Why It's Important For You to Practice Failure

We learn valuable lessons when we experience failure and setbacks. Most of us wait for those failures to happen to us, however, instead of seeking them out. But deliberately making mistakes can give us the knowledge we need to more easily overcome obstacles in the future.

[emergencymind]

Great video. As emergency doctors, proactively training for challenges and failures is critical to improving performance, but the consequences of real-life "stalls" can be extremely severe, so how do we do it? Two Ideas:
1 -- Simulation. Whenever possible, try to create safe environments where you can actively work through stumble and recovery drills. Purposefully stretching your skills and training for failures in simulated environments is a great way to get much of the benefit of practicing failure without the real-life costs.
2 -- Visualization. when you don't have access to a sim lab, you can always run mental experiments where you mentally practice recovering from a stumble. You can do this individually in a meditative mindset, or with a team as a low-fidelity sim or a table-top exercise.

[mikehale]

These videos are gems. Teachers could use these in high school or college to engage minds on a deeper level of problem-solving. I spend every Sunday morning starting with the FS Newsletter. It has added real value to all aspects of my life.

[aditi]

These ideologies are so natural and practical...still harder to practice

[SamTuke]

Practical examples of how to practice failing on business contexts please! A brilliant decision-making lecturer at business school forced the whole class to commit to decisions which (we'd later realize) exemplified overconfidence bias. We felt very silly when our decisions and biases were revealed to our classmates. That's a lesson I don't think any of us will forget, and will inform better decisions for the best of our lives. Failing in a controlled environment 🙂

[cambowman]

This makes sense if you're the ONLY one paying the price for that "mistake" and you already have an idea of how to resolve the issue and doing so in practice will require a fairly high degree of facility, so there's a need to practice. Otherwise, this is a startlingly bad idea. There are plenty of situations in which this would not only be a bad idea, but actual grounds for a malpractice claim. I'd prefer my surgeon or my lawyer NOT take the opportunity to learn at my expense by deliberately making a "mistake." Indeed doing so would be a violation of their professional responsibility.

[XOPOIIIO]

Sorry, I don't know where to write. But how could I read your articles in chronological order on your site? The option disappeared recently.