
Mistakes I've made, and what you might be able to learn from them - jacquesm
http://jacquesmattheij.com/Mistakes+I%27ve+made%2C+and+what+you+might+be+able+to+learn+from+them
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gizmo
Only very few people have _all_ the necessary skills to successfully build a
business from the ground up and grow it, and that's OK, really.

In this case Jacques has a few character traits that are real liabilities. So
it's easy for us to laugh from the sidelines... knowing that we would never
make those mistakes ourselves... (oh, the naivete) but we're all making
critical mistakes, and only very few of us are introspective enough to realize
what our real weak points are. (We tend to dismiss those things we're bad at
as unimportant and we overestimate how introspective we are compared to other
people. I'm no exception).

It wouldn't surprise me if the mistakes Jacques has listed are pretty
inconsequential in the big picture. Sure, it only takes one big mistake to
kill a project, but in the course of 24 years everybody is going to make so
many mistakes that it becomes easy to lose the forest for the trees.

Too gullible? That's not the end of the world. Everybody gets burned
occasionally. Well, almost everybody. People who never get burned tend to be
pessimists who never see opportunities, even when they're looking right at
them! Maybe in this case there is a different problem, such as "doesn't make
contingency plans" or "too impulsive". Even if you trust everybody completely
you can still become hugely successful in 24 years. I suspect "gullibility" is
only on the list because you feel like a fool when you get taken advantage of,
not because you've been consistently cheated in the past 24 years. I also
suspect that if you had become hugely successful you wouldn't feel so bad
anymore about trusting the wrong people.

Or take "seeing potential in people, not reality". Perhaps in combination of
the above this can be simply summarized as "bad judge of character", if that's
not too harsh. Other things hint at this as well "surprised when other people
zone out", "surprised when people burn out", etc. Or maybe you do see the
reality in people, the "spark" as it were, but perhaps you just don't have the
reality distortion field to turn those people into passionate followers.

Anyway, I admire the way you've described some of your mistakes, but I don't
believe, not for a second, that these mistakes are actually what have kept you
from getting the success you want.

~~~
jacquesm
Funny, I think I've actually been quite successful, possibly much more than
what I ever deserved, but I always wonder what the road behind me would have
looked like if not for these things and I'm ok with making mistakes as long as
I learn something from them.

This is just one attempt of many at analyzing and learning from past issues.

Think of it as a single step in a 70 year project of self improvement.

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chime
Great post jac. 1, 2, 3, and 5 sound perfect answers for the "What is your
biggest weakness" interview question.

> I was raised in an environment where almost everybody simply spoke the
> truth.

I'm the opposite. I was born and brought up in India and went to a boarding
school at age 10. I will give people the benefit of the doubt initially but I
will not fully trust them till they've proven themselves, usually by their
actions not words.

> 3) I either delegate too much or too little

Proper delegation is easy when all you have are managerial/people-skills. You
delegate to the best coders, artists, and accountants that you can afford. But
when you consider yourself as a viable candidate for a task that can be
delegated, you end up with the "I should have done it myself" half the times.
On the other hand, a manager with no-tech/domain-specific skills would think
"I should have picked a better person." Over time, the manager gets better and
better at finding the right people to delegate the task to, whereas you don't.
Meanwhile, you get more and more prone to either doing it yourself completely
or not doing it at all and completely relying on someone to do it all.

My advice to anyone who fits this bill (as do I), next time you think "I
should have done it myself", stop yourself and instead ask "What could I have
done differently to help someone finish this task better?"

~~~
nileshtrivedi
<i>I'm the opposite. I was born and brought up in India...</i>

Lest anyone draw any unwarranted inferences here, it's not impossible in India
to have an environment where everyone simply speaks the truth. I have myself
as an example. Grew up and was educated in an environment of complete
meritocracy and honesty and only beyond my teenage years, realized how the
real world works.

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swombat
Jacquesm,

To echo your comment about the DNA testing kit, be careful about uploading a
structured analysis of your personal weaknesses to a medium that forgets
nothing... People might use this against you (by exploiting your weaknesses)
in the future.

~~~
jacquesm
Good point, and thanks for the warning, I really appreciated it, and I'll keep
it in mind.

Those that would use this against me though will find that over time I've
changed, bit by bit, and I'm confident enough about these things now that I
dare to commit them to writing as a permanent reminder to myself and to others
that personal improvement _never_ ends.

And for every person that intends to abuse this there will hopefully be more
than one that will either benefit from it indirectly because they can avoid
some pitfall elsewhere or because they will know better what my weaknesses are
when dealing with me in a positive way.

Life is risk.

~~~
swombat
Agreed. I made the same decision/trade-off analysis when I posted my articles
about "Hyperbrains" on <http://inter-sections.net> .. and was sternly warned
about it by my father!... and had to admit he had a point too.

~~~
jacquesm
More reading to do :) Thanks again!

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Sukotto
This is a wonderful exercise. Everyone has hamartia [1] ... the "fatal flaw"
and you would greatly benefit from figuring out what it is and staying mindful
of how it can mess things up for you.

It can be hard to see this in yourself. Ask people you trust to be honest and
who know you well to help you evaluate your weakness(es)

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamartia>

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j_baker
To summarize, don't assume that other people are like you, because they
probably aren't. I think this is a good lesson for many hackers.

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chasingsparks
_I have to work really very hard to overcome this tendency and I'm pretty sure
that it has cost me over the years to find little or no interest in doing the
'grunt' work of running a business._

This is my biggest problem. I am interested building things or attempting to
do things that I am not sure that I am capable of. The moment I finish
building or even recognize how to do so, I lose interest. It's not great.

~~~
Oxryly
The lawn needs mowing and the dishes are dirty!

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DanielBMarkham
Good one, Jacques.

Be careful you are not too hard on yourself. There is a difference between
having a personality trait "I tend to believe what people say as being true"
and making a mistake "I believed that salesman really owned the Brooklyn
Bridge!"

Same goes for the rest of them. In fact, most of these are actually strengths
-- as long as you temper them with experience. I especially liked knowing how
to do too much and not being able to stay out of the kitchen, as I am terrible
about that myself.

The one about short attention spans is a good one also because

~~~
j_baker
> In fact, most of these are actually strengths

I would go so far as to say that strengths _are_ weaknesses. It just depends
on the context of the situation.

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vsync
Wow this sounds exactly like me. Bookmarking for reference.

