Science Confirms: Failing is the Fast Track to Success!

Don't give up before you learn what you need to be successful. Failing is integral to learning a new skill!

From Fast CoCreate

Originally Posted at Awkward Family Photos

We're all familiar with the term "muscle memory." Once you've learned to do

something--serve a tennis ball, play a difficult piece of piano music, or draw a lifelike human hand--your body seems to intuitively "know" how to reproduce that action. But researchers at John Hopkins University have recently discovered that our ability to perform a physical athletic or creative task isn't entirely about what the body has learned to do right. Instead, we owe our success to the hundred times we've tried to master a skill and failed.

"When you're just starting to learn something new, the errors that you experience are helping you learn faster," says David Herzfeld, a PhD student in Biomedical Engineering involved with the Hopkins study.

To demonstrate this, Herzfeld's team devised a simple video game in which subjects used a joystick (represented on screen by a blue cursor) to hit a red target. The exercise was similar to throwing darts. "When the dart lands below the target, the next time you throw just a bit higher," Herzfeld says. "But next time, maybe the dart goes above the bullseye. What do those two errors together tell you? Your error sensitivity was too large. You overcorrected."

After a series of failed attempts, players corrected just enough to master the game. Then, the scientists secretly reprogrammed the joystick to always send the cursor 30 degrees to the left. After a few huge errors, subjects again adjusted to the new paradigm, learning to aim right. But as soon as they'd gotten the hang of it, the scientists switched the cursor back to its original "straight-ahead" position. Subjects were again forced to correct their shots, this time by aiming left. The scientists discovered that most people increased the speed at which they were able to readjust.

Even though this article is referring to learning hands on skills, I can't help but relate it to the many times I've failed at something in my business, and how the pain of that failure was so indelibly printed on my memory that I made sure that I changed my approach the next time. If failing at a certain task is the way we eventually learn to master that task, then not only am I more resolute to continue on to success in all things, but I am more certain that I should never let my failures get me down. It's just part of the process.