Better By Mistake: The Unexpected Benefits of Being Wrong

by Alina Tugend

Overview

New York Times columnist Alina Tugend delivers an eye-opening big idea: Embracing mistakes can make us smarter, healthier, and happier in every facet of our lives.

In this persuasive book, journalist Alina Tugend examines the delicate tension between what we’re told—we must make mistakes in order to learn—and the reality—we often get punished for them. She shows us that mistakes are everywhere, and when we acknowledge and identify them correctly, we can improve not only ourselves, but our families, our work, and the world around us as well. Bold and dynamic, insightful and provocative, Better by Mistake turns our cultural wisdom on its head to illustrate the downside of striving for perfection and the rewards of acknowledging and accepting mistakes and embracing the imperfection in all of us.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101486436
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/17/2011
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	454 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Alina Tugend writes the the award-winning biweekly column “ShortCuts” for the New York Times, and a parenting column for Worth magazine. She was born and raised in Southern California and spent seven years in London before moving to Larchmont, New York, with her husband and two sons.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 (Mis)Understanding and (Re)Defining Mistakes: What is a mistake? 9

2 It Starts Early: How our children learn from blunders 41

3 "Fail Often, Fast, and Cheap": Mistakes in the workplace 73

4 It's Not Brain Surgery … But What if it is?: Learning from medicine 107

5 Lessons From the Cockpit: Aviation's approach to errors 143

6 Blaming You, Blaming Me: Men, women, and mistakes 159

7 You Say Mistake, I Say Lesson: Different cultures, different approaches 189

8 I Want to Apologize: Saying "I'm sorry" 215

Conclusion 247

Acknowledgments 253

Notes 255

Bibliography 273

Index 285

What People are Saying About This

Daniel Coyle

“Fascinating, vivid, and spectacularly useful. Alina Tugend is a whip-smart guide to the secret landscape where our (so-called) errors are transformed into powerful opportunities. Make no mistake: this is a great book.”--(Daniel Coyle, author of The Talent Code)

Daniel H. Pink

"BETTER BY MISTAKE is a fascinating and wide-ranging exploration of the deeply human phenomenon of screwing up. With Alina Tugend as your wise (and wise-cracking) guide, you'll learn why perfection is a myth, why apologies pack power, and why effort is often more important than results. And once you've finished this book, you'll never look at mistakes -- or yourself -- the same way." --( Daniel H. Pink, author of DRIVE and A WHOLE NEW MIND)

Hallowell

“Oh what a jewel of a book this is! Read it, smile, learn, be surprised, then rejoice in your newly found power of imperfection. Glory in your foibles, rejoice in your mistakes, knowing that if you will but embrace what you may have wanted to deny or avoid, not only will you become more true, you will also grow both in strength and in joy.” --( Edward Hallowell, M.D., author of "CrazyBusy" and "Driven to Distraction")

Wendy Mogel

“The research presented in Better by Mistake is refreshingly clear and often surprising. Read it and find out why Japanese teachers allow students to spend twelve minutes or more explaining their wrong answer to a math problem, why posting grades for all to see is an example of a healthy understanding of the cyclical nature of time and why praise lowers ambition. This book is fascinating, practical and fun.”--(Wendy Mogel, author of The Blessing of a Skinned Knee )

Editorial Reviews

In her absorbing first book, veteran journalist Tugend confronts a common but complicated subject: making mistakes. Beginning with two universal truths—people are not perfect and mistakes happen—the author first defines her subject as separate from "error" and in consideration of its outcome (mistakes have led to countless scientific advances, for instance). Tugend investigates the fear of failure and shame of messing up that pervade American society (though we're not alone); unsurprisingly, the fear starts early and is reinforced often. One of Tugend's recurring themes is that we not only can, but should learn from our mistakes, and chapters discuss major errors from Wall Street, the field of aviation, and the hospital floor, including a famous case of the wrong limb being amputated. These case studies put into perspective our daily errors and illustrate the progress being made in mistake prediction and reduction. And the distinction between "person approach" and "system approach," posited by James Reason in Human Error, is also addressed. While Tugend's study of gender differences in this arena seems to circle the issue without landing anywhere truly interesting, her analysis of saying "I'm sorry" is highly illuminating. Ultimately Tugend succeeds, by stripping mistakes of their power to intimidate and effectively redefining them into malleable, manageable learning tools. (Mar. 17)

Publishers Weekly

Sometimes belabored debut examines why making mistakes and learning from them is better than always trying to be perfect.

Covering what seems like familiar ground despite the book's counterintuitive title,New York Times consumer columnist Tugend argues that the childhood admonition to learn from our mistakes is culturally undercut by another, more powerful message: Errors are dreadful, can bring punishment and must be avoided, concealed or never discussed. This tension, the author writes, often leads to the risk-adverse tendency to stick with the known, and causes trouble in schools, cockpits and operating rooms, among other places. Remedies range from parents taking care not to unknowingly instill an error-avoidance mindset in their children to simple pre-flight and pre-op checklists that keep flight crews and surgeons from making the same oversights that may have caused past accidents. Well-selected excerpts from studies and interviews with experts provide the book with depth, but only in the conclusion does the full force of Tugend's prose emerge in a strong finish, in which she vividly evokes the profound importance of apologizing. Elsewhere, as in a lengthy consideration of gender bias in how mistakes are perceived, the author verges on being silly. We must strive, she writes, to"create a world in which it is safe for both menand women to make mistakes."

Thoroughly researched but low-wattage illumination.

Kirkus Reviews