Decision Tips
Look for lessons in mistakes.
The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make a mistake.
—E. G. Hubbard
Henry Ford’s first business, the Detroit Automobile Company, failed within two years. His second automobile business also failed. But his third, the Ford Motor Company, made him one of America’s richest men. Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first job as an anchor in Baltimore. Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, had his first book rejected by 27 different publishers. Colonel Harland Sanders was fired from dozens of jobs before founding what is now KFC. When developing his bagless vacuum, James Dyson went through 5,126 failed prototypes and his savings over 15 years. Today he’s worth $4.5 billion. And arguably the greatest basketball player of all time, Michael Jordan, was cut from his high school basketball team.
The above examples illustrate the point of this chapter: Some of the most accomplished people have faced setbacks and failures.1 However, when people view them as learning opportunities and extract insights from them, they can be used to improve future decision making. Or as Thomas Edison so aptly put it, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
This chapter is an extension of our previous discussion of risk taking. The greater the risks you take, the greater the probability that you’ll make mistakes. It’s up to you to decide whether you treat your mistakes as failures or as new information to learn from.
It’s up to you to decide whether you treat your mistakes as failures or as new information to learn from.
Two streams of research can provide us with insights into how and why we respond the way we do to mistakes and setbacks. These are reinforcement theory and studies on perfectionism.
Reinforcement theory tells us that repeated failures lessen our motivation to try again.2 Take, for instance, your current interests and hobbies: You probably continue them because you’re relatively good at them. If you spend your spare time knitting, golfing, reading, doing crossword puzzles, drawing, or writing computer programs, I’d predict that part of the reason you enjoy the activity you’ve chosen is that you’re relatively successful at it. Now think about activities you’ve tried and never gone back to. My guess is that you had no natural talent for the activity or that you found the activity difficult, so you lacked motivation to continue or to develop your skill. We all have a tendency to want to repeat those activities where we’re positively reinforced with successes or successive improvements and to avoid activities where there is no positive reinforcement. What does this mean in terms of decision making? You’re going to make choices that don’t turn out as you expected, and these setbacks are likely to make it more difficult for you to make future decisions that encompass uncertainty and risk.
Another barrier to accepting mistakes is the desire for perfectionism. A number of us are perfectionists—meaning we have a strong desire to do well at tasks and also tend to resist short-term change.3 Although perfectionism is a complex concept, its major dimension is excessive concern over making mistakes.4 People high in perfectionism fear failing, making mistakes, and losing control.5 They are also more likely to be plagued by procrastination.6 It appears that a perfectionist’s response to the fear of making a mistake is often to avoid making decisions. If you have strong perfectionist tendencies, beware that this can lead to both fear of making mistakes and procrastination.
So how do you counteract the reinforcing pressures of setbacks? How can you move forward and not become gun-shy after you’ve made decisions that didn’t work out as you had hoped? You begin by acknowledging that failures are part of life. Life is made up of uncertainties, so the only way to avoid failures is to avoid uncertainty and risk. Is that the kind of life you want to live? Probably not. What you need to do is to extract lessons from your setbacks. Given that you’re going to make mistakes, what can you learn from them? What insights can they provide that can help you make better decisions in the future? Making mistakes is okay; you just don’t want to repeat the same mistakes. And once you make a mistake, you want to bounce back from it. The best way to do this is to seek out small victories. After a major setback, make decisions where you can achieve small wins or make small improvements. This helps you regain your confidence. As a case in point, a friend of mine decided to try to impress his girlfriend by cooking her an elaborate French-cuisine dinner. It was a disaster. None of the recipes turned out right. His first reaction was to give up his efforts at trying to prepare gourmet meals, but on second thought he decided to go for small wins. The next time he invited her over, he grilled steaks and focused his gourmet talents on the crème brûlé dessert.
Look for lessons in mistakes.
If you’re a perfectionist, be particularly alert to tendencies to procrastinate.
Seek small successes or small improvements.