Learn from success or from mistakes?
In “Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways To Be Persuasive,” the author describes a noteworthy study:
Behavioral scientist Wendy Joung and her colleagues were very interested in whether directing trainees’ attention to mistakes others had made could provide better training than pointing them toward the correct steps others had taken. In other words, which training method produces better results: establishing one precise, standardized path and teaching it to learners, or learning from other people’s mistakes and errors?
They gathered a large body of data from different trainees, specifically firefighters, who must make very quick decisions in dangerous situations. They have to skillfully and seamlessly combine the mind's intelligence and specific operational plans, the heart's courage in frequently changing decisions to match reality, and the body's thoroughly trained dexterity. Firefighters' survival and success seem to share something with entrepreneurs who “run a business” and must succeed before all their capital runs out.
Data analysis showed markedly greater improvements in judgment among firefighters trained using others' mistakes than among those trained without considering others' mistakes.
This is completely contrary to the Science of Success theory (not yet comprehensively verified), which says to focus on positive successes rather than dwelling on mistakes: if you focus on mistakes, you will actually make them! It is just like thinking, ‘Do not think of a pink elephant’—you will indeed think of a pink elephant!
In this case, clearly, people learn more from mistakes than from success. Although many companies mainly focus their training on the positive, teaching people how to make the right decisions, the findings of these studies indicate that a substantial portion of training should focus on mistakes others have made and how people can avoid them.
You can always learn on your own… But your time is not unlimited.
In starting a business, can we succeed without making any mistakes?
Entrepreneurship is an arduous journey, and success requires not only spirit and passion but sufficient knowledge and skills.
We can always learn a great deal from our own mistakes (about 80%), but there are also lessons we can learn from other people's mistakes (the remaining 20%). If everyone lives 60 years, someone who learns from both their own mistakes and others’ will clearly make better use of those 60 years than someone who learns only from their own.
If you receive proper entrepreneurship training, it will give you a foundation for acquiring 20% of this body of life experience. Studying entrepreneurship means learning from experience (reflecting on it until you appreciate its gravity!), from predecessors’ mistakes, from what others spent 20 years getting wrong, getting right, and getting wrong again before distilling it into lessons for us. This means we do not need to spend another 20 years having the same experiences, encountering exactly the same failures, and deriving the same lesson, only to become exactly like our predecessors after 20 years. That is not how society builds on the past and progresses!
Do not celebrate too soon. You will not immediately absorb the hard-earned lessons from earlier entrepreneurs’ mistakes, because those experiences are not yet yours. But at least they offer invaluable signals to help you recognize the path you will take, the bends you will encounter and turns you will choose, so that whether right or wrong, every decision makes you wiser.
Now you know how to accelerate learning and personal development toward success: through your own experience and “standing on the shoulders of giants.” Here, you must choose both, not one or the other.
Life is very short, and remember that your resources are not unlimited: time, health, and opportunities. Enter this life with everything you have, learn from everyone you can, and do not arrogantly think you can stand outside the process of learning and succeed alone without anyone’s help. “Just do it. Keep charging into walls, and reality will be the greatest teacher, teaching you everything.” In fact, that is only half true., it is a saying for those who endlessly calculate, plan, and deliberate without ever entering the action to “make things happen.” You must act quickly while preparing the knowledge, skills, experience, relationships, partners, and advisers needed to sail into the open sea! These can only be accumulated alongside action.
Life is short, so those who learn only from their own experiences lose many advantages. Reality is a great teacher because it teaches us hard-earned lessons, but only after we have spent our youth, used up our money or lost every chance to start again. Are there not football teams that only work out how to win in the 90th minute, just as the referee's final whistle rings out mercilessly? Your life is finite. Take action and seek help now. Do not waste your life!
Mentors and experts remain essential in a startup ecosystem. Do not assume you are already so capable that everyone else’s advice (for your consideration) is merely empty talk.
Standing on the shore watching others swim, it is easy to say, “That's easy; I can do it too.” You think you need no guidance, but only when you jump into the water for the first time do you realize how little you can do!
Seek advisers with experience and real results. In fact, the more they have failed, the better, because the more you can learn from them. The important thing is to learn how to use experts. You do not yet know how to work with them, and when results fall short, a “blame culture” emerges. Remember, what still matters is that you take 100% responsibility for your success.
Entrepreneurial ability can therefore certainly be trained if we learn from the mistakes of earlier entrepreneurs, adapt experience to connect with your own path and receive guidance from insightful, practical teachers. Business is a very difficult path, so learn whenever you can.
Then sleep a little less, and learn and work a little more. If you sleep 10 hours a day while starting a business, you are not on the path to becoming a successful entrepreneur; you are on the evolutionary path to becoming a pig.
Finally, when the student is ready, the teacher appears!
(When the teacher is ready, students should not skip class)
TMT
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