I remember reading a bit of borrowed wisdom very early in my career, and it’s stayed with me, even if the exact wording has faded in my memory:

A young student once asked the Master, “How do I avoid making mistakes?” 
The Master answered, “Experience.”
“But how do I gain experience?” asked the student. 
The Master answered, “You make mistakes.”

We all make mistakes, and sometimes they seem to come in droves.  It’s easy to fall into the trap of counting all your mistakes and carrying that tally with you, letting the despair interfere with current and future work.  When that starts to happen, it’s important to shift your thinking and see if there’s a way to make your mistakes count.

Is it a mistake that happened because you were taking a risk?  Or is it a mistake that seems to happen over and over again?

In the Marine Corps, there’s criticism if a young officer doesn’t make enough mistakes. That’s because it’s an indicator that risks aren’t being taken . . . and risk is an essential factor in achieving excellence.  We’re not all Marines, but there’s something worth learning from that perspective. 

Making a mistake when you were taking a risk isn’t necessarily a shameful thing.  Embarrassing, maybe, but not a reason to avoid taking risks in the future.  The important thing here is to identify what went wrong, and how to mitigate that risk next time you’re trying something new.

Repeated errors, though, can feel like the fabled “death by a thousand paper cuts.”  When the same mistakes crop up over and over again, it’s time to do some trouble-shooting.  First, identify a pattern (if there is one).  At what point does the mistake occur?  Is it always a particular kind of mistake?  This information is very important for the next step.

Can you reduce mistakes by changing your process?  How about using automated systems?  Can you engage other minds in searching out the source? 

In any office, there are a variety of ways you can take advantage of technology and processes to reduce errors.  The spell-check function in Microsoft Word, for instance, drives me nuts — but, wow, does it ever catch errors like repeated words!  (That’s a mistake I make all the time.)  For every time I feel aggravated by telling the computer that, yes, I really do want to write my sentence like that, there are five or six times when the system saves me. 

Another thing that makes a big difference in error rates is simply building a bit more time into the process.  Being able to put something down and then look at it a day (or even half a day) later can make a tremendous difference.  It’s also well worth the time and effort to have somebody proofread whatever you’re doing.  Sometimes, no matter how exacting we are, we’re simply too close to the work to be able to see when we’ve left a word out or forgotten a bit of formatting.  Technology is great, but there is no substitute for the human eye in catching the wrong word or an awkward misspelling.  (And, no, I’m not just saying this because I do proofreading.) 

These are simple steps, but paying attention to these details will make your mistakes count.  When you stop counting mistakes, you can move out of the mindset where discovery leads to despair, and into the mindset where solution leads to experience.  Mistakes will come and go, but experience is something you’ll own forever.

Nicole is a freelance wordsmith and editrix, providing creative support to entrepreneurs who want to have a way with words.  She fervently hopes there are no errors in this article.