mistakes

Mistakes are unavoidable and so are bad habits. Don't waste your energy trying to avoid them before you even know what you're doing.

Nobody ever got good at anything without making mistakes.

Even the best of the best constantly make mistakes. There are imperfections in every performance ever performed — maybe imperceptible to everyone else, but definitely there and, more often than not, noticed by the performer.

Perfection is unattainable — it's a target that moves faster than you can. You can't ever do anything perfectly. There is always room to do it better.

Focus on what you want to do, not what you don't. Trying to avoid mistakes just leads to more mistakes.

Don't preemptively try to avoid "bad habits".

I say this for two reasons:

  1. "Bad" for someone else can be good for you. You can't know that something doesn't work for you without actually trying to make it work.
  2. It's not a bad habit until it's a habit. Trying not to do something you already don't do is a waste of time. You could be using your time so much more effectively!

The time to eliminate bad habits is after they become both detrimental and habitual.

Making mistakes is how you learn.

Even if you could theoretically avoid them completely, you wouldn't actually be training anything! It would be a pure waste of time.

This doesn't mean you should be actively trying to do things wrong. It means you should be challenging yourself. If what you are trying to do is challenging enough to help you grow, mistakes are inevitable.