When you’re beautifying your lawn, it’s appropriate to do some work (like adding fertilizer) and then wait a few days before you check back on the results. But when you’re driving, you can’t look away for even several seconds… you need to pay attention all the time.
What’s the difference? The amount of time it takes for feedback to manifest.
If you add fertilizer to your lawn, nothing is going to change for a couple days. You can stare all you want, no feedback is coming. But in the car, the world around you is changing constantly. Steering alone takes vigilant attention: you adjust the wheel every couple seconds as you travel straight down the road. Feedback evolves right before your eyes.
Training your brain is more like driving a car than working on a lawn: you benefit most from immediate, constant feedback.
In the car, you don’t care where you were ten minutes ago, or even ten seconds ago… it doesn’t matter. What matters is where you are now, in this instant, and what direction you’re going and how fast. In the brain, feedback applied to an event that’s a week old is hard to learn from, as the brain is no longer engaged in the event. But feedback on what you were doing a couple minutes ago is relevant and pertinent, and you learn from it.
Sports coaches know this. The most powerful speeches coaches ever give are given directly to individual players as the game progresses. In that moment, the right feedback can change everything. It can be simple: pointing out an opponent weakness, reminding the player of a particular strategy or tactic, or simply telling them “Well done!”. We remember the half-time speeches, but the players get the most from the constant feedback from the coaching staff on the field.
If you want to make change in your life, find people you can trust to give you supportive, real-time feedback. Be open to hearing even the parts you don’t like… that’s where you can grow the most if you’re not defensive about it. Learning isn’t a ‘telling’ event, it’s a ‘hearing’ event. Just listen, adjust, and repeat.
Are you helping someone else grow? Give the feedback you have right away, rather than later. Be candid but supportive. Be honest but respectful. Most of all, keep it simple. Like a driver, you aren’t trying to change everything all at once… you’re trying to nudge the steering a little in a different direction as needed.
In either case, to get the most from feedback, reduce the time it takes for the feedback to reach the target. Shorten the feedback loop.
In the news
- Nice to see we have our priorities straight: Plastic Surgeons Stay Busy in Recession
- Gee, if only I had a little pill to solve all my problems: Psych Drugs Gaining Widespread Acceptance
- Let’s see: we eat the same, we exercise the same, and we have the same health results… we must both have the same bad genes! Obesity ’spreads among the young’
Quote for the week
Feedback is the breakfast of champions. – Ken Blanchard quotes
Healthy thoughts,
Jeff
