This is the slowest and most painful way to learn.
And yet, I hear many people insist on making their own mistakes – even fail at things they needn’t – because they feel they’ll learn better that way.
There are certainly things you learn better by doing them wrong before you do them right. It’s an inevitable part of the music-learning process, and there are countless other situations where making mistakes is essential.
But it’s not universal. You don’t need to have terrible work-life balance in order to learn to prioritize it. You don’t need to get blackout drunk in order to learn to drink responsibly. You don’t need to be an ineffective teacher on your way to being an effective one.
You will undoubtedly learn things and get better the longer you practice. But if you insist on not taking advice from experts or teachers, and making every mistake for yourself, then you have chosen to take the longest possible route to excellence.