From: Craig Maloney Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2019 13:33:56 +0000 (-0500) Subject: Finishing up chapter 03 editing X-Git-Tag: 20200112^2~18 X-Git-Url: https://jxself.org/git/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=6603c8b9e273aa7bd94f614f87352e03eae8bb90;p=themediocreprogrammer.git Finishing up chapter 03 editing --- diff --git a/chapter03.md b/chapter03.md index 8d13149..19ce020 100644 --- a/chapter03.md +++ b/chapter03.md @@ -54,10 +54,10 @@ Mistakes also act as a reminder to pause for a moment and not get too wound up i ## Journaling our mistakes -There's value in not making the same mistakes twice. Knowing that we repeated the same failure is useful because it gives us a pattern to understand. We can see that doing this particular thing gives us a failing result. We can then see what caused us to do the same thing and plan for how to mitigate it. This can be part of the learning process as long as we don't fall into a spiral of self-recrimination when we realize that we've made the same mistake again. +There's value in not making the same mistakes twice, but when we do repeat the same mistake can still be useful. Knowing that we've repeated the same failure is useful because it gives us a pattern we can understand. Those patterns show us that doing this particular thing leads to a repeatable failing result. We can then determine what caused the mistake and plan for how to mitigate it. This is part of the learning process, as long as we don't fall into a spiral of self-recrimination when we realize that we've made the same mistake again. -One trick that I use more infrequently than I would like is journaling. Keeping a journal of what happened and how we fixed it is one way to explain to someone else (often ourselves) about what happened. Explaining what happened allows us to become a teacher to ourselves and others. It reinforces our learning process. Writing down what happened in a way that others can understand allows us to arrange the thoughts in our head in a way that is clear and understandable. When we articulate our own thoughts about what happened and codify them we start to understand our own thoughts and can shake loose other ideas about how to fix this and other problems. We give ourselves the pause we need to fully understand what happened and how best to move forward. We become our own sounding-board for ideas on how best to proceed. +One trick that I should use more often is journaling. Keeping a journal of what happened and how we fixed it is one way to explain to someone else (often ourselves) about what happened. Explaining what happened allows us to become a teacher to ourselves and others. It reinforces our learning process. Writing down what happened in a way that others can understand allows us to arrange the thoughts in our head in a way that is clear and understandable. When we articulate our own thoughts about what happened and codify them, we start to understand our own thoughts and can shake loose other ideas about how to fix this and other problems. We give ourselves the pause we need to fully understand what happened and how best to move forward. We become our own sounding-board for ideas on how best to proceed. -This isn't about keeping a record for posterity so we can look back at a list of failures and beat ourselves up about the past (if you're anything like me that happens automatically). It's a way to teach ourselves and maximize the learning process. It's about giving ourselves the freedom to be the instructor to our future self so we can be more aware when a mistake is about to happen and understand how to correct for it. This allows us to focus on the moment just long enough to understand what happened, what we did to correct it, and how we can best proceed from here. It also helps us to locate where our gaps are and the next actions that we'll need to take in order to fill in those gaps. +This isn't about keeping a record for posterity so we can look back at a list of failures and beat ourselves up about the past (if you're anything like me that happens automatically). It's a way to teach ourselves and maximize the learning process. It's about giving ourselves the freedom to be the instructor to our future selves so we can be more aware when a mistake is about to happen and understand how to correct for it. This allows us to focus on the moment just long enough to understand what happened, what we did to correct it, and how we can best proceed from here. It also helps us to locate where our gaps are and the "next actions" that we'll need to take in order to fill in those gaps. We'll talk more about journaling in later chapters but I fully recommend a journal habit if for no other reason than it gives you a willing apprentice to teach, even if that apprentice is only yourself.