The Art of Forgetting: Learn and Move on

Life is generally filled with chaos and challenges. These often have made me feel overwhelmed and powerless on multiple occasions. But, every time, I have been able to grow, learn and become a better version of myself.

The way our brain learns and adapts is generally through a series of events that happen throughout our journey, from burning ourselves touching something hot to standing back up once we fall. After each event, we seldom remember the cause (burnt) but rather remember the underlying effect and impact (not to touch hot material again).

However, during interviews, we often put emphasis on the following question:

What is your biggest failure and what have you learned from it?

This is one of my most disliked questions during an interview.

Biggest? In what terms? There can be small failures that have yielded deep learning, whilst the opposite is equally true. I am truly skeptical that this question on its own would be able to allow any interview panel to form an objective opinion on hiring, not to mention that this question can easily be rehearsed prior to the interview, which furthermore obfuscates and clouds our judgements.

No situations are ever identical. Therefore, I have found it way more valuable to ask the following question:

How would you handle this particular situation?

We, as humans, are built on top of prior experiences. By giving a situation/behavioural question, candidates would be able to showcase their toolkit that they have acquired and engage in a much more meaningful, on the spot, conversation with the interview panel.

I fundamentally believe that people that retain the learnings from failures don’t dwell on the failure itself. They would convert the learning into one of the many tools that can be re-leverage for future situations. The cause itself is not truly worth remembering, while the outcome, however, is.

Forgetting is an Art. Being able to look back on how you’ve gone your way of becoming a stronger and well-rounded individual, in my opinion, is the true indication that someone has gown and taken the learning with them.