This is Part 6 of this series. Here are links to the previous parts: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]In my last email, I showed you how I helped Karen create a framework for success. She set herself a SMART goal, created a focus roadmap and milestones, and developed new daily routines to support her goal.
Karen now has a much more solid start than ever before. We just have to make sure that she doesn't slip up as the months pass by this time!
How do we do that?
Every goal is driven by momentum. That's why at the beginning, things feel smoother --- everything is fresh and new, and you feel energized to achieve it. But, this energy slowly drains away as time goes by and distractions get in the way... unless you have a way to keep this momentum going strong.
And, the way to do that is to always make sure you have
Progress. You need to keep moving.
Progress means you know you're improving. The more clearly you can see your improvement, the more motivation you get. So you need to have
a way to measure your progress -- a
Feedback Loop can help you.
A Feedback Loop is a cycle that helps you get information about how well you’re performing each time you attempt to make progress towards something. Feedback is what tells you what went wrong, or what went right.
Without a Feedback Loop, you can't tell how well you're doing. You can't tell what's going right and what's going wrong. You can't tell
what you need to change.
A good Feedback Loop is part of the Learning Cornerstone Skill we teach at Lifehack. There are 3 key factors that make a Feedback Loop effective:
- Consistent --- Getting the same quality of feedback each time.
- Fast --- Fast feedback is important because the longer it takes to get feedback, the longer it will take to improve on the skill.
- Accurate --- Having feedback that actually reflects your performance accurately.
An example of a bad feedback loop is the New Year's resolutions. They only have a
one year cycle. One year to evaluate yourself is way too long. How many chances do you have?
Developing a good Feedback Loop is a very important skill to have. In our Lifehack Ultimate Transformation Masterclass, it takes an entire lesson to cover it fully.
How can this help Karen? For her, the key was faster feedback. To create fast feedback, you need to break down the skills you want to improve into smaller pieces.
Karen's goal was to plan and present her first marketing campaign proposal to her marketing directors by April; and what she planned to do include speaking confidently in from of a live audience and upgrading her visual presentation skills.
So to help Karen, we created a short feedback loop based on her SMART goal and roadmap:
With her cue card exercises, she could count how many cards she was able to go through within 30 minutes and record how many mistakes she made each time. The more she practiced, the easier it was to just speak from memory --- more cards, less mistakes.
Karen even decided to keep a journal of her improvement, writing down what difficulties she had as a way to reflect on her progress over time.
All these gave her a daily momentum to make improvement, creating a really fast Feedback Loop to stay motivated.
With this entire framework setup, Karen was now well on her way to success with her New Year's resolution.
Imagine you can do this with all the other goals and decisions in your life, it'd be a great game changer! Well, this is exactly what I'm going to talk about in the next email, stay tuned!
Cheers,
Leon
