Book of the Week: "The 4-Hour Workweek" - Two Types of Mistakes

It's been awhile ... actually, it's been a long while since there was a new "Book of the Week." In all fairness, I've still been muddling through Tim Ferriss' "The 4-Hour Workweek," while also multi-reading (if that's even a word) another book, titled "The Winner's Brain." The latter is pretty intense with a lot of science.

But first I want to revisit the "The 4-Hour Workweek," mostly spending time on one specific section dealing with mistakes.

It is evident in life that we are all going to make mistakes. Mistakes happen, but what should not happen is making the same mistake twice. In a story of man making a big batch of cheesecake, he screwed up the recipe, royally, and wound up with something that resembled soup instead of the more solid, cheesecake.

The point of the story was to highlight two very important concepts from the Italian political philosopher, Niccolo Machiavelli: Mistakes of Ambition and Mistakes of Sloth.

The first, Mistakes of Ambition, are to be encouraged. These are made when you don't have all the information. Just as in the cheesecake scenario, the man had never made cheesecake in bulk before and this was before the advent of Splenda and he was dealing with another sugary sugar substitute, which he was unfamiliar with. Thus why it turned out horrible.

It's not at all different than your work life. If you're trying to compile historical data from past years about a given project. In the beginning, you will most likely have one idea of how you're going to handle it, but perhaps midway through the project, you come to discover it is not going the way you imaged. Now you have to re-think your process. Nothing wrong with it. You just found a way that doesn't work and adjust.

In a business setting, these types of mistakes of ambition, should be encouraged. People want to be around others who are innovating and trying new ways of accomplishing tasks. With that comes mistakes or as I like to call them "learning experiences of what not to do next time."

The second type of mistakes are the most dangerous. These are referred to as Mistakes of Sloth and it means exactly what it sounds like. They are careless errors that come from doing the same things repeatedly and expecting different results (i.e. the definition of insanity in the workplace). These types of mistakes must be avoided in business. To grow and have a growth mindset, you need to innovate and keep pushing the envelope.

If you're a business owner, you should want people on your team with a growth mindset as opposed someone with a fixed mindset. Those people that come into work everyday with enthusiasm and want to do a good job as opposed to people who are just "going through the motions.

See the two twitter screenshots, which exemplifies both points: mistakes will happen (but they have to be the good type of mistakes) and surrounding yourself with those people who are constantly going above and beyond what is expected of them.