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What hap­pened and what did you learn from it

In a col­umn in the New York Times I read a few years ago, some­one wrote about Melanie Ste­fan at Edin­burgh Med­ical School who pub­lished her ​“Fail­ures Résumé” and encour­aged oth­ers in the aca­d­e­m­ic world to do the same (which many have there­after done). A résumé, or CV, of fail­ures need not be pub­lic but is a place where you can list what notable mis­takes you have made and what you learned from them. The rea­son for mak­ing one is sim­ple; there is often more to learn from our trou­bles than our triumphs.

If you also believe you can learn more about how to improve your struc­ture from your adver­si­ties than your achieve­ments, then start writ­ing out your CV of fails, fail­ures, or mis­takes today.

Do this

1. Open a new doc­u­ment in your favorite pro­gram for writ­ing such as Word, Pages, OneNote, or what­ev­er you prefer.
2. Think back on the most recent mis­take you made in terms of your structure.
3. Describe what hap­pened, as clear­ly and with as much detail as you can. Allow me to exem­pli­fy: Just yes­ter­day I real­ized that the keys to my bicy­cle lock were not where they were sup­posed to be when I got into town which meant I had to car­ry my bike two sto­ries up to my office instead of lock­ing it out­side. It was no big­gie, but it was annoy­ing and I would have pre­ferred not to.
4. Now, write down what you learned from the mis­take. Think of some­thing con­crete — regard­less of how small the solu­tion may seem — which you can do to avoid mak­ing the mis­take again. If we return to my exam­ple, I am now, more than ever before, con­vinced that I real­ly have to attach the keys to the inside of my bag again as soon as I have used them. This will ensure that the keys are nev­er placed or for­got­ten elsewhere.
5. Add more mis­takes you have made regard­ing your struc­ture if you can think of any right now.
6. Save the doc­u­ment and give it a suit­able name, such as ​“CV of struc­ture mistakes”.
7. The next time you hap­pen to make a mis­take that could have been pre­vent­ed with bet­ter struc­ture, write it on the CV and think of a pos­si­ble solu­tion you can add to the mis­take. A while from now, you will have adjust­ed your struc­ture with lit­tle improve­ments and no longer repeat the same mistakes.

A sim­ple solution

If you describe the mis­takes you have made to your­self it will become eas­i­er to think of ways to avoid mak­ing the same ones again, and you will, in fact, not make the same mis­takes as often as before. If you can­not think of a pos­si­ble improve­ment or solu­tion imme­di­ate­ly, you will have one or sev­er­al mis­takes to sink your teeth into when­ev­er you feel inclined to improve your struc­ture (and your life!) a little.

As the CV becomes a long list of things that pre­vi­ous­ly both­ered you but which have now been solved or addressed in some way, it will in time become quite the trea­sure of wins that you can return to when you need to remind your­self that you real­ly can improve your life one step at a time.

What’s your way?

What was the most recent struc­ture mis­take you made? If you’d be will­ing to share yours, I am all ears. Please write to me and share. 

(Do you also remem­ber to eval­u­ate the things you do well in order to become even bet­ter?Eval­u­at­ing and refin­ing improves your struc­ture!)