[1] I consider my greatest failure in life to be that I haven’t failed enough.
[2] I failed to make critical course-corrections because they lay outside my info bubble,
Some day you may find you’ve taken on too many tasks, and that trying to succeed at all of them means you will fail all of them. At that point if “giving up”** (enough of them) to succeed at the rest is outside your info bubble***/the realm of acts you consider taking*, things might not go well—and perfectionism can mean taking failure really hard.
It may be tricky, balancing this against trying more things—to move away from not doing enough things at once for there to be any “failure”** (to learn from). Or it might be easy—if you’re doing things that other people have done before you might be able to get an estimate of difficulty, and useful advice.
(If someone knows X, Y and Z are crazy hard, then if you ran your plan to do all of them on the same day by them, maybe they’ll hear “I’m going to run a 100 miles and climb a mountain and fight a bear.” and say “don’t do that, that’s crazy hard and too many things. If you want all 3, start by trying to run 1 mile, climbing a tree/small hill, and learning about the right form for punching, and get started on a punching bag.”)
*This theory is oversimplified—failure stems from multiple causes, present and absent. Perhaps this means success requires a bunch of things to go right. Perhaps it means the opposite—failure requires a bunch of things to go wrong.
Perhaps there are many good changes, any one of which can improve things radically, or outright lead to success directly (or via spiraling—like if adding a good habit led to getting better at adding good habits, etc. ). And likewise, many bad changes which can make things a lot worse (not getting enough sleep → sleep deprivation → not doing things as well + not making as good of decisions (~per unit of time) → things get worse, etc.)
**Framing/mindset may effect perception and action. (Recognizing this/changing mindset might help.) If you see something as “giving up” you may be unlikely to do it.
“(Classes with lots of) Tests are amazing—you get to fail so much!”—no one says this.
“I can see how well my program is working right now by having it tell me what it’s thinking.” Sounds a bit more positive.
***I’m not sure this is what you meant by info bubble, and I’m curious about what it actually means.
What I meant by “info bubble” is just all the things I’m aware of at this point in time. Presumably there are actions outside of my info bubble which are more beneficial (or more harmful) than any inside, simply because things I’m unaware of encompasses a much larger expanse of possibility space. This is more true the more insular my life has been up to the present moment. The fact that I didn’t “sow my wild oats”, as the expression goes, did spare me from some harm, but it also stopped me from discovering things that could have set my life on a different, more optimal path.
Some day you may find you’ve taken on too many tasks, and that trying to succeed at all of them means you will fail all of them. At that point if “giving up”** (enough of them) to succeed at the rest is outside your info bubble***/the realm of acts you consider taking*, things might not go well—and perfectionism can mean taking failure really hard.
It may be tricky, balancing this against trying more things—to move away from not doing enough things at once for there to be any “failure”** (to learn from). Or it might be easy—if you’re doing things that other people have done before you might be able to get an estimate of difficulty, and useful advice.
(If someone knows X, Y and Z are crazy hard, then if you ran your plan to do all of them on the same day by them, maybe they’ll hear “I’m going to run a 100 miles and climb a mountain and fight a bear.” and say “don’t do that, that’s crazy hard and too many things. If you want all 3, start by trying to run 1 mile, climbing a tree/small hill, and learning about the right form for punching, and get started on a punching bag.”)
*This theory is oversimplified—failure stems from multiple causes, present and absent. Perhaps this means success requires a bunch of things to go right. Perhaps it means the opposite—failure requires a bunch of things to go wrong.
Perhaps there are many good changes, any one of which can improve things radically, or outright lead to success directly (or via spiraling—like if adding a good habit led to getting better at adding good habits, etc. ). And likewise, many bad changes which can make things a lot worse (not getting enough sleep → sleep deprivation → not doing things as well + not making as good of decisions (~per unit of time) → things get worse, etc.)
**Framing/mindset may effect perception and action. (Recognizing this/changing mindset might help.) If you see something as “giving up” you may be unlikely to do it.
“(Classes with lots of) Tests are amazing—you get to fail so much!”—no one says this.
“I can see how well my program is working right now by having it tell me what it’s thinking.” Sounds a bit more positive.
***I’m not sure this is what you meant by info bubble, and I’m curious about what it actually means.
Classes with lots of tests are amazing, thanks to the testing effect.
What I meant by “info bubble” is just all the things I’m aware of at this point in time. Presumably there are actions outside of my info bubble which are more beneficial (or more harmful) than any inside, simply because things I’m unaware of encompasses a much larger expanse of possibility space. This is more true the more insular my life has been up to the present moment. The fact that I didn’t “sow my wild oats”, as the expression goes, did spare me from some harm, but it also stopped me from discovering things that could have set my life on a different, more optimal path.