Mistakes ... are good ..

Not too long ago I sent out an email for our newsletter. A little stressed trying to figure out how we're going to stay open... got to try everything, including a newsletter about our classes. One tiny, so minor problem: the program thought we were in California. Looking at the sample email, it looked correct. The people who actually read it, not so much.

So here's the thing: I could pretend it didn't happen (oh trust me, I tried to stop the email once I found the error). Or I could use it as a teaching opportunity.

MISTAKES ARE OK.

Over the years teaching seniors how to use computers, one theme comes up again and again: "ANY MISTAKE IS THE END OF THE WORLD!!!! ALL PUPPIES ON EARTH WILL DIE BECAUSE I CLICKED THE WRONG BUTTON." That sounds dramatic, but there have genuinely been times a senior was so afraid of making a mistake that I thought I might have to perform CPR. I'm not kidding.

So why is a mistake so terrifying? Did they destroy a computer once? Were the instructions unclear? Is every puppy on earth really one click from armageddon? There are actual peer-reviewed articles on the topic of "Boomer Panic" (not my term, that's the name of the article). Basically, the fear of doing the wrong thing gets so strong that people freeze up and do nothing, or, in some cases, get belligerent and verbally lash out. Why?

When I ask a senior what could actually go wrong if they push the wrong button, none of them can give me an answer that comes close to reality. Most just say "I don't know." Honestly, the real answer is far scarier to someone determined to stay "not tech savvy": they might learn something from the mistake.

That's the whole point. Mistakes are how I learn. It's how children learn. It's how everyone in the world learns, except for the people who refuse to make one in the first place.

You can't break it ... you don't know how

Mistakes happen so often with computers that there's literally a feature built around them: the error message. Its entire job is to alert you to a mistake, sometimes yours, sometimes the programmer's. They show up so often that even people who aren't tech savvy know they exist.

For those of you worried about breaking your computer by pushing the wrong button: I'd bet you can't even find that button. Why? Because nobody wants to get taken to court over something "stupid." That button does exist, but you'd need to understand computers to find it, and it'll warn you not to push it unless you know exactly what you're doing.

Here's the actually scary part.

The fear of doing the wrong thing is far worse than actually doing it. Push the wrong button, and you'll most likely get an error message, or nothing at all. That's it. No puppy death. Nobody mocking you. Maybe a DONK noise. That's the whole consequence.

The real danger is what that fear leads to. That's when seniors call fake tech support and get scammed. That's when they download some "helpful" software that turns their phone into a mess.

That's why in our classes, mistakes aren't just allowed, they're expected. There's no judgment, no grade, no quiz waiting at the end. We're not asking you to memorize steps or recite anything back. You click the wrong thing, we laugh it off together, and you learn it for real. That's the whole method.

Now I've fixed the time zone issue, so here are our classes: After a little embarrassment