How fast to fail

This weekend I went skiing. Despite having skied very few times, I'm not bad at it. The thing is, when you don't know how to do something well, you fall. If you play it safe, you don't fall. Obviously this goes beyond skiing.

I had quite a few hard hits, went faster than I could control, and hurt myself quite a bit. But above all I learned that if you don't step outside what you already know how to do, you won't learn. And much more importantly, if you don't fall you have no measuring stick and you lose all reference for what's right or wrong.

We tend to believe that the optimal thing is not to fall, not to make mistakes. But nothing is further from the truth. If you want to progress in whatever you're facing, you must do it badly thousands of times before becoming good. Nobody has ever become an expert at something without first being terrible at it. You can't name me a single case.

Progress begins by accepting that you're going to do things badly. When I fell in a way that was almost aesthetic, while others passed me doing 100km/h without breaking a sweat, it stings. But that person who looks like they could ski well even without the skis has fallen many more times than you. That's exactly why they already know what they need to do to not fall when going that fast.

After a few bruises, I'm still bad, but less than two days ago. Real progress isn't in looking like you're doing it right. It's in correcting what you're doing wrong, because you're going to do it wrong, over and over again.