# make mistakes Be open to wrong answers because that is how you learn. > It is by erring again and again that we find the shape of the path, by tripping again and again that we learn to walk it. Along the way, the answers emerge not before us but in us. > > — [Maria Popova](https://www.themarginalian.org/2023/03/18/lewis-thomas-mistakes/) > If you are not making mistakes, you're not taking enough risks. > > — Debbie Millman > Mistakes are not just opportunities for learning; they are, in an important sense, the _only_ opportunity for learning or making something truly new. > > — Richard Feynman Old design teacher once said that sometimes you need to step over the line to figure out where it is. ## willingness to be wrong Only by considering wrong answers will you find the right answers. > We are at our human finest, dancing with our minds, when there are more choices than two. Sometimes there are ten, even twenty different ways to go, all but one bound to be wrong, and the richness of selection in such situations can lift us onto totally new ground. This process is called exploration… > > If we had only a single center in our brains, capable of responding only when a correct decision was to be made, instead of the jumble of different, credulous, easily conned clusters of neurons that provide for being flung off into blind alleys, up trees, down dead ends, out into blue sky, along wrong turnings, around bends, we could only stay the way we are today, stuck fast. > > — Lewis Thomas ## failing better **Fail Hard. Fail Fast. Fail Often.** is a catch-phrase you hear a lot. There is value in being open to failure (being wrong) in the creative exploration process. Take big shots, be willing to go deep, understand that most ideas won't work. I have seen this phrase overused, though, and often used as an excuse for when something broken or incomplete is shipped. I prefer the phrase **Fail Better**. Make intelligent attempts and learn from what doesn't work. Getting something wrong, understanding why, and then improving is the key to [[iteration|iterative design]]. > The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them — especially not from yourself. Instead of turning away in denial when you make a mistake, you should become a connoisseur of your own mistakes, turning them over in your mind as if they were works of art, which in a way they are. … The trick is to take advantage of the particular details of the mess you've made, so that your next attempt will be informed by it and not just another blind stab in the dark. > > — Daniel Dennett I absolutely love this idea… > Try to acquire the weird practice of savoring your mistakes, delighting in uncovering the strange quirks that led you astray. Then, once you have sucked out all the goodness to be gained from having made them, you can cheerfully set them behind you, and go on to the next big opportunity. > > — Daniel Dennett --- tags: #creativity #process home: [[! creative process]]