Careless Mistakes

[mattsonn]

One issue that I have is that I make careless mistakes. Quite often. Both in day to day living and in schoolwork. I'm not going to go into detail right now, but I'm just putting this thread out here to see if anyone else has the same issue or has any advice.

[WanderingOak]

I used to make careless errors quite often when I was in High School. At first, it was quite demoralizing, and I would react with anger or embarrassment, which of course just made things worse. Since then, I've developed two strategies, the first being to just relax while I am working on a problem. When I was stressed, I would oft-times not think clearly about what actually needed to be done or the processes required to do it, but when I relaxed I didn't have these problems. My second strategy, for math at least, was to 'measure twice', or just double check my work, either by hand or with a calculator.

[bollenbach]

Yeah I understand what you guys are saying...

I think my biggest fault sometimes is my initial reactions to some situations.

Sometimes i get stressed out when I really don't need to be. Also sometimes I feel like... as much as I read about design, self development, and other areas of school that I don't soak up knowledge as good as I could.

I'm learning that... it isn't really what you read, it's how much you read and what you get out of it. I'm getting better one day at at a time but hey...

there's always room for improvement!

Did this dable into what you were talking about mattsonn?

[RT Wolf]

I don't think it's just what you read and what you get out of it, but also how you apply it. Application and action are ridiculously important.

[mattsonn]

Thanks everyone for your advice. This is what I got of it (let me know if I missed anything):

* Wandering Oak: relax, check over your work, especially in math.
* Bollenbach: It's not what you read, but how much you read, and what you get out of it. And there's always room to improve an issue like this.
* RTWolf: It's also important to remember to apply it.

For right now, my plan is to focus and relaxing and checking my work. As for mistakes made during day to day living, I'm just going to continue relying on paper as much as possible as opposed to my brain. When I have some time to really focus on this on this issue, I'll look for ways I can fine tune my brain so that I don't mess up so much.

[dpvtank]

Oh man, you sound just like me! The amount of stupid mistakes I make in math are huge. I've been through it all: demorilization, anger, humiliation, desire to just punch something, etc etc.

I don't know how I'm dealing with it. Most of the time, I just visualize that things go well. But I've learnt that its only when I actually pratice and prepare beforehand and do my work that I do well and stop making stupid mistakes.

Sorta easy right now for me to say. I think I did a pretty crappy calculus summative before my Christmas Break which I'll get back tomorrow. This is where I seriously under-prepared (because of a ton of other work) and lacked visualization.

[Sheehan]

I would suggest that you note your mistakes with a journal, or anything that's somewhat permanent and private and think "I will not do this mistake again, and I will consciously try to prevent it". Ask your subconscious mind the question "Why did I make that mistake?" repeatedly and you might just suddenly find the real reason. Once you know the reason you made that specific mistake, understand it and try to fix it. There are reasons behind everything we do, however, most of them hide under the sea of consciousness.

Merely thinking and knowing about the real problem can give you more solutions, and writing your thoughts on paper or the computer screen can help your thought process become more streamlined and focused.

Being more conscious of what you are presently doing helps too. For example, if you are working on a difficult task, tell your self "I am working on a problem that needs to be solved without making mistakes. Therefore, I will not make mistakes". Intend and manifest.

[John Hill]

Hey Matt,

If you keep telling yourself you make careless mistakes "quite often" you will probably keep doing them.

When I was a little kid I used to knock over my milk at the dinner table "quite often" and my parents would continually say to me, you always knock over your milk everytime you come to the dinner table, and guess what, I continued to knock it over.

The same thing goes for your self talk, if you change it to something of a more positive nature your actions will follow your words and you will probably find you will stop making those careless mistakes.

I've written more related information at the link below.

John

[Ellesse]

I remembered I used to make careless mistakes a lot in my maths as well, and once I know the areas that i've made a mistake in and how these careless mistakes were made, I'll keep on practising, practising and practising the "right" way of doing the sums until I just automatically gets the hang of it. And interestingly, I made less of those mistakes.

I guess you can apply the same towards day to day living too... Just my 2cents.

[mattsonn]

Thanks everyone. More interesting advice. Let me summarize it all for my own reference:

* Dpvtank: Practice and prepare beforehand, visualize things going well.
* Sheehan: Keep a journal of my mistakes, try to find the real reason behind them, think & know more about those areas, be more conscientious when I'm doing something.
* John Hill: Use positive self talk
* Ellesse: Keep on practicing things the right way until the mistakes start going away.