Play is what happens anytime we choose to do something without knowing exactly where it's going to end up. There are no instructions we need to follow or outcomes we need to achieve. Just two elements: intrinsic motivation and the freedom not to know the answer in advance.
Objectivity is just when you park your emotions and learn without judgment. I don't have to like it, I'm just here to learn from it. Neutrality negates your opinions as if you have no judgments.
Most people, when they make a mistake, either beat themselves up or quickly move on and try to forget about it. But neither of these responses is optimal. The most effective approach is to sit with the discomfort of a mistake long enough to extract its lessons, but not so long that you become mired in self-criticism.
Most of us think we know how to learn from our mistakes. We tell ourselves we'll do better next time, or we replay the failure in our minds, hoping the sting of embarrassment will motivate us to change. But research suggests these common responses are often the least effective ways to grow from our errors — and in some cases, they can actually make things worse.
We don't learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience. If you have a really challenging experience and you just move on, you're not going to get any wiser. You need to actually stop and reflect on what happened.
Most people think of mistakes as unfortunate detours on the path to success. But researcher Karen Sokal-Gutierrez has found that the relationship between error and learning is more intimate than that — that mistakes aren't just inevitable, they're essential. Without them, we don't just learn more slowly; in some ways, we don't learn at all.
Most of us think the best response to failure is to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and try again. But researchers have found that this intuition is often wrong. What matters more is not the trying again, but the thinking — specifically, the kind of thinking we do about our mistakes before we make our next attempt.
Most of us think we know how to learn from our mistakes. We feel bad about them, we try to understand what went wrong, and we vow to do better. But researchers who study the science of errors say that what we think helps us learn from our mistakes often doesn't work — and some of the things we think are unhelpful actually do work.
Most of us think we learn from our mistakes, but researchers have found that people often fail to extract useful lessons from their failures. Instead, we focus on the pain of the mistake itself, and quickly move on — which means we're doomed to repeat it.
Most of us think we learn from our mistakes, but the research suggests something more complicated: we often remember our mistakes in ways that are distorted, and we frequently draw the wrong lessons from them. We tell ourselves stories about what went wrong that protect our egos, and those stories can lead us to repeat the same errors.
Most of us think of mistakes as something to be ashamed of, to be hidden or forgotten as quickly as possible. But researchers who study learning and performance have found that this instinct can be deeply counterproductive. The errors we most want to forget are often the ones with the most to teach us.
Most of us think about mistakes the way we think about embarrassing moments — we want to put them behind us as quickly as possible. But researchers who study learning say this is precisely the wrong approach. The moments just after making a mistake, it turns out, are among the most powerful opportunities for the brain to encode new information.
Most of us think of failure as something to move past as quickly as possible — something to hide or explain away. But researchers have found that the people who benefit most from their mistakes are those who do the opposite: they slow down, sit with the discomfort, and try to understand exactly what went wrong and why.
Most people think the best response to a mistake is to move on quickly — to put it behind them and not dwell on it. But research suggests that this instinct can actually prevent us from learning. The most effective way to learn from failure isn't to forget it — it's to engage with it carefully and deliberately.
We have a very egocentric view of our mistakes. We're thinking about how does this reflect on me, how does it make me look. And I think when we do that, we actually lose an opportunity to be curious about the mistake, to learn from the mistake, to understand what really went wrong.
Adults spend so much time in environments where they're trying to control the outcome that play as a practice becomes about not knowing, not having an attachment to what the outcome is. Side quests release us from worrying about the outcome. Learning begins with inquiry. In fact, the word quest comes from the root question or inquiry.
We've reduced play to be this cherry on top of an already good life. But from a scientific perspective, it is much more fundamental than that. Play is what happens anytime we choose to do something without knowing exactly where it's going to end up.
For many of us, forgetting a name or losing your keys feels like a small failure. But what if forgetting is actually one of the most important things your brain does?
I've always thought of myself as a learning machine. The moment I think I know everything or I've seen everything or I've experienced everything, I become a worse investor. The best investors I know are voraciously curious and are always trying to update their models and their thinking.
I can't teach you if I don't have your attention. But if I can get your attention with something remarkable, well, now I suddenly have something to attach the learning to.
Old math isn't going to work for the new equations coming to work. You're going to have to start over a bit, redefine yourself, learn again, push yourself, get uncomfortable.
It's a move really from the education a lot of us were familiar with, which was everyone sitting on the mat learning together, progressing as one, to actually adapting to the strengths and weaknesses of an individual student.
I'm just offering a glimpse of some of the things that people may not see, of sweaty hands, of anxiety, insecurity, of trying to be someone I'm not, of making mistakes, learning from those mistakes.
6mo ago
Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.
