Make One Mistake Next Week!

I'm going to start "Next Week's Challenge" on my blog.  Over the next few months, if you follow along with the challenges, together as a group of software developers, we should all grow, and as a whole, improve the software development world! 

At the end of each challenge week, I will ask you to post your feedback, so we can all grow together on how things went!  Sound like a good idea?  Let’s begin!

My Challenge to You

Here is an interesting challenge to get things moving! I challenge you to make one mistake next week.  If you reading this on Friday, think about it over the weekend, and try of think of something that might end up as a "mistake", and just do it.  Don't be afraid to fail, just do it!  This is my challenge to you.  Weird Eh?  This could have two possible outcomes:

You will be forced to try something you might not have tried, and you will do it:

1. and nothing will fail, and you won't have made a mistake, and you will be rewarded by your awesome accomplishment!
   
   or
   
2. and you will fall flat on your face!  If that happens, make sure you write down in detail what your execution plan was, and what went wrong.  Step back and think about it, and write down 3 things you could do differently next time.

Mistakes Make You Grow

Don't be afraid to make mistakes.  Some of the most significant advancements in science and humanity have been because of mistakes.  Unfortunately as software developers, we are trained to not make mistakes.  Heck, any mistake we make in code at the very least will cause a bug and testing time.  In the worst cases, you cause systems to go down and create extremely unhappy managers and customers.  However I challenge you today, to not be afraid to make them!  Just make sure you learn from them quickly, and adjust your approach, and keep going! 

Some of the most successful software companies have made disastrous miscalculations that can be conceived as mistakes, you can see some of them on my other blog, 10 Biggest Computer Flops of All Time.  Now, although the title says they were flops, and they were at their time, you could argue that all of these "flops" had huge contributions to our software and technology industries. 

Where Does the Problem Start?

The problem starts in school, where you are taught to not make mistakes.  You are basically punished if you think outside of the box, and make mistakes.  We are trained in this manor for at least twelve years of our lives.  While this is good while we are learning, we need to make a transition to being ok with making mistakes as we grow.

I would rather my software developers make a mistake, and learn from it, than sit there all day and not come up with anything original.  When a mistake is made, I simply ask that they try and not do it again.  The key here is not just trying to not make mistakes, but to put measures in place so that you can't make the mistake again!  Or so it’s harder to make the mistake. 

Some Personal Examples

I make mistakes all the time!  But I never make the same one's twice, and I try and improve things and learn all the time, constantly!  Let me pick a few examples that have happened on my blog in the last few weeks so you can follow along!

In the last two weeks as I dedicated more time to my blogs to take my mind off of some family issues.  My aunt is struggling with a battle with cancer, in and out of the hospital, cancer is brutal, nobody deserves to suffer like that.  I hope one day to make a difference in that area.  Anyway, during the constant postings, I learned a lot about other people through emails and comments.  For example in the post of "How to Win Friends and Make Developers happy" I deleted someone's comments because someone else was attacking them for bashing the post.  I was trying to be nice and avoid conflict, but soon got huge backlash for pulling the comments.  So I put the comments back, because I honestly liked the post, it was just I didn't want conflict on the blog. 

The lesson learned here:  If you’re going to run a blog, just let people say whatever, and if they start fighting with each other, oh well.  Don't delete others posts if you ask for their ideas.  Also, blogging might not be the best way to de-stress :).

In the post yesterday on normalization, I was trying to make a point that JOINS are slow, and in some cases, denormalization could be ok.  I found it interesting that some new Web 2.0 companies were following this path, and I wanted to let my readers know.

Lesson learned was:  "Don't over simplify a hot topic" because you will get flamed.  Also, be careful with titles, some people will not read your post, and just read the title!  Fair enough, I asked for it I guess.

Other lessons I've learned is not to use so much bold and highlighting in my posts, some said that it looked like someone spray painted all over it lol.  I thought that was clever, what does everyone else think?  What's a better way to draw attention to certain areas of the text?

So Don't Be Afraid, Just Learn From Your Mistakes

See, some people will follow the rules, be afraid to be out there, to grow their minds, to challenge the status quo.  They are afraid to say what's on their minds, afraid to be themselves, afraid to ask that girl to dance!  Others will challenge approaches to problems, create new innovative ideas, and ask the girls to dance!  When they are shut down, they will be ok with it, and change their approach.  They get better and better at it, and then you look at them and go "oh, they are naturals at that, I hate them!".  The trick, or sleight of hand, is that they fail 9 out of 10 times, but you don't see those mistakes because they handle the mistake properly, learn, and get better at it!

So be one of those people that makes mistakes, gets back up from the mistakes, learns from them, and try's a new approach. 

Sounds simple, but 90% of the people out there will either never try anything new because they are scared to make a mistake or fail.  The others will try something, make a mistake, not change their approach and try again, fail, and continue that vicious circle over and over.  A very select few will actually make mistakes "correctly".  This is great news for you, because if you learn this skill, you are far ahead in the race!

So What!  I'm A Software Developer, Not Thomas Edison

As software developers you might be thinking at this point, well, I'm a software developer, I'm not trying to be Thomas Edison.  That's fine, what I would say to you is, there must be some other area in your life that you can improve this very second, this very minute, if you were try a different approach.  You might be scared to do it because of the fallout of making a mistake, but why not try it and see what happens!  You can always take corrective action after, and the next time you get another idea, you might get it right!  The lesson should not be "Never Try".

Everyone makes mistakes, you just learn from them.  That is the key.  Easier said than done!  But if you read this blog, and read as far as you have read on this long winded entry, you must want to improve yourself!  So just do it! 

I look forward to hearing your "success's" next week, and even if you do make a "mistake" it will be a success because you will learn from it!

 

Technorati Tags: software development, mistakes, learn from mistakes

Comments

[Nisha]

Well Thanks for the motivation .... i also really feel that most of the people are just afraid to commit mistake due to the reason that they get overconcious of the fact that what other people will say when they come to know that you have made a mistake .... I think the key point is to identify and then rectify your mistakes as soon as you commit it and never commit that mistake again ...

Thanks will try and commit a mistake next week to learn not to commit it again :)

[American Freight]

Very informative and worthwile reading. Thanks for shairing this valuable information.

[Siraj]

Loved it. A friend of mine had this link / URL in his MSN nick. And i just realized of a mistake i.e. i should not have followed that link and ended up here ;) .. now I am going to make more mistakes than before .. but then again loved reading.