How to be less afraid of being wrong
I picked up "Tiny Experiments" by Anne-Laure Le Cunff on a random Tuesday evening, expecting nothing less than a full-body validation on my penchant for detours and side quests.
The premise was interesting: you can run on a different operating system that rebels against a world obsessed with results and the many forms of success measurement (KPI, OKR, ROI, NPS, GMW, nasty three-letter curses). It outlines two paths: linear versus experimental. Ladder versus loop.
We know this too well.
In one corner, you feed the compulsion to get things right the first time, climb fast, optimize, and make things look effortless, like you have 55 years of experience at the ripe old age of 37. In the other, you bask in the productive chaos of trying things just to see what happens.
The second bit is about reclaiming trial and error as the default mode for growth, especially when we're wired to get queasy on the "error" part. There is no substitute for actually reading the book, so do it. “Tiny Experiments” has a nice way of organizing ideas, but I’ll dump mine based on resonance.
Not all time is created equal
We all have the same 24 hours as Beyonce (that is a universal truth), but a minute-by-minute measure of time is a bad way to determine its value.
One hour of deep focus or creative flow is not the same as an hour spent spiraling through bad news or switching between tabs. For every creative, entrepreneur, and strategist, we need to protect and relish our good hours.
We will get disrupted, and things will break
When things break, when the weaknesses of our systems get exposed, when things don’t go as planned, we are forced to change. And the book says:
“The degree to which you are forced to change defines the magnitude of the disruption.”
Change feels like your place in this world, which you fought hard for, is being challenged or taken. If we stay rigid, we will also break, but if we learn to dance with disruption, we will stay longer in the game and increase our odds of winning.
Learn in public
This is one of my favorite lines in the book. If you are a millennial who suddenly became important at work, this is for you:
“Learning in public is the opposite of pretending you have everything figured out.”
Sharing while you’re still figuring it out is the bravest form of learning. It’s also the most generous. HGRT was born out of this premise. You can learn, change your opinions, and you don’t have to be burdened by what people say for updating your world view.
Commit to curiosity
The point isn’t to be right all the time, it’s to stay open. Curiosity doesn’t need tidy outcomes, final answers, and well-behaved data. Le Cunff says that if you take an experimental view of life, it’s hard to take failure personally.
And if that is the case, you don’t have to be afraid of being wrong.
—D