The Tyranny of Mistakes

August 11, 2009 | 6 Comments

Update

I just found an amazing post about mistakes at Eric Sink’s blog. It’s a great partner piece to mine, from someone who actually knows what they’re doing. Unlike me.

My First Job

When I graduated in 1998 I went to work as an Electrical Engineer at a local company. The company was small, developing exciting lighting products and I had great plans for my future. It was not meant to be.

In the 5 years at this company I had a pretty tough time. At one stage I was working a 90 hour week. I had a thousand yard stare. I was permanently exhausted.

But the most difficult thing to deal with was that I just kept making mistakes. It became a vicious cycle.

Being John Gallagher (circa 2000)

1. Do something from your to-do list.
2. Whilst you’re doing it, be aware that you could make a mistake. Make sure you’ve thought everything through.
3. Once it’s done, make sure to question if you did it right.
4. Oh no. Somethings gone wrong. Remember that thing yesterday that you dealt with? You made a mistake.
5. Whilst you’re correcting the mistake, think how this mistake happened. Then think about it some more. Imagine how annoyed the customer/colleague this affected is. Think about how they feel. Think how much damage you’ve done. Feel really bad, because you should – it was you who made the mistake. How could this have happened?
6. The mistake has now been corrected. Carry on.
7. Ah. That mistake I made yesterday that I corrected? I made a mistake correcting it. Another mistake to correct.
8. Go to 2.

Maybe you can start to see a few problems with this pattern.

I Felt Rubbish

Every time I realised I’d made a mistake, I’d feel like a fool, like an idiot. I’d curse myself. And whilst I was trying to correct it, this meant I wasn’t concentrating. I was too busy feeling bad about myself. And that meant I made more mistakes.

I became convinced I was worthless to the company. I desperately wanted to perform well, but couldn’t understand why things kept going wrong. I tried reading self help books, meeting with my managers regularly to examine my workload, loads of things. Nothing really worked.

After a few years of this pattern day in, day out, I was really unhappy. I cried randomly for no reason. I couldn’t sleep properly worrying about mistakes I was going to make or had made that day. I’d always been a pretty happy person. That feeling went away and was replaced by a vicious anxiety. I felt like I was losing the essence of who I was.

Being made redundant was the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Within a week of leaving, my happy personality returned. I looked back on what had happened as though it wasn’t me.

My Second Job

I worked for a charity doing IT. At first, everything was brilliant – it was a fresh start, with no more long hours.

But after a couple of years, things started to go wrong again. The old patterns rose up to the surface. Every day turned into a catalogue of mistakes. I couldn’t believe it – I thought I’d left this behaviour behind.

Once again, I’d allowed mistakes – simple, little mistakes at first – to at first demoralise me, then take me down the vicious spiral I knew so well until I was on the point of paralysis.

The Point

Recently I launched my first Alpha of Lapsus. As you might expect, I made some mistakes. For the first time, I could see clearly the trap I was about to fall into yet again.

I tried to concentrate on providing a fix rather than feeling bad, or imagining how annoyed my Alpha testers might feel. I wasn’t totally successful, but I was more able to think clearly about how I could correct the mistake. I finally realised something really obvious.

It’s not the mistake that’s important, it’s how you deal with the mistake.

If I allow myself to obsess over the mistake itself and how terrible it is:

1. I’ll feel really bad.
2. That will mean I can’t provide an effective solution.
3. That will mean the mistake doesn’t get fixed properly.
4. And… wham! We’re back into the old pattern again.

Since I focused on fixing my mistake, I didn’t jump on the helter-skelter of bad feeling and the mistake was fixed properly.

Other Coping Strategies

1. Giving people an “out”

“I’m doing my absolute best for this person, but if they’re unhappy, they can always quit.”

For my Alpha Testers, it means I’ve asked them to try the software for a minimum of 3 weeks. After that they’re free to stop. For the paying customers of Lapsus, this will mean a full 30 day no quibble refund, which is great business practice anyway. Giving people an out means I don’t feel guilty. I don’t feel shame. I feel like I’ve done right by the person because I’ve compensated them in some way for my mistake.

2. Caring less

“You care too much.”

I’m really passionate about every little detail. Some people have told me “You care too much.” I disagree. There’s too much mediocre stuff out there. Caring about quality is something that I think will stand me in good stead.

The solution isn’t to just care less, it’s to change how I channel that energy. It’s to be relentlessly positive when something doesn’t make the grade. It’s to consider how unpleasant or difficult situations have helped me. That isn’t changing my standards, it’s just changing my attitude when things don’t go as planned.

3. Accepting failure

“Mistakes are OK.”

Making mistakes is part of life. “Mistakes are OK if you learn from them” the world bleats at us. I’d go one further. “Mistakes are OK.” Full stop. End of sentence.
Learning from mistakes isn’t essential. It’s valuable, of course. And it should be encouraged. But the first quote seems to imply that if I don’t learn from my mistakes, the world ends. It doesn’t. Shit happens. It doesn’t mean I’m bad at what I do or my project is doomed.

Accepting that I’ll not always learn from my mistakes means I’m much calmer when correcting a mistake. And it increases the chances that I make sure it never happens again.

4. Focusing on my needs

“I care best for others when I’m caring for myself”

Being empathetic is a great quality to have, but like anything else, when it’s taken to extremes it can be really unhelpful. To be effective I need to decouple myself from others.

By thinking what I need to put right the mistake, I’m much more effective at putting it right. Which means less mistakes and better solutions.

Conclusion

It’s still very early days for me, but I think I’ve made my first baby steps at battling against “The Tyranny of Mistakes”.

As always, your comments are always welcome.

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