The Experimenter’s Guide: Learning Through Trying Things Over and Over

Why Your Brain Wants to Experiment, Not Be Perfect

Your mind isn’t built to avoid mistakes. It’s built to be a discovery engine. This engine learns by trying things out.

But many of us learned to fear mistakes at some point in our lives. We think mistakes are permanent marks against us. Really, they’re just temporary pieces of information that help us learn.

Here’s the simple truth: mistakes are feedback in disguise.

When you make a mistake, the universe is showing you something. It’s showing you what you couldn’t have known without trying. The faster we can get this feedback, the faster we can improve and grow.

The Art of Making Things Less Scary: Learning to Wobble

Think about learning to ride a bicycle:

Our body couldn’t learn this from watching videos. It couldn’t learn it from reading instruction books. It had to experience the wobble.

This same idea works for any skill or project. When we try to do something complicated all at once, it’s like trying to ride that bike straight onto a busy highway. The risks are much higher than they need to be. The fear of falling becomes so strong that we can’t move.

The Solution: Break Things Down

Take that scary task and break it into pieces. Make the pieces so small that failing at any one piece doesn’t feel important.

Are you building a feature for your software?

Are you learning something new?

The magic happens when you work on these small pieces quickly.

Waiting makes problems worse. If you catch a small coding error in minutes, it’s a learning moment. If you find the same error weeks later, you might need to rebuild entire systems.

Turning Things That Block You into Things That Help You

Every mistake teaches us something. But not all lessons are easy to see.

Usually, mistakes teach us about two categories of things:

🧱 Barriers: The Walls We Run Into

These are the real obstacles that show themselves through failure:

These barriers become visible only when we hit them. Each collision teaches us exactly what we need to learn next.

🔑 Conditions: The Hidden Things We Need

Conditions are harder to notice than barriers. These are circumstances we need for success that we don’t know exist until we try:

You can only discover these things by experimenting.

Key insight: Treat each failed attempt like a research expedition.

Ask yourself: “What did this attempt show me that I couldn’t have known before?”

Then design your next experiment to test what you’ve learned.

The Power of Going Through Cycles Quickly

Traditional advice often fails us here. We’re told to “measure twice, cut once” and plan extensively before acting.

But for minds that love discovery and finding interesting things, this approach doesn’t work. It’s like trying to learn swimming by only studying theory.

The Principle of Rapid Iteration

Instead of one long attempt, try multiple quick experiments:

Traditional Approach:

Rapid Iteration Approach:

Each cycle should be intense enough to show problems quickly. It’s like turning up the heat to find the weak spots.

How to Practice Rapid Iteration

  1. Stop immediately when you hit an error

    • Don’t push through
    • The error is the valuable thing

  2. Spend a few minutes understanding

    • What exactly went wrong?
    • What does this teach you?

  3. Adjust your approach

    • Make one specific change based on what you learned

  4. Dive back in immediately

    • Don’t overthink
    • Test your adjustment right away

This isn’t being careless. It’s speeding up your learning on purpose.

You’re taking months of slow learning and compressing it into days of focused discovery.

Updating the Programs in Your Head

We all carry beliefs about what we’re “naturally” good at or bad at:

These beliefs feel permanent, like unchangeable facts about us.

But what if these beliefs are just old programs running on outdated information?

The Experiment: Challenge One Belief

  1. Pick one “fixed” belief about yourself

  2. Research for one hour

    • How have others developed this exact skill?
    • What methods did they use?
    • What small steps did they take?

  3. Create small experiments to test your belief

  4. Track what you discover

What You Might Find

Your limiting beliefs often hide more nuanced truths:

What You BelieveWhat Might Be True
”I can’t focus""I can’t focus on things that don’t interest me, but I can focus for hours on problems that fascinate me"
"I’m not creative""I haven’t given myself permission to create imperfect first drafts"
"I’m bad at math""I learn math better through visual examples than abstract formulas"
"I’m not organized""Traditional organization systems don’t match how my brain works”

Each experiment cracks these limiting beliefs a little more. The shell gets weaker each time.

The Daily Practice

This isn’t about becoming someone else. It’s not about fixing what’s “broken” about you.

It’s about recognizing something important:

Your brain already has everything it needs. It just prefers a different instruction manual than the one people have been giving you.

How Your Mind Actually Works

Your mind thrives on:

Every day, you have a choice:

The Paradox of Failure

Here’s what most people don’t understand:

The more willing you are to fail quickly and often in small ways, the less likely you are to fail in big ways when it really matters.

Why? Because each small failure teaches you something specific. You build a library of what works and what doesn’t. When the big moment comes, you’ve already failed your way through all the small problems.

Remember This

Core Principles for Experimental Learning

The Path Forward

The path forward isn’t about avoiding mistakes. It’s about transforming how you see them.

When mistakes stop being sources of shame and become sources of insight, you’ve unlocked a superpower. When you can:

…you’ve developed an ability that no amount of careful planning can match.

Your First Experiment

Start today with this simple process:

  1. Pick something small you want to try
  2. Set a 15-minute timer
  3. Try it without overthinking
  4. Note what happens when you fail
  5. Adjust based on what you learned
  6. Try again immediately

The only real failure is not starting the experiment.

Read this when you need reminding: Your brain isn’t broken. It’s built for discovery. Give it the experiments it wants. Then watch how quickly you grow.