On Making Mistakes

Seth Godin’s recent post “Delivering on never” got me thinking about mistakes. And how much I hate making them.

Seth says you can’t deliver on all “nevers.” (Read the post if you don’t know what I’m talking about. Seth is wonderfully insightful in just 87 words.) I’m not going to kid you – my initial reaction was, “Well why can’t I deliver all of them?  Why can’t I just deliver perfection? How about I just never make a mistake?”

And believe me, I try. I try to never miss a deadline, leave a typo or be late for a meeting. I’ve also earned a reputation for being a control freak (though I prefer to think of it as being detail-oriented). But in reality I’ve done all three of those this week alone (admittedly, it was a bad week).

What grates me is that these mistakes are usually caused by failing to think things through, rushing through a project, a lack of attention to detail. All (mostly) preventable.

I would almost – almost – rather suffer through a major failure. Major failures mean you took a risk. You tried something new. Major failures mean there’s a lesson to be learned. The only lesson you have to learn from leaving a typo is to use spell check – and that’s most likely something you already knew.

Lucky me, those big failures are just as certain to come about as any small mistake.