Treat Failure Like a Scientist (8)
Treat Failure Like a Scientist
When a scientist runs an experiment, there are all sorts of results that could happen. Some results are positive and some are negative, but all of them are data points. Each result is a piece of data that can ultimately lead to an answer. And that's exactly how a scientist treats failure: as another data point.
This is much different than how society often talks about failure. For most of us, failure feels like an indication of who we are as a person. Failing a test means you're not smart enough. Failing to get fit means you're undesirable. Failing in business means you don't have what it takes. Failing at art means you're not creative. And so on.
But for the scientist, a negative result is not an indication that they are a bad scientist. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Proving a hypothesis wrong is often just as useful as proving it right because you learned something along the way. Your failures are simply data points that can help lead you to the right answer.
Failure Is the Cost You Pay to Be Right
None of this is to say that you should seek to make mistakes or that failing is fun. Obviously, you'll try to do things the right way. And failing on something that is important to you is never fun. But failure will always be part of your growth for one simple reason…
If you're focused on building a new habit or learning a new skill or mastering a craft of any type, then you're basically experimenting in one way or another. And if you run enough experiments, then sometimes you're going to get a negative result.
It happens to every scientist and it will happen to you and me as well. To paraphrase Seth Godin: Failure is simply a cost you have to pay on the way to being right. Treat failure like a scientist.
Your failures are not you.
Your successes are not you.
They are simply data points that help guide the next experiment.
from http://lifehacker.com/treat-failure-...ist-1537090657
"Failure Is the Cost You Pay to Be Right." Boom!
As an actual scientist I endorse this post. However:
"Proving a hypothesis wrong is often just as useful as proving it right because you learned something along the way"
-False. Proving a hypothesis wrong is ALWAYS more useful than proving it right. Fact: you CANNOT prove a hypothesis correct. You can only gather evidence which is consistent with a hypothesis.
I do experiments that basically go like this: I will create this situation or condition and enact X stimulus. If A happens then the behaviour is consistent with my hypothesis. If B happens then my hypothesis is wrong, which is great as my collection of plausible hypotheses has just shrunk by one. Disproving hypotheses is far more progressive.
Originally Posted by zeno
I'd be rubbish. I've played a lot of 500 and memorising what cards have been played is habit... I'd probably openly discuss my reasoning and get greeted with a "Sir, are you counting cards?" "No it's just obvious which ones have been played" "Sir you're going to have to come with us" "Fuck you I'm Kevin Spacey" > RUN OUT OF THE CASINO.
Haha we probably would make a bad team then, my girlfriend and I were called into the casino back room in Amsterdam a few weeks due to our unusual visiting frequency. They didn't appreciate my cheeky comments too much,
Lol sounds like a good story. I think us Kiwi's are often too cheeky for our own good - a consequence of coming from a country where most people are laid back.
Great article, reminds me of when my assistant bid 100x more than the intended by a simple decimal place mistake and we ended up blowing $600 in 5 minutes. It was a def big 'failure' but was able to use the data to turn that minus into a positive and that data is still bringing in profits today.
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