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Think and Grow Rich test: Do you make mistakes?

September 26, 2009 by JD
Filed under: Books, Self-Improvement, Success and Failure

My answers to the Think and Grow Rich Self-Assessment Test

Recently, I was reminded of the self-assessment test in Napoleon Hill’s best-selling book, Think and Grow Rich.

There are fifty-four questions in that test, and I’m going to be giving my answers and thoughts on one or two of them as close to daily as I can manage. I may miss a day here or there, but I’m going to follow through until I reach the end of the test.

I’ve started the series of posts with:

Think and Grow Rich self-assessment test

Question Number 3. Do you often make mistakes in your work?

I think this is a difficult question to answer.

Do I make careless mistakes?

No.

Do I continue to make the same mistakes over and over?

No.

Do I make mistakes in my work?

Yes, I do.

When I make a mistake, I try to analyze it, learn from it, and move forward. Sometimes it’s harder to learn a necessary lesson than it is other times.

For example, over the last few years, I’ve created a lot of blogs on a lot of different platforms. I’ve tried Blogger, WordPress, Manilla, Mambo, PHP-Nuke, and quite a few others.

I wanted to learn all I could about the pros and cons of the different platforms. While I did that, I think it was mostly a waste of my time and effort.

I would have been much better off concentrating on two or three blogs and building them over the years.

Still, I learned some valuable lessons and won’t make this mistake again.

So, I think it’s fair to say that I rarely make careless mistakes, but I sometimes make strategic or tactical mistakes.

Isn’t that a necessary part of learning and growing?

Are you failing your way to success?

I’ve heard (or read) many successful people say that they failed their way to success. I think this generally means that they tried many different things to accomplish what they wanted to achieve and most of them failed.

However, by continuing to try new techniques, methods, and approaches to the problem, eventually they found something that worked well for them.

Thomas Edison is the most famous example, in that he failed to make a light bulb about 10,000 times before he succeeded.

However, if you read the background on this story, it’s not totally true. In fact, he found many ways to make a light bulb successfully. Some worked better than others, but he considered one of them a success because it combined energy efficiency, bright light, long life, and the ability to be mass produced.

(I’m writing this from memory. I should probably take a moment to check to see if I’m correct.)

Ok, that was interesting. I just went and did some reading and my memory seems to be pretty much on the mark.

The one thing I left out was that Edison also had a commercially-viable way to generate and distribute electric power that would make his light bulb work. That makes it a real distinction from other light bulbs that worked well in the laboratory, but would never have sufficed for paying customers in the real world.

I was also reminded that Edison was a proponent of direct current electricity, and because of the short distribution length (a little over a mile) it was only commercially viable in central business districts of cities.

So, truthfully, he succeeded several times along the way, before finding the right combination of factors that he considered to be successful.

Therefore, I believe that part of the process of educating ourselves and finding ways to achieve our goals almost always entails making mistakes in our work.

The real importance of the process is being able to identify your mistakes, learn from them, and not repeat them in the future.

Is it wrong to make mistakes in your work?

I would hope that we do more things right than wrong, especially when we have some experience in what we’re doing.

But, I believe that making mistakes is an intrinsic part of accomplishing new things.

Overall, I try not to make more mistakes than are necessary, but that’s a nebulous criterion.

What about you?

Do you make mistakes in your work? Do you think they are necessary or avoidable?

Act on your dream!

Tags: Napoleon Hill, self-assessment, test, Think and Grow Rich

Comments

One Comment on Think and Grow Rich test: Do you make mistakes?

Mitch on Sat, 26th Sep 2009 8:51 am

I make mistakes, and I hate every single one of them. I don’t make a lot of mistakes, which is a good thing, but I’ve made mistakes when I’ve tried to complete a project in little time so that I can show clients how fast I work. That’s not going to happen anymore, I’ll tell you that.
.-= Mitch´s last blog ..Yes, Another Theme Change =-.

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