I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
-Thomas A. Edison
I came across this quote today and had a few thoughts that I wanted to share about mindset and problem-solving.
One of the biggest failures of the education system is, ironically, the lack of importance that is placed on failure. We're raised in a society that loves to hand out 8th place trophies to everyone who participates. While getting this trophy may give Johnny a little dopamine rush, it's actually one of the biggest detriments to his potential for success in life.
No matter how you measure success, it's unavoidable that there will be roadblocks and hardships along the way. People need to get out of the mindset of trying to avoid failure and they need to get into the mindset of how to seek it out and learn from each experience.
I like to argue that science has the best method for going about almost any problem in life - The Scientific Method.
- Formulate a Hypothesis
- Collect Data
- Test your Hypothesis
- Come to a Conclusion
Whether you want to find the best diet to lose weight, start a business or even invest in a cryptocurrency, The Scientific Method can give you a place to begin searching for answers.
Here's an example to illustrate how you can apply The Scientific Method to problems that will arise in your life. For some context, imagine that you're looking to add a cryptocurrency to your investment holdings. ARK is a cryptocurrency that you've had your eye on, but you aren't sure whether or not it will be a good investment.
1). Formulate a Hypothesis:
First, you need to learn a little bit about ARK, how it works, what it does, what problem(s) it's trying to solve, etc. Once you've compiled some information on that, you create a hypothesis of how ARK could gain market share and thus, increase in value.
Example hypothesis (in this case, a prediction of a future scenario): First, here's my one-sentence explanation of what ARK aims to achieve: Ark aims to create an input interface and SmartBridge with every major cryptocurrency in which users can send ARK and interact with various blockchains to carry out specific actions all without leaving the ARK wallet.
My hypothesis is that this technology will be adopted by consumers who want/need to interact with various blockchains to carry out specific tasks like storing files on the Factom blockchain or deploying a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain but don't want to learn how to use each blockchain natively. The usage of ARK for these reasons will cause demand for the ARK token to rise and result in a higher token value proportional to the rise in demand.
2). Collect Data:
There are a variety of ways you can collect data for any "experiment". For our example with ARK, I would go out and collect data that relates to ARK's ability to actually deliver on SmartBridge technology - is the team capable? Does ARK have a strong community backing? What have they already created and how does it measure up to the task of adoption? etc.
3). Test Your Hypothesis:
I won't go into all the nitty gritty details for the sake of keeping this example sort of concise. The main thing I did to test my hypothesis was to download the ARK desktop wallet, send ARK tokens to the wallet and perform a few tasks inside the wallet to see how easily I could use it (since ease of use is the main hurdle to adoption). It turns out that Ark's wallet is clean, relatively simple to use, and it quite honestly surpasses the majority of crypto wallets I've used previously.
Anyways, the following screenshot shows the Ark wallet after I had staked a delegate (staking a delegate turned out to be surprisingly easy within the Ark wallet!).
4). Come to a Conclusion:
There are some issues that make it relatively complicated for the average person to use Ark. Namely, buying ARK tokens and securely storing them in the Ark wallet. To buy my tokens I first had to buy Bitcoin with fiat, then I had to send Bitcoin to the Bittrex exchange, then I had to buy ARK with BTC, then I had to send ARK from Bittrex to the ARK desktop wallet.
To make this all more secure I also took the additional step to set up a Ledger Nano S to hold the private keys. For mass adoption to be practical, I believe there will need to be a way to simply set up an Ark wallet and buy ARK tokens within it for any currency (fiat included).
Disclaimer: This is not financial advice and is only for entertainment purposes.
The Scientific Method can be an effective tool for problem-solving and while it is taught in Science class, it is left out of pretty much every other subject. The education system fails to teach students that this method can be applied to their daily lives and used to solve life's most challenging problems in a systematic and valuable way.
The Book Club Initiative is a program that I created to reward community members for learning and interacting with content. This community is all about learning and sharing, so in order to learn more from each other, I’m asking a question of the day (QOTD) on every post.
Every response that answers the question/shares valuable insight will get upvoted. Upvote value is based on the quality & thoughtfulness of your answer. Thanks for your participation and I hope you guys enjoy this way of building the community and rewarding learning/thoughtfulness. If you guys have any suggestions for ways to improve this program, please let me know, as I’m always looking for ways to better reward everyone for learning! 🏆
QOTD: What problems have you identified in your life that can be better solved with The Scientific Method? Have you used the method in the past? If so, how did it work out for you?
Thank you for reading, I look forward to your responses below!