Yes, poorly. The old adage is of course that “anything worth doing is worth doing well” — which is very true. But if we walk around with the notion of only taking on things we can do well, we miss out on incredible opportunities in life.
You won’t complete new tasks the way you’d like to on the first attempt. You may have a dream and vision for how to master this new area of life, but it won’t feel that way when you start. It will feel awkward and unpracticed. You’ll question whether you are really cut out for this type of thing. And you’re likely to be VERY concerned about how your efforts will be viewed by others.
Such is the way of growth. We have to make the mistakes that teach us what not to do, and thus what to do. A technique can fail in a new endeavor, and we can gladly say, “Excellent! I’ve eliminated one way that will not work for what I’m trying to do. How will I change my approach tomorrow?” A partial success should find us saying, “Hey, this might work. I need to PRACTICE. But if I keep this up, I could really make progress.”
People who have achieved great success know this lesson through and through. T. J. Watson, then president of a thriving IBM, once said the formula for success was to “double your rate of failure.”
Now, you’ll excuse me, but I’m going to get a little mathy on you. Imagine you’re trying to solve a problem — business, family, relationship — doesn’t matter. You are looking for solutions to the problem. We’ll say for the sake of the example that 1 out of every 20 of the ideas you consider would actually be useful in addressing the issue.
If you consider or attempt 1 idea per day, you have a 5% chance of success and a 95% chance of failure each day. You’re statistically likely to fail once per day. Now, attempt 2 ideas per day. You’ve gone up to a 10% chance of success and a 90% change of failure. You’re still very likely to not find your solution on a given day. But by doubling your rate of failure, you’ve also doubled you chance of success!
Work at this for 5 days in a row. Tackling 1 solution a day, there’s only a 25% chance you’ve solved the issue. The 2-a-day method has you up to 50-50. Now, imagine you tripled it…
If we desire a new skill or activity greatly enough, we have to be willing to do it poorly for a time. And you can start by practicing alone or with a small audience. If you want to learn to play the guitar, you don’t practice on national television. You practice for yourself, your spouse, or the squirrel sitting outside your window. Better to play poorly in reality and improve daily than to play perfectly in your mind but never pick a guitar.
