We all know someone who, when something goes wrong, sentences us with an unappealable and unfair "I told you so". It is unappealable because that someone usually, effectively, has warned us (although in a low voice) and it is unfair when the bad result has been in spite of and not due to the effort. The unappealable makes the "I told you so" overwhelm the "let me explain" and that takes away for a while the desire to try again. The prominence of "I told you so" is due, in part, to the fact that we live in a world obsessed with results and disdainful of effort: getting there counts more than how you got there when, precisely, learning lies in the how and not in having gotten there. subject The expression "the end justifies the means", which atrociously subordinates the how to result and opens the door to all sorts of outrages, is another variation of the same attitude.

Results are important, but obsessing over them limits learning, the only guarantee of future results. The "I told you so" attitude makes us intransigent about good decisions that may have ended badly and complacent about bad decisions that have ended well.

It is true that this attitude is part of who we are, of human nature, but we can choose sides: those who, knowing the risk, try and those who prefer to wait at goal while rehearsing ways to say "I told you so".