
How You Learn More from Success Than Failure - fogus
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-success-breeds-success
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Ye-Ha
I would argue that you can learn to succeed the same way that you learn
anything else: From someone who knows how.

You don't learn to speak Mandarin from failing at it.

As someone who has been tagged as an overachiever by my friends (and also that
I take things too seriously), as well as many sucessful accomplishments (and
some failures), I have captured what I have learned about succeeding and teach
it as a 'achievement coach.'

I don't do stuff to brag about it, so I'll list as my biggest personal
achievement being the first and only woman to win the single-handed sail boat
race from San Francisco to Hawaii on my Santa Cruz 50. My very first single-
handed race was just a few short months prior to the Hawaii race.

How did I win a sail boat race where you have to sail the boat all alone?
Primarily by learning winning strategy from others. Everyone in the race knew
how to sail.

This is the main reason that we applied for this round of Y Combinator. To
learn from people who know how to start companies.

Note that I said "primarily." There are many factors involved that I learned
along the way and teach as a coach.

I believe that anyone can win with the right strategies and that you don't
have to fail to learn them.

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alttab
I can equate this to aggressive inline skating which I did competitively on
the ASA Am circuit for a long time (ala <http://www.rolldc.com/> \- my home
crew).

I would try to land a trick a million times, trying different things or
variations or mind-games to conceptualize the balance or approach. None of
that shit ever helped.

However, getting it SORTA right, or straight up lacing it one time would allow
me to land it 2/4 next tries. Then 3/4 next tries... etc.

The success, mainly the FEELING (in this case physical/balance/positioning)
had such a great impact that my brain absorbed the muscle memory much quicker.
It then became a feel, and much less of "ok, now jump and spin, try to put my
foot here...". I'm sure business could be similar. You can feel success,
correct moves, etc, once you've done it before because you know you're on the
right track.

For anyone curious and with Windows (.wmv) heres an old skating edit from
sophomore year in college. Even though I edited it, there are only a couple of
clips of me, I'm the second guy that shows up.

<http://filebox.vt.edu/users/skottie/TeamCool/summermid.wmv>

Edit: I realize its a little off topic because its not about hacking but I've
equated this "feeling" to code as well. You know when you are on the right
track (design/progress) because you get that effortless "bliss" feeling.

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char
You clearly learn valuable lessons from both; you just learn from each in
different ways.

There are an infinite number of ways to fail, each one having the potential to
teach you a valuable life/personal lesson (in addition to the lesson of 'don't
do it that way if you want to succeed').

From each success, you learn all the secrets of how to succeed in your
endeavor, which could be considered the most important lesson. However,
because there are fewer paths to success than to failure in most cases, you
may not get the same breadth of lesson-learning as you do with failures.

I believe both are valuable for everyone to experience at some point.

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chrischen
You fail many times before you succeed once. In this case you learn more from
failure.

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RiderOfGiraffes
Surely the whole point is to make the most of everything, take every
opportunity. Learn everything you can (that's relevant, and sometimes even if
not!) all the time. Your aim is to succeed and learn from that, but sometimes
you don't have the choice.

If you succeed - learn from it.

If you fail - learn from it.

Try to succeed. (insert gratuitous Yoda quotation)

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SlyShy
This might be true for learning mechanical and motion related tasks, which
seems to be all they've tested here. For cognitive learning I doubt this is
true, however. If I tried to teach someone arithmetic by giving them problems
where the answer was always four he wouldn't learn at all. Learning a general
theory requires finding out what does work and what doesn't work.

Also, I'm concerned with the correlation and causation here. Someone who
naturally bowls well is likely to have strikes and also more likely to finish
the game well. I think the real result here is that people who suck at bowling
are less consistent, more of the time.

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hegemonicon
Needs more explanation on the actual mechanism at work. There is a
preponderance of evidence of the instructiveness of failure, and we have a
fairly good understanding of the underlying mechanism behind that (the
dopamine prediction error signal).

See here:
[http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/10/learning_from_mistake...](http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/10/learning_from_mistakes.php)

And here:
[http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/07/over_at_the_times_ben...](http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/07/over_at_the_times_benedict.php)

Anyone have a link to the original (ungated) paper?

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justin_hancock
This is misleading, you essentially you learn from positive experience not
necessarily success. You learned from the teachers who encouraged than those
that didn't.

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joeythibault
Sounds eerily familiar to the SvN mantra (37signals). I think the point is
that momentum can be exhilarating while even the smallest missteps can really
set a company back. Which is why, as a startup you need to positively
reinforce your staff, remind people of/tout the little successes and mitigate
the failures. Momentum is important for morale (and future successes).

