“I’ve been doing it for 20 years…” is a often heard statement used to support one’s beliefs in the way to do something and potentially a degree of hands-on knowledge forged in the most important aspect of the process of life-long learning that is mastery, mistakes followed by endless the process of attempted correction called trials and error. Doing something for 20 years can actually reinforce stupidity if the primary focus is not reassessment and modified reattempt.
“A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life time of experience.”
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
Experience (according to Webster’s):
- Observation or practice resulting in or tending toward knowledge
- An affecting event
- The state of being affected from without* [?]
“Two months of experience repeated sixty times does not make ten years of experience.
It just makes a beginner a decade older.”
-Tom Purvis
“Limitations in experience often create limitations in vision!”
“Ironically, a great deal of experience in only one area can create very limited vision.”
-Tom Purvis
(intentionally focused may yield expertise; unintentionally blind can yield ignorance)
“If you must make mistakes, it will be more to your credit if you make a new one each time.”
-unknown
“Practice does not make perfect, only perfect practice makes perfect!”
-Vince Lombardi
“Don’t practice until you get it right, practice until you cannot get it wrong”
-George W. Loomis, 1902 (often attributed to Julie Andrews)
“Every experience serves.”
-David Hawkins, MD, PhD
Long after inventing the light bulb Thomas Edison was working to invent a storage device for electricity…the battery. At one point he had 25,000 failed attempts.
When asked by a reporter, “How does it feel… failing 25,000 times.” Edison replied, “Fail? Today I know 25,000 ways not to make a battery.”