Learn how to succeed through Failure

To preface this, it is not my own idea. I have read many books, and I got it from one, but now that I have applied the philosophy to my life, I have incorporated it in new ways.

The learning process is really about error correction. However it is not about reduction of errors, or trying not to make very many, learning something well can be about making as many error's as possible in the beginning. I will now use an example. There was a game called dance dance revolution. People walking by it in an arcade were drawn to the flashing lights and dance pad on the ground, wondering in amazement how it worked. Then an expert would walk up and make it all look so easy that no one else would want to try it.

The first time I did it, I knew I would look funny doing it, and that I probably would not be able to do anything about it. So I tried tons of different songs, watched others do it, and would hopelessly abandon all sense of coolness in my attempts to get my feet where the screen told me they should be. (as I am writing this, I am noticing the lack of point, or maybe meandering through it, will try to fix). So for the next several times, I tried to discover what I was having a problem with, and what I was already good at doing. Sometimes what I was good at doing would lead me into one of the things that I was awful at. But in the beginning there can be so many things that you are not doing well that you don't know where to improve or how.

The Point. Pick one thing, and get better at it. No one can improve in every area at the same time. Become aware of what is failing and what is working, and be willing to be bad at many things until you figure out what it will take. I think I noticed this most dramatically with the unicycle. I would say there were around 15 leaps of understanding that I had to go through to be able to ride it more than a few inches. Until I could do each of these, and be at least somewhat aware of them, I was not going to be able to ride it.

So my philosophy in riding the unicycle was, fail at as many things as possible, in order to discover what I was going to have to learn how to do. After those initial sessions, I could look for small areas where I was improving, even if they were subtle. I could have learned half of the things to get better at the unicycle the first day, and I still would not be able to ride it. So for a large learning curve like that, it takes just failing for a while, and for the unicycle quite a while.

Then one day, you don't feel like you have improved in the least since you got the darn thing(going from one inch to ten inches does not really count). All of a sudden, you do it for a good distance, everything just falls into place.

(So far, all of this was just cursory info that came to my head as I was thinking about what I was really wanting to say. And as an aside, I am speaking on the main idea at my Toastmasters group this Tuesday, in 2 days)((Alternate title: How to kill two birds with one stone, write about what you are thinking about for a blog, then speak on that topic in your public speaking group. Ha ha ha, I will include that advice in my book on how to take over the world)

Now what I was going to be talking about. The 1 % success rate. This is also not my idea, read it in a book a while ago. If you improve in something by 1 %, anything at all, after a year with compounding interest you will be 1000% better or more. So here is my take on this. I am energized by having new ideas and thoughts in my head. I was interested in cryptography recently for about 3 days, then something else caught my interest. I don't mind jumping around as long as I know that I will come back to this later at some point and learn more about it, or get better at it. In fact, sometimes just having these ideas not completed is exciting because I can take the concepts I did learn about in that brief time further. Then when I go back to the cryptography, I have context to put the information in, as well I have thought about it at random times for a while.

Another way to apply this philosophy would be to think about having a core set of competencies that you want to be able to do. I like to improve myself through reading, improving my motor skills through learning new manual skills like juggling or unicycling, learning how to improve my memory, many others. So lets say there are 10 of these things that can be relaxing and may or may not help me in the future. I go in cycles of doing some of these things and completely neglecting others. Lets break it down

I probably have a top three that I am always doing one of these. If it is juggling, I have all of that stuff in my car, and may always carry three balls around with me wherever I go. I may do this for an average of 20min a day, in between this class, during my break at work. I have the other 7 things that I do occasionally, like origami, where I keep some paper handy in my room or in my backpack, when I get the urge I will do it for a few days, then not do it again for 2 weeks.

At the moment I can only do 3 models of origami. You could call me a failure at origami. I learn one new model a month, if that. And soon It may drop off the radar screen as other things push it out of the way. But one day I will pick it back up, and It might be on the top of the list, in which case I will work on it in a creative frenzy learning two or three figures a day for several weeks.

I guess you could call this the 5min a day principal. Anything you want to learn, if you were to put in a little bit of time towards it every day, at the end of a year, you could be awesome at it. The other point I see in this, is that you could do several of these things, and let a natural flow develop as to which one is more interesting at the moment. This is a very exciting way to go about the day.

Everyone stands in lines, has to sit at stop lights, or wait for a meeting to happen. What could you learn while this was happening?

This question alone is exciting to me, almost blowing my mind. It conjures ideas like what are the limits of human potential? What would be possible if a person continued to get better at an increasing number of things through out their whole life?