99U: You hear it all the time: “Everything happens for a reason.” Let it sit there for a minute. Marinate. Steep. What exactly prompted that thought? You flunked a class. You got fired. You presented a really wacky idea in a pitch meeting when something more conservative would have won the gig. Regrets. We all have ‘em.
4 comments:
This article was really valuable and reaffirming. Last night Rebecca and I sat in on part of the Ragtime tech and inevitably became excited for when it would be our turn to sit at the tech tables, and then our turn years down the road to do it all for a career. But with that optimism and excitement for the future came the reminder that we are going to fail plenty of times as designers and people before we land with a company we love or find our niche in the design world. Reading how these designers messed up the balance between personal and work life, picked the wrong job or the wrong major, and gave up a frightening opportunity is something we do on a small scale every day. Not only will we have a big crosswords in our life that will change us as designers, but the small daily decisions have positive and negative effects too. Realizing that these crossroads exist but that even catastrophic mistakes can become lessons is reassuring.
To be honest, I think this is one of the best and most relatable articles I have ever read on the green page. The day I learned you learn from your mistakes was the day I understood the saying, “things happen for a reason”. Obviously, it is not possible to find an answer for every bad thing that happens but whether it be good or bad I can assure you that you will gain something from mistakes even if you find yourself saying “goddam, I should have done it this way”. I really enjoyed reading all these people's stories and the various things that were gained from them. One thing that I really love about CMU school of Drama is the concept of learning by doing, it was a big change to my learning method but applying what I learn in class to what I will be doing for a career is very cool. So if I have one to thing say it is that if you have the opportunities to make mistakes at little to no cost I would highly suggest it.
The idea of the do-over is so seductive. The chance to change all your mistakes, even if those mistakes didn’t matter in the long run. It’s why we make up responses to conversations we had hours earlier or dwell on how much better things would be if we had done something differently. The personal story in this article that stuck out to me the most was titled “I used to think that a concept would be more valuable the longer I worked on or thought about it.” It seems we’re always told that more time is better in regards to just about anything. The more time you spend with a person, the more you value them. The more time you spend on a project, the better the end product will be. This follows the same logic that the do-over enforces: if you spend more time and energy on something you will eventually make it right, at least in a metaphorical sense if not a literal one. But what we don’t seem to talk about is the value of walking away. The quality of time spent with a person/project/idea rather than the quantity. And once that quality starts to diminish, the value of moving on to the next thing and letting go of the past.
It is really very interesting to read about and analyze how major business corporations view their regrets. For the majority of us, our regrets are somewhere around "Man, I should have asked for no mayo" and "Ugh, I should have asked for that girl's number." All of these regrets, while they do theoretically affect our lives in a number of significant ways, very rarely are they huge mistakes that affect hundreds of people's careers. When big businesses make mistakes, they are putting thousands of careers in jeopardy. However, these business owners still feel that it all happens for a reason, and it is important to learn from the past but not dwell on it. It is so easy to get caught up in what ifs and if onlys, but that gets you nowhere. Learn from the past and apply those lessons to the future.
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