Learn from success or from mistakes?
In “Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways To Be Persuasive,” the author describes a noteworthy study:
Behavioral scientist Wendy Joung and her colleagues were interested in whether directing learners' attention to others' past mistakes could provide better training than focusing on correct actions others had taken. In other words, which produces better results: standardizing a correct path and teaching it, or learning from others' errors and mistakes?
They gathered a large body of data from different trainees, specifically firefighters, who must make very quick decisions in dangerous situations. They have to skillfully and seamlessly combine the mind's intelligence and specific operational plans, the heart's courage in frequently changing decisions to match reality, and the body's thoroughly trained dexterity. Firefighters' survival and success seem to share something with entrepreneurs who “run a business” and must succeed before all their capital runs out.
Data analysis showed markedly greater improvements in judgment among firefighters trained using others' mistakes than among those trained without considering others' mistakes.
This is completely contrary to the Science of Success theory (not yet comprehensively verified), which says to focus on positive successes rather than dwelling on mistakes: if you focus on mistakes, you will actually make them! It is just like thinking, ‘Do not think of a pink elephant’—you will indeed think of a pink elephant!
In this case, people clearly learn more from mistakes than from successes. Although many companies focus primarily on training positive aspects and teaching sound decision-making, these studies' results indicate that a substantial portion of training should focus on mistakes others have made and how to avoid them.
You can always learn on your own… But your time is not unlimited.
In starting a business, can we succeed without making any mistakes?
Entrepreneurship is an arduous journey, and success requires not only spirit and passion but sufficient knowledge and skills.
We can always learn a great deal from our own mistakes (about 80%), yet there are still lessons we can learn from others' mistakes (the remaining 20%). If each person lives for 60 years, then clearly someone who learns from both their own mistakes and those of others will make better use of those 60 years than someone who learns only from their own mistakes.
If you receive proper entrepreneurship training, it will give you a foundation for acquiring 20% of this body of life experience. Studying entrepreneurship means learning from experience (reflecting on it until you appreciate its gravity!), from predecessors’ mistakes, from what others spent 20 years getting wrong, getting right, and getting wrong again before distilling it into lessons for us. This means we do not need to spend another 20 years having the same experiences, encountering exactly the same failures, and deriving the same lesson, only to become exactly like our predecessors after 20 years. That is not how society builds on the past and progresses!
Do not celebrate too soon. You will not immediately “absorb” the hard-earned lessons from earlier entrepreneurs' mistakes, because they are not yet yours. But at least they give you invaluable signals to recognize the road you will travel, the bends you will enter and the turns you will choose, so that whether your choices are right or wrong, you become wiser after each decision.
Now you know how to accelerate learning and personal development toward success: through your own experience and “standing on the shoulders of giants.” Here, you must choose both, not one or the other.
Life is very short, and remember that your resources are not unlimited: time, health, and opportunities. Enter this life with everything you have, learn from everyone you can, and do not arrogantly think you can stand apart from learning and succeed alone without anyone's help. “Just do it, just bang your head against the wall, and reality will be the greatest teacher, teaching you everything”—that is only half true. It is a saying for those who endlessly calculate, plan, and deliberate without ever truly joining in to “make things happen.” In reality, you need to act swiftly while preparing everything necessary: knowledge, skills, experience, relationships, partners, advisers… to be ready for the open sea! And you can accumulate these only alongside action!
Life is short, so those who learn only from their own experiences lose many advantages. Reality is a great teacher because it teaches hard-earned lessons, but after our youth is gone, our money is spent, or no opportunity to start again remains. Are there not football teams that only learn how to win in the 90th minute, just as the referee's final whistle coldly sounds? Your life is finite; act and seek help right now. Do not waste your life!
Mentors and experts remain essential in a startup ecosystem. Do not assume you are already so capable that everyone else’s advice (for your consideration) is merely empty talk.
Standing on the shore watching others swim, it is easy to say, “That's easy; I can do it too.” You think you need no guidance, but only when you jump into the water for the first time do you realize how little you can do!
Seek advisers with experience and real results. The more someone has failed, the better, because you can learn more from them. What matters is learning to work with experts. If you do not know how to do so, a “blame culture” emerges when results disappoint. Remember: you must still take 100% responsibility for your success.
Entrepreneurial capability can therefore certainly be taught, if we learn from earlier entrepreneurs’ mistakes, adapt their experience to our own path, and receive guidance from teachers with profound practical insight. Because business is a very difficult path, learn whenever you can.
Then sleep a little less, and learn and work a little more. If you sleep 10 hours a day while starting a business, you are not on the path to becoming a successful entrepreneur, but on the path to evolving into a pig.
Finally, when the student is ready, the teacher appears!
(When the teacher is ready, students should not skip class)
TMT
Tạ Minh Tuấn – Steve Starwalker is a pioneering entrepreneur in family healthcare, entrepreneurship education and telemedicine technology in Vietnam.
