Weekly Quote: Steven Johnson on Where Good Ideas Come From

This week’s quote comes from Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation. This title came up during a review of another book in a recent Charter Newsletter, and I decided to check it out.

The quote builds on an idea I’ve been thinking and writing about since I started this site, that you learn and grow much more when things go wrong. The idea that mistakes are the language of growth, that we build ourselves through productive struggle and not when things are easy, is such a big part of our personal development

if you’re doing some form of daily review in your journal, I encourage you to ask yourself what went wrong or was especially hard for the day. You can learn a lot from this, particularly how you react against external inputs, which are often beyond your control.

If you examine those reactions, you’re very likely to learn something, particularly if you look over time at trends that may appear. Taking that information and considering how you can build from it is a concrete step in making positive personal improvements.