Average Cost of Mistakes

Your goal isn’t to never make mistakes. If anything, you should probably make more than you make now; more people are too risk-averse than the reverse. No, your goal should be to keep the average cost of your mistakes low.

Especially relative to the average learning you get from a mistake, the cost of mistakes is more relevant than the frequency. If you can maintain an excellent cost:learning ratio for your mistakes, then the math alone explains why you should make more!

Consider: how much do you gain from learning something new? How much is more wisdom worth to you in the medium and long term? Whatever that number is, just make sure your mistakes cost less than that. Make your mistakes in an environment that makes them easy to recover from. Pad the edges and put on your helmet, and then go bonkers.

The version of you that exists three years from now will be far better off with this strategy than simply one of “make as few mistakes as possible.” Making this mistake would be very costly, so don’t.

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