Does it ever feel like you get random feedback? Positive one week, negative the next, but you're always doing the same things the same way? Regression to the mean, baby!
Things go great, you get praise. Things go poorly, you get critique. Next time things go the opposite way! Praise leads to poor performance, critique leads to good. Eventually all you get is shit because it's the only feedback that makes a difference.
Kahneman observed this with air force training and the story has been repeated ad nauseam for decades. On average, you perform at your average. Your behavior responds to feedback slooooowly.
Performance oscillates around your mean.
We're all amazing at our best and kinda crap when it feels like everything's going to shit. You're tired, cranky, tests aren't passing, your keyboard's making that weird squeaky noise, everyone's asking stupid questions, and now your lunch is late.
Yeah flow is great, but engineering, that's work. The odds are not always in your favor, it's your average performance that matters.
So how do you get good?
You want the graph to look like this:
Average performance trending up, compounding if you can. You don't need much, just a little bit of slope beats a lot of y-intercept.
There's two ways to do get there:
- Get better at what you're good at
- Improve your weak spots
Early in your career, focus on your strengths. You have room to grow and lots to learn. Your best is good but it's not yet great. Working on things you enjoy feels rewarding, creates a virtuous cycle, and you'll become great pretty fast.
Later in your career, focus on your weaknesses. You're already great at your strengths and there isn't much left to improve. Sure you can go from 1% to 0.1% but that won't meaningfully change the average. Your weaknesses now dominate.
That's why beginners need encouragement and experts seek negative feedback. Beginners just need to do more of the thing and feel the progress. Experts need to know what's wrong so they can fix it.
Cheers,
~Swizec
PS: you see this a lot in sports. Rookies can pull off a great qualifying lap or play in a game, but they can't win championships. Experts put on a great lap every lap.
Continue reading about Feedback is a strange thing
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