Episode Transcript

What’s up, everybody? Welcome back to THE a.m guys.

So today I want to talk about action and how it leads to competency, if you do these things, because there’s a misconception, I think, that we have as people, that if I do something I’m learning.

We automatically, for whatever reason, assume that we’re learning and improving, and especially if we’re successful at something that we do, or we’re good at something we do, we assume that we’re learning. And it’s interesting, because when push comes to shove, if you had to teach what you know, did you actually learn along the journey?

And by learn, I don’t just mean like the skill set. Cool, I learned math. Two plus two equals four. Okay, you’ve learned a principle of math, but you actually haven’t learned why that is and the surrounding concepts of philosophy, you don’t actually understand, I guess you could say the universe of math and how it works. And this is how it is with everything.

It’s interesting, because growing up in the music arena and growing up playing a lot of music, you could learn a lot of music, but without actually consciously sitting there to learn and understand. Oh, my hand feels this way when I do this. Oh, I’m doing this. When I do this, Oh, I see that these things are current. Why am I doing that? Why am I doing this? And you’re going through this process of curiosity. Curiosity is deeply associated with learning. Then you begin becoming competent. You can actually have action over and over and over. You can do the same thing over and over and over. But unless you have feedback, right, whether it’s from yourself or somebody else, and there’s feedback during that process, you’re not actually going to grow and learn. Feedback is such an important process, especially in business, you need feedback.

You need feedback about the product, the offering. You need feedback about design. You need feedback about processes. You need feedback from communication and ideation process. You need feedback to improve. And the reason why I’m saying this is very simple, just doing something doesn’t mean you’re going to improve, and a lot of us believe that if we just do something, we’re just do something, we’re just going to automatically improve, and it’s not the case, right?

I played a lot of basketball growing up, but I never actually had feedback and real feedback long term to actually become good at what I was doing. And it’s interesting too, about feedback. If you don’t listen to feedback, you actually won’t learn. So you can be given feedback and ignore it, and then the improvement process stops. So I’m saying action only leads to you being competent in what you’re doing if you actually have feedback, and if you’re consciously sitting there learning, if you’re consciously sitting there paying attention.

I was cooking the other night, you know, and I cook often, and my wife was watching me open a package of sausage, and she’s like, Oh my gosh, I was crazy because I took scissors and just cut it a certain way. And she’s like, I’ve been trying to figure out how to get that better. And I told her, I was like, you know how many different things I tried before I actually discovered the best way to open the package of sausages? She’s like, I don’t know how many that’s like, six or seven. I tried to open this package six or seven different ways, but each time I was like, Okay, why didn’t that work? And I began having self feedback.

The point of what I’m saying is this, you need feedback in your life, and if you don’t like feedback, you got a problem with learning, and you got a problem with improvement, even as much as you might say otherwise, feedback is super important, because without that, you don’t know actually how you improved. You don’t know what you did to get better. You need to know the nuances of how you’re actually improving from the skill set you’re learning. You don’t just need to know the right answer. Two plus two equal four. Knowing the right answer and not actually knowing how the math works doesn’t help you. It actually hurts you long term, because you know the right answer, you have no idea how to get there, and so as a result, you just become one hit wonder over and over again.

At least in that area cool, you have the right answer, but you’re outside of that right answer. You’re non functional. And it’s interesting, because any area in my life where I’m non functional, it’s simply because I haven’t improved. If I’m not able to really actually do what I need to do, I haven’t stopped and learned. I haven’t either provided feedback, look for it, received it, or even accepted it in some way, shape, fashion or form, in every area in my life that I’m lacking in is because of the same thing.

And so you could even say that this is part of having humility, to be able to listen, to move forward, to be able to listen and change and actually grow and move forward, and that this is part of that journey, is having feedback in your life, and why it’s so important to have feedback, one of the best things to do as well, if you’re leading a team of people, is have moments and sessions for feedback, by the way, to where you guys give feedback about projects, work, teamwork, so on and so forth, and those things just a last little tidbit.

Anyways, guys, I’ll catch you later. Peace.