As human beings, we all make mistakes. Even we put our best efforts we still do something wrong and make mistakes. Sometimes there is something out of our control, but sometimes it is only our own mistake. This is a normal thing. We can not expect always to do all things in the right way. But, you can expect to improve yourself every time you do something wrong or make a mistake, so you can not repeat the same mistakes.
Sometimes we make small mistakes. Sometimes our mistakes can cost us a lot. But still, it is not the end of life. We need to look at our mistakes as something that will improve us and ensure they will not appear in the future. This is the only important thing behind every successful person. Yes, if you want to succeed, you will need:
- To be aware of your mistakes.
- Study the reasons why you make such a mistake.
- Remove the reasons for the mistake to not appear in the future, so you will not make the same mistake in the future.
The biggest question is what we need to do when we make a mistake. Here I want to share some of my thoughts about this.
As a first thing, you will need to track your progress
Everything that you do must be part of your measuring and tracking system. With this system, you want to track the progress toward the achievement of your main goals. If you don’t track your progress and achievements, in most of the cases you will even don’t know that you are doing something wrong.
So, the best way is to use a systematic approach where you will develop the processes you will need to implement and the results you expect after each process.
You need to use in-process points to check the achievements
If you divide your project into small tasks and action steps, including several milestones you can easily check your achievements at those milestones.
Why is this important?
This important because only on such a way you can locate your small mistakes and improve the work toward the achievement we want to achieve. So, you will not allow big and catastrophic mistakes when you work on something important. You will catch the small mistakes and improve yourself on the go.
You really need the right systematic approach
Yes, we need a systemic approach to discover our mistakes. As I mention at the beginning of this article, you need to know that you make a mistake and learn from this in order to not make the same mistake in the future.
It is important for you to discover that you make a mistake. If you don’t know that there are mistakes you will not be able to learn and improve yourself. I have seen many persons that don’t want to admit that they have made a mistake. What is more important is that they even don’t know that they are guilty because they are not achieving the goals they want to achieve. In such a situation they will blame other people or other circumstances for their own failure.
So, your system will contain three important parts:
1. Admit and be aware of your own mistakes
There can not be excuses for your own mistakes. It doesn’t matter if they are big or small mistakes, you need to do something and not to make excuses.
The important part of this system after you become aware of your mistakes is to take the right responsibility to improve yourself.
2. Analyze what was wrong and find a solution as a quick fix
After you’ve admitted to yourself that you have made a mistake before you talk to other people about what’s wrong, analyze the mistake and what you have done (or not done) as possible causes of your mistake.
The next important question you need to ask yourself is: What I had to do differently to prevent the same or similar mistakes in the future?
Yes, the first thing is to admit that you have messed up something, the next thing is to say that you have learned something and the last thing is about what you need to do for quick fixes and prevention of the same or similar mistakes.
If you have created your working processes, you can easily admit that you make a mistake and you can easily locate where you need to improve something and how to do some quick fixes of your mistake.
3. Learn the reasons why you fail and improve your system
The last part of this system is a continuous improvement process. When you know the reasons why you fail in doing something, you can easily start working on possible improvements.
For example, in the past, I have used some process for book reading as in the figure below.
The most important part of the processes like this in your everyday life is to have clear milestones. What do you want to achieve with what you are doing? In the case of book reading, I have a milestone to read 50 pages in two hours. If I succeed in this then everything is OK, and I don’t need to do something for possible improvements. But, if I don’t succeed to achieve my milestone, then the first question I need to ask myself is “Why”. Why I have not achieved my milestone to read 50 pages of the book? The answers to this question can give me many “because of”. Because I have interrupted or distracted. Or, because I don’t sit and read for two hours, but only one hour. All of these answers are the reasons why I don’t achieve my milestone.
The next thing I need to ask myself for each of the reason is how I can improve myself in order to ensure that the reasons will not appear again. If the reason is a distraction on my phone, I will decide to turn off my phone when I want to read in my reading time. So, all of these solutions will bring improvements to my basic system.