13220: Science Proves Me Right (And Wrong) About Failure’s Value

Raw transcript:

you know how I’m always saying don’t be
afraid of failure because we learn from
failure failure is a good thing it
teaches us stuff well science has gotten
involved researchers have gotten
involved and to a degree they disagree
with
me but it’s not something you need to
worry about you still fail learn anyway
let’s talk about that in this episode of
the vo Heroes podcast
so my definition of success is do more
of what works and less of what doesn’t
and that way you can’t help but succeed
right so do more of what is uh
successful and works for you and is good
and do less of things once you figure
out what they are that don’t work that
are failures right you learn from those
failures and I’m not the only one who
harps on this whole notion that failing
leads to learning I mean George Clooney
there’s a famous clip that goes around
on on the web where George Clooney
actually says you don’t learn anything
from being
successful you only learn when you fail
now I don’t know that I would go that
far but what do I know I was never
people Magazine’s sexiest man alive you
know he clearly knows more about things
than I do but let’s just say
that the research that recently came out
scientists looked at whether or not
failing at things actually did lead to
learning and what they discovered was
something really
interesting once you’re really expert at
something you may not learn as much from
failure as you would learn when you’re
first starting out and don’t really know
what you don’t know yet you don’t even
know what works what doesn’t work you’re
just sort of gathering new information
new skills putting them to the test and
so on but once you get expert at things
once you’re really good at stuff if you
fail you may not learn something from it
you might even blame yourself for being
so stupid that you didn’t see whatever
it was that caused the failure it might
be distracting more than a learning
experience I feel like almost everything
that we do in this business is a
long-term learning curve so I wouldn’t
worry so much if that if this kind of
blows up and people like oh that all
that all that BS that we learned before
about learning from failure that’s not
true science shows that that’s not true
that’s not what they said what they said
was you’ll learn a lot more from failure
as you’re beginning to acquire the
skills of a process or uh a pursuit or
uh a concept an
idea and you’ll learn less from a
failure as you become better and better
at it and that kind of seems obvious but
but it was interesting to note that it
was you know peer-reviewed research that
showed this so
still let me be your guide your
supporter I’ve got your back on this be
willing to
fail 90% of the time you’re still going
to learn something if you fail once you
get really good at it then maybe you
don’t need to worry about it anymore but
again our business is changing all the
time so who knows how that moves you
back in the learning curve towards the
beginning if things change you know we
were all going into casting offices
forever and now it’s almost all self
tape so there’s a learning curve that
needed to be uh handled there and so
failing at that might have taught you
something about self taks I don’t know
but I just wanted to bring it to your
attention and if you’re really good at
doing writing or Voice work or acting or
uh doing the associated tasks around
those
Pursuits there may be less value the
more worldclass expert you get at
something there may be lessue value at
failing but not much not much be willing
to do that be willing to get messy be
willing to get dirt under your
fingernails and mud on your hands and
make a mess and then figure it all out
just still be willing to do that all
right just just trying to have your back
there what do you think does this make
sense to you uh let me know in the
comments below I’d love to have a
conversation about this you can hit the
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Bell and find out when new episodes come
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Talent who might be afraid of failure
might be afraid of and not know about
learning from you know not not being
successful I whatever you’d like to do
whole laundry list of things that are
possibilities I’m David H Lawrence the
17th I thank you so much for watching
and for listening and I will see you in
the next episode of the vo Heroes
podcast

(from YouTube)