How to Learn From Failure
cc image used courtesy of connors got heart on flickr
So often when talking about innovation or change we hear someone say don’t be afraid to fail. That is harder than it sounds, I mean really; who wants to fail? Who wants to stand up in front of a group, no matter how big or how small and admit they were wrong. I know some people would admit they were wrong, but no one wants to be wrong.
Part of the problem is failure is seen as a waste of time, of money or other resources. But we can learn a lot from failure as Jonah Lehrer writes Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up
Too often, we assume that a failed experiment is a wasted effort. But not all anomalies are useless. Here’s how to make the most of them
- Check Your Assumptions - Ask yourself why this result feels like a failure. What theory does it contradict? Maybe the hypothesis failed, not the experiment.
- Seek Out the Ignorant - Talk to people who are unfamiliar with your experiment. Explaining your work in simple terms may help you see it in a new light.
- Encourage Diversity - If everyone working on a problem speaks the same language, then everyone has the same set of assumptions.
- Beware of Failure-Blindness - It’s normal to filter out information that contradicts our preconceptions. The only way to avoid that bias is to be aware of it.
Read more
- Failing to Learn and Learning to Fail (Intelligently): How Great Organizations Put Failure to Work to Improve and Innovate
- Kent Bottles: Why Smart People Don’t Learn from Failures
- How You Learn More from Success Than Failure
- Try, Try Again, or Maybe Not
- Trying and Failing Enhances Learning, According to Research by Nate Kornell
- Getting It Wrong: Surprising Tips on How to Learn
- What Steve Wozniak Learned From Failure
- The Role of Failure in Learning
Top Ten Links Week 5
CC image used courtesy of holeymoon on flickr
My personally selected top 10 from the links I shared on Twitter from 1/29/2010 thru 2/4/2010
- about dismantling the echo-chamber… more on the echo chamber
- Content Creators & Consumers (& the iPad) – an interesting post on who the audience of the iPad is. I know its not me, but I’ve had conversations with enough people who are just waiting to get one that I know there is an audience no matter what the techies feel its lacking.
- Facebook Is Working On A Foursquare-Killer
- Why Smart People Don’t Learn from Failures – its ok to fail, just be sure you learn something from it.
- President’s budget freezes library funding, omits school libraries from education increase if you haven’t heard or read about this you need to and read Buffy Hamilton’s response An Indecent Proposal
- Don’t feed the trolls, unless you’re feeding them tranquilizers – great article on how to handle blog comments, including how to handle trolls
- 10 Steps to Promote Learning in Your Conference Presentation
- Information and services should be equal
- But, I Like My Loser Friends! great post from Mary Schmidt at Lip-Sticking in response to The Most Important Success Tip:Stop Lying Down with Dogs, Already from Copyblogger
- ALA Learning -5 Tips for Trainers to Prevent TechFail
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- Feel free to quote blog posts and link back to the site. Please do not copy my entire post on your site. Thank you
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