How Do You Call It: Failure or Experiment?

Many of us, have this attitude that we must never fail. Everything must miraculously happen from your first try. And if you fail, the world is going to end? 

On the other hand, in games like Heroes of the Storm, Civilization 6 and many others you should constantly improve. Try new things. Check what works and what doesn’t. I call these checks… experiments. Lately I’m trying to see all activities as experiments. I’ll share with you my observations, (after all, they are a result of an experiment, right?) about two areas of our lives. 

First area is games, of course. I was recently trying to beat Immortal difficulty of Civ6 (managed to beat a computer on duel map two days ago!). It was a huge effort of trial and error, or in other words, experimenting with different start up sequences of production. Different city production management. Different approach for first districts. In summary, lots and lots of experiments. Every one of those managed to change my approach to the game just a little bit. Note that I’m not talking about any big change happening at once. So, this is the hidden power of experiments. Every one of them will give you small piece of new information which you can adapt to your style. Piece by piece with some patience, curiosity and consistency you can manage to beat the challenge.

Second area is work. Let’s see if the top approach is working here. I’m currently reading Work Rules by Laszlo Bock and I’m fascinated how Google managed to experiment with different approaches and come up with solutions that work well for them. Laszlo says that they didn’t come up with the “end solution” at once, instead they iterated different approaches, experimented with different options and last, but not least they’re constantly monitoring and evolving their approach!

So, be more experimental and don’t be afraid of “failures”, because there is no such thing. We learn little bits of information from each experiment. We as human beings make it success or failure, for an experiment the end result is just that: a result. Try for one week to consider everything you do as an experiment. Then check the results and if they are not what you’ve expected change the experiment, learn from it and adapt the new one.

Keep learning and may the Force be with you!