress than you would if you walk around terrified to make a wrong turn or a false step. Thomas J. Watson, Sr., the longtime chairman who built IBM into one of the largest companies in the world, once said that “If you want to succeed, double your failure rate.” So find something you care about that has a great potential reward – whether your goal is information, profit, or conquering a fear — and make a mistake. It won’t be nearly as bad as you think, and you’ll be on your way to success.
Livio, Mario. 2014. Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein-Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe. Simon and Schuster.
Schoemaker, Paul J H and Robert E Gunther. 2006. The wisdom of deliberate mistakes. Harvard
Business Review 84 (6): 108-15, 146.
About Dr. Leslie Pitner
Dr. Pitner has built a reputation as one of the most innovative orthodontists in the Southeast. Her practice, Pitner Orthodontics, serves the Columbia and Chapin communities, but she has patients coming from all over the US. Leslie Pitner majored in art and received her undergraduate degree from Williams College in 1990. She completed her master’s degree in art history at the University of Pennsylvania in 1995. She then attended the University of North Carolina School of Dentistry and graduated with honors. Her training in art directly translates to her orthodontic practice by allowing her to utilize her eye for beauty and detail and bring that passion to each patient’s smile.
While in practice, Dr. Pitner completed a unique master’s degree program in positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She uses this element of her education to encourage patients to grow in their strengths through the challenges of orthodontics and enjoy the positive power of a smile. Dr. Pitner has broad interests from traveling and public speaking to driving her own race-car. www.drpitner.com
