It took me a while to figure out that I was surfing waves that were too big for me. The people around me were better surfers than I am and they were comfortable but I was not. But I didn’t realize that I was uncomfortable until I was in smaller waves and I noticed how much more comfortable I felt. I noticed because I began making both mistakes more often.
When you are trying to catch a wave, there are two mistakes that you can make—being too far behind the wave, which means it will just roll under you and you won’t catch it because it’s not breaking yet, and being too far in front of the wave, which means you will get munched by it because it’s already breaking.
These are asymmetric mistakes. Being munched by a wave is not fun. Having a wave roll under you feels like nothing compared to being munched. Because they are asymmetric mistakes, I found myself being too far behind the wave much more often than I was too far in front of the wave. Because one mistake is painful and the other is not. But if your goal is to zero in on the right place to be, then you have to make both mistakes. It would be like trying to learn to ride bike but only ever falling off to the right and never to the left. You would never find the center point of balance.
You see this when people practice handstands. They go up on their hands and come down on their feet instead of their back. Because coming down on your back doesn’t feel as nice. But to find the center point of balance, you have to make both mistakes.
My wife regularly burns toast. And I often ask her to cook it for a shorter amount of time. One day I asked her, “When is the last time you didn’t cook it long enough and had to put it back into the toaster?”
Make both mistakes.