Comments on: Can we Learn from Mistakes? http://www.dougwoods.co.uk/blog/can-we-learn-from-mistakes/ ICT, Online and eLearning Consultant and Trainer Fri, 12 Apr 2013 14:42:57 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: doug http://www.dougwoods.co.uk/blog/can-we-learn-from-mistakes/#comment-33 doug Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:15:03 +0000 http://dougwoods.co.uk/blog/?p=243#comment-33 Clive, thank you for your comment; you make some excellent points.
Analysing mistakes is important, in fact it’s the topic of a follow-up article I’m planning. As you say, confidence is an important issue too and it is confidence in their ability to analyse mistakes (successes too, I’d suggest) which is key.
I’m not sure I’d agree that confident people make mistakes and unconfident people avoid making mistakes, though, … we can all make mistakes.
The issue is that simply making a mistake does not, in itself, give us the right answer.

]]> By: Clive Portman http://www.dougwoods.co.uk/blog/can-we-learn-from-mistakes/#comment-32 Clive Portman Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:30:37 +0000 http://dougwoods.co.uk/blog/?p=243#comment-32 Hmm. Couldn’t disagree with you more.

I think we learn far more when we make mistakes and stop to analyse what went wrong, than if we get things right in the first place.

By comparing ‘trial and error’ with ‘learning from mistakes’, you’re just making a distinction based on how sure one was of the choice in the first place. This only comes into play when you take confidence into account: more confident people are happy to make mistakes and learn from them, while unconfident people shy away from the experience and play safe, often learning nothing.

You’ve hit the nail on the head in your last paragraph. It’s when mistakes are labelled as failures that under-confident people stop learning, and it’s important to get rid of the misconception. Sorry, but I feel you’re adding to that!

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