If You’re Making Silly Mistakes Then You Need More Practice

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Climbing a skill hierarchy like math is not just about conceptual understanding, it’s also about reliable execution.

If you’re making “silly mistakes,” then you need more practice, simple as that.

If you don’t clean up your silly mistakes on low-level skills, then you eventually hit a wall where no matter how hard you try, you’re unable to reliably perform advanced skills due to the compounding probability of silly mistakes in the component skills.

(Think about gymnastics: if you’re “almost” able to land a backflip, then that’s great … but at the same time, you’re NOT ready to try any combo moves of which a backflip is a component. Even if it’s a silly mistake keeping you from landing the backflip, you still have to rectify it.)

And even that’s the most optimistic scenario. Other times, silly mistakes indicate a deeper conceptual misunderstanding that you don’t even know you have until you are held accountable for rectifying those mistakes.

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