id: llf title: Looking Like a Fool previous: habits next: dm date: 2021-03-13 ---

## Looking Like a Fool

I was listening to an old episode of Tim Ferriss’ podcast this morning with the creator of DuoLingo, Luis Von Ahn. For those of you that don’t know; DuoLingo is a free language learning platform. One point was that people who are willing to make a fool of themselves learn languages faster than those who want to wait until they sound perfect.

It got me thinking that this applies to far more than just language learning. It applies to any type of knowledge or skill acquisition. If I am not screwing something up, often it means that I am not at the edge of my knowledge. Work should be done in the realm of competency. I want to make sure I am putting out a solid product, but learning something new should be at that uncomfortable edge. Pushing so that I may just be able to manage what I am trying to do means stumbling often.

There is a great quote from Samuel Smiles, “We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.” Most of us feel stupid when we fail and that is what the podcast was getting at. In learning languages it is increasingly pronounced. Being unable to express yourself and displaying that lack to others can be embarrassing and makes most people feel foolish. When seen from another perspective, it can be funny for everyone involved. Learning other skills is like this as well. We feel clumsy when picking up a new sport or just can’t seem to get that new math concept.

This connects quite strongly to the learning mindsets I have heard put forward in a couple of different books and discussions on learning. The two are often characterized as fixed and growth mindsets. The fixed mindset assumes that abilities are innate, a result of intrinsic talent. A growth mindset believes that abilities are developed. While people do vary in capability; the ability that we have to improve is often far greater than we realize. We may not all be able to be Einstein but we can certainly get better than we are now.

A fixed mindset leads us to fear failure, thinking that if we fail, we have hit the limit of our capacity. This thought is extremely destructive and leads us to shy away from anticipated failure. Feeling foolish through this lens also speaks fundamentally to who we are and what we are capable of. So we shy away from the challenges that run a high risk of us making mistakes, both in front of others and by ourselves.

Small aside, feeling foolish is not just for when you do something in public. I am my harshest critic and almost universally judge myself more harshly than the people around me do. This includes when I feel foolish. I think that this is the case for most of us, so don’t discount being able to watch yourself make mistakes even if there is no one else there to see.

Adopting a growth mindset allows challenges and mistakes to be seen as steps on the road to mastery. They reflect only that we still have more to learn and nothing about us as a person. This makes those with a growth mindset much more tolerant to making mistakes and admitting them. The result is often much more success in long term learning.

Mistakes and failures are signposts. How do we know where we are lacking? what we need to get better at? Using current technology we can easily access any information we could want but, we do need to know what to look for. If you can successfully do something then you don’t need to look it up, if you can’t then you know what you need to research.

Unfortunately there is no easy way to get used to making mistakes and feeling foolish other than just doing it. It is not as big a deal as most of us think, the world won’t end and it is likely no one will think less of you. You can start with people that you trust and know well, or take classes with other beginners. Having other people struggling along with you means that you all get to feel foolish together. It is quite likely that someone else is having exactly the same problem as you. The people you trust give you the reassurance that your mistakes won’t change how they view you and make it safer to take those risks.

Everyone learns new things, everyone makes mistakes and feels like a fool sometimes. It can even be fun. It can leave you with a funny story to tell later and it will certainly help you learn. Success is often just a function of how many times you try. Being willing to fail means that you will try more new things and meet with more success in the end. That is worth a few stumbles and some embarrassment.

Thanks for reading.

Phone time: 8h 20m