Being Wrong... No Longer a Stressful Dilemma

"Denial has a bad reputation. We are quick to sneer at it, to regard it as the last, sorry refuge of those who are too immature, insecure, or pigheaded to face the truth. But... denying our mistakes is sometimes an understandable reaction"(Schulz, p228).

Kathryn Schulz really made me feel better about myself.

There are so many instances where I have done the things that Schulz outlined in her book and felt bad about. But after reading her book, I feel as though I am more able to see past my mistakes as failures and a hinderance to my ultimate goal. I hope this book will allow me to admit to my mistakes earlier rather than pressing on and ignoring the errors I made in hopes no one else will realize that I made them.

As was stated in several other classes, being wrong is an essential part of the whole creation process. "Fail quickly to succeed faster" is something that has been said to the class on several occasions by our professor. In Schulz's book, she constantly reminds us that being wrong "shouldn't be an embarrassment, and cannot be an aberration." Like Norman, she firmly believes that being wrong, on many occasions, is the right thing to do; "being wrong is often a side effect of a system that is functioning exactly right"(Schulz, p61). In this case, the system is the design process, and coming up with faulty ideas is the side effect.

"Scientists gravitate toward falsification; as a community if not as individuals, they seek to disprove their beliefs" (Schulz, p32). While we may not be setting out to fail, we do set out knowing that we will fail at one point or another. In one of his examples, Norman states that "it usually takes five or six attempts to get a product right" (Norman, p29). Both authors agree that being wrong is an essential part of making something right, and that, in many cases, ideas turn out to be so wrong that they are thrown out and something new is created. "... not only can any given theory be proven wrong... sooner or later, it probably will be"(Schulz, p32). "New products are almost guaranteed to fail, no matter how good the idea" (Norman, p29).