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It’s the holiday season, which means we’re all supposed to be "making memories." But usually, we’re just making mistakes. We burn the turkey, buy the wrong size sweater, or send an awkward text to a group chat that was definitely meant for a spouse.

We treat mistakes like coal in our stockings. But what if I told you that being wrong is actually the greatest gift you’ll receive this year? In fact, the most famous Christmas story in history only exists because a world-class genius couldn't read a font.

Let’s get dumb.

In June 1841, Charles Dickens was wandering through Canongate Kirkyard in Edinburgh. He was in a graveyard (pretty standard "moody writer" behavior I guess) when he spotted a tombstone for a man named Ebenezer Lennox Scroggie.

The stone identified Scroggie’s profession as a "Meal Man" (a grain merchant). But Dickens, perhaps because of the fading light or the 19th-century font, misread it. He thought it said "Mean Man."

He was horrified. He noted in his diary that to be remembered through eternity only for being mean was a "testimony to a life wasted." He imagined a soul so shriveled that his neighbors literally carved his bad attitude into his grave.

In Reality, Ebenezer Scroggie was actually a legendary hedonist. He was a generous town counselor, a jovial corn merchant, and the great-nephew of Adam Smith. He was once even "written up" for grabbing a countess’s bottom during a General Assembly. He was the life of the party, the exact opposite of a Scrooge.

If Dickens hadn't been a "dumb" reader that afternoon, we wouldn't have the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, or Yet to Come. We’d just have a book about a guy who sells oats and is nice to his neighbors.

In the mid-90s, a game studio called DMA Design was building a top-down cops-and-robbers game called Race'n'Chase. It was failing. The missions were boring and the playtesters hated it. But there was one massive coding error: The police car logic was broken.

Instead of pulling the player over and issuing a ticket like a polite fictional cop, a pathfinding bug caused the police cars to aggressively ram the player, trying to drive through them. It caused absolute chaos.

The developers tried to fix the logic bug, but the playtesters screamed, "NO! The crashing is the only fun part!"

So, they leaned into the bug. They scrapped the structured missions and rebuilt the game around the chaos caused by the broken code.

They renamed it Grand Theft Auto. One coding error created the most profitable entertainment product in human history.

Psychologists have a name for this, and it’s called the Pratfall Effect. A 1966 study showed that if you are generally competent, making a clumsy mistake actually makes you more likable.

We are wired to dislike perfection. It feels fake.

(ha-mar-TEE-uh) A Greek term used in tragedy to describe a "fatal flaw" or an error in judgment. Usually, in plays, it’s what gets the hero killed.

But in the Dumbify universe, we’re reclaiming it. Let’s call it "Productive Hamartia." It’s the error that feels like a disaster in the moment but turns out to be the foundation of your best work. Dickens had a massive case of Hamartia in that graveyard, and we’re all still watching the movie adaptations today.

This week, I want you to intentionally lean into a mistake. When you inevitably mess something up (and you will, it's December), I want you to do three things: