Easy mistake

Unlike the many other kinds of mistake, a easy mistake is one that is:

• Indisputably bad amongst skilled practitioners,
• Invisible to the one making the mistake,
• Habitual or recurring, because it is invisible,
• Trivial to prevent in future, once revealed. That is, the solution doesn't require excessive talent, money, or effort to remedy.

Some examples:

• In PKM, naming files "Untitled" or "New file", resulting in files getting lost. Easily solved by writing titles that summarise the content, and continuing to update the name over time if needed.
• In chess, making moves that give the opponent significant advantage without gaining any advantage in return. Often easily solved with a blunder trainer.
• In office work, getting distracted for hours doomscrolling instead of working. Often easily solved with body doubling or pairing.
• When something breaks in a high stakes environment such as a factory or company, assigning blame or even shaming employees, resulting in things being concealed, eventually causing even greater problems. The alternative is blameless culture.
• In team videogames, running into battle one player at a time, instead of as a unit
• In videogames with item economies, buying items that are definitively or measurably bad, perhaps because the player "likes them" or simply has never thought to try others. An alternative is finding Item Tier Lists, or reading character build guides.
• In videogames like Overwatch, standing too far from the game winning objective, instead of close enough to secure it

Easy mistakes are embarrassing

Particularly in team video games, if you are spotted repeatedly performing a mistake, you'll likely be called stupid, told to "stop being stupid" or some variant. This counterintuitively often results in you continuing to repeat the mistake, perhaps because of performance pressure from so many team members now looking at you, or to spite the person who called you stupid.

It's important in rectifying stupid mistakes that they are not personal failings, but the result of chains of events and reactions leading to an outcome. For that outcome to not occur, the chain of events and reactions must change

Some people refuse to do drills that could improve their easy mistakes because they believe the drills will make them look foolish. One coach solves this by making students foolish on purpose, citing that looking foolish in front of the team is better than looking foolish at a competition^[1]

Fixing easy mistakes improves skill dramatically

Easy mistakes are frequent amongst almost all skill practitioners, usually even up to 90th percentile. Thus, identifying and fixing stupid mistakes is among the simplest and most important methods for becoming top percentile. Some examples of rapid skill ascent from fixing easy mistakes:

• In chess, using a blunder trainer can typically improve ELO by a few hundred in a few months
• In Brotato, identifying my game-losing item choices took me from frustratedly losing Danger 5 to winning easily.
• In DotA 2, switching from moving as an independent player to one only in formation with other players took me from 50% win rate to winning next twenty games in a row, easily.

How to identify easy mistakes

The invisible nature of easy mistakes to the one performing it makes it difficult to self identify. Two options exist for identifying easy mistakes:

• The practitioner becomes an observer. Record your performance, then watch it later.
• Ask someone else to observe. This should ideally be someone more skilled in the same domain, but even someone who seems to be less skilled can still make useful observations simply by being an external observer.

Further reading of stupid mistakes

Dan Luu has written about them extensively in 95% isn't that good

Psyche.co considered the base reason for stupid mistakes: Why some of the smartest people can be so very stupid

Extraordinary Tennis for the Ordinary Player, published in 1977