Something to readReviews & performance
Does Self-Compassion or Criticism Motivate Self-Improvement?
A short blog post on experiments suggesting that kindness to yourself after a failure helps you improve
Why it’s worth your time
Being kind to yourself after a mistake can sound like letting yourself off the hook, and this short post describes experiments that point the other way. In three of them, the nudge was three minutes of writing.
How to bounce back from a mistake at work
The essay · 2 min · Free
How to get it
Opens their site. We don’t copy it here; we’d rather they get the read.
- Read the post.
It's about 400 words. The middle describes the four experiments and the three-minute writing prompt, and the last paragraph is the practical takeaway.
- Write for three minutes after your next slip.
The next time you miss something or get hard feedback, take three minutes to write to yourself about it from an understanding, compassionate point of view, while staying honest about what went wrong. Then write one thing you'll do differently.
Good moments for this: after a mistake at workafter a tough reviewwhen your self-talk turns harsh
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Making it work for you
Every workplace is different. Here’s what to think about before you start, and what might get in the way.
Things to think about
Where mistakes are talked about openly, telling the team what you learned may save someone else the same slip; where they're held against people, keep the writing to yourself and share the fix.
What might make this harder
Write it as advice to a friend who made the same mistake, then read it back as if it were addressed to you.
Questions people ask
Does self-compassion make you lazy?
The experiments McGonigal describes point the other way: after a failure, a wrong or a reminder of a weakness, people given a brief self-compassion prompt showed more motivation to improve, or more belief that they could, than people given a self-esteem boost or a neutral comparison.
What study is this post based on?
Juliana Breines and Serena Chen's paper Self-Compassion Increases Self-Improvement Motivation, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin in 2012.
Who is Kelly McGonigal?
A health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University, and the author of books including The Willpower Instinct and The Upside of Stress.
What it says, and how it holds up
This post takes on a worry that can follow any mistake at work: if I go easy on myself, will I stop trying? Kelly McGonigal, writing in 2012 on her Psychology Today blog The Science of Willpower, says up front where she stands, then reports a set of experiments behind her view. In four studies led by Juliana Breines, people prompted to view a weakness, a wrong or a failure with compassion were more willing to learn from it and improve. In one, they spent more time studying after failing a hard test.
It's a short blog summary, and the studies behind it were experiments with college students and other adults in the US that measured motivation, beliefs and, in that one case, study time. That's a reasonable basis for trying three minutes of writing, and a thin one for bigger claims about careers; the paper's own authors describe the finding as somewhat paradoxical. If the mistake points to a real gap in skill or a pace you can't keep, self-compassion can get you back to work, and the gap itself still needs practice, help, or a word with your manager.
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Picked by Truest and described in our own words. The original belongs to its creator. Last updated October 9, 2026. We sell a career membership; where that’s relevant above, we say so.