How to manage and measure mistakes

Published on October 22nd, 2024

by Mike Ingham, Sailing World
It’s not the first mistake, it’s the second,” world champion sailor Bora Gulari once said while I was coaching him in the Nacra 17 for the US Sailing team. When asked if it was OK to quote him, he said, “In fairness, I got that from Terry Hutchinson.” Regardless of the origin, I like its message—that the unexpected is inescapable, and that it’s how we manage problems that matters. That doesn’t mean being complacent, however. It means finding solutions.

When I’m sailing, I make ­mental notes of any adversities such as “spinnaker takedown late.” Then, once onshore, I add details into the Adversity Spreadsheet that I keep. It’s an incredibly useful tool to keep those second mistakes from happening again. I recently added an Impact column to the spreadsheet, which is a measure of how many boats were lost due to a noted adversity.

This is easy to estimate sometimes, such as our flubbed takedown cost us two boats, so the impact is simply “2.” But it’s harder to estimate the impact of a bad start. Did it cost me 15 boats at the moment, or five? All I can do is make my best guess. – Full report

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