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Trial and Error Quotes

    “The first time you bake cupcakes, you will certainly follow the recipe with rigor. The third time, you might improvise and screw up. Learning your lesson, you will follow the recipe again and again as closely as you can. At this point, by the fifth time, some people actually learn to bake. They improvise successfully. They understand the science and the outcomes. They develop a kind of gracefulness in the kitchen. Others merely plod along. They’re cooks, not chefs. We have too many cooks. The world is begging for chefs.”

    Seth Godin, Graceful (Page 5)

      “Committing many mistakes, one learns what is a mistake and how not to commit it. Knowing what is error, one comes closer and closer to what is truth. It is an individual exploration, you cannot depend on others’ conclusions.”

      Osho, Courage (Page 16)

        “That is one of the problems: people have been taught never to do anything wrong, and then they become so hesitant, so fearful, so frightened of doing wrong, that they become stuck. They cannot move, something wrong may happen. So they become like rocks, they lose all movement. Commit as many mistakes as possible, remembering only one thing: don’t commit the same mistake again. And you will be growing.”

        Osho, Courage (Page 12)

          “Life is trial and error, and culture is a collection of some of our best practices handed down from generation to generation, but even they aren’t one-size-fits-all.  We have to make our own mistakes to figure everything out.  When we were kids, we had to bump into something before we stopped running in the house; we had to burn our hands before we stopped playing with the stove.  And now, we gotta get our assess kicked a few dozen times before we get the hang of whatever the rest of this life is.” ~ Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 267)

            “There are no mistakes in life, only lessons.  There is no such thing as a negative experience, only opportunities to grow, learn and advance along the road of self-mastery.  From struggle comes strength.  Even pain can be a wonderful teacher.” ~ Robin S. Sharma, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

              “Most learning, especially most organizational learning, occurs through trial and error.  Error occurs whether you want it to or not.  Error is difficult to avoid.  It’s not clear that research or preparation have an enormous impact on error, especially marketing error.  Error is clearly not in short supply.  Trial, on the other hand, is quite scarce, especially in some organizations.  People mistakenly believe that one way to successfully avoid error is to avoid trial.  We need more trial.”

              Seth Godin, Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?