Better Feedback :Better Results
I’m all about finding ways to get maximum impact in minimum time.
That’s what today’s topic can do for you. Save time and get better results.
’m going to highlight how you can use high-quality feedback to get higher grades, more success in job interviews, and faster promotions at work.
What’s great about accessing better feedback and making good use of it is that you’ll get better results without putting in much extra work. In fact, you’ll discover that it’s a repurposing of the time you’re already spending, but it will lead to better results.
Incredibly, very few people take advantage of this easy opportunity.
It’s surprising and not surprising. Using high-quality feedback is not something we’re taught; you have to figure it out for yourself or have someone suggest it to you.
Beyond that, it can seem like a lot of work, and let’s be honest, things that seem like a lot of work put people off.
So What Does High-Quality Feedback Mean?
Imagine you’re a kid playing a sport— baseball, for example—and you really want to get better.
To get better at fielding the ball, you need 2 things: repetitions and feedback.
You can get a hundred reps in, but if you’re doing it wrong and no one is correcting you, you’ll build up muscle memory of how to do it wrong.
On the other hand, if you have a coach beside you
- who demonstrates the right way to field the ball
- gives you 10 reps to practice
- then shows you what to correct
- gives you another 10 reps to practice
- then tweaks your form again
- gives you another 10 reps to practice
- then shows you a recording of what you’re doing and highlights what to fix and
- gives you another 10 reps of practice
I promise you will get WAYYYYY more improvement out of those 40 reps than the 100 reps without coaching.
Beyond the obvious fact that you’re getting coaching on how to get better, notice one really important subtlety.
While the coach will highlight the things you’re doing well, their focus should be on the things you need to fix.
So, what are some of the characteristics of high-quality feedback from this example?
- Assessment of what’s right and what’s wrong
- Repetition to build muscle memory
- Focus on weaknesses to
a) make max improvement and
b) not spend excess time on things you already know
How To Get and Use High-Quality Feedback
1) Getting Higher Grades
RIGHT/WRONG QUESTIONS
Let’s start with how to apply feedback to getting higher grades.
To begin, ask yourself, what’s the purpose of feedback when it comes to learning. I’d say there are two dimensions.
- Do you know the material? — can you retrieve the right info?
- Do you know the material well? — how fast can you retrieve the right info?
There’s a pretty simple pathway to getting this feedback: ask yourself a question and try to answer it correctly ✔️.
Those of you familiar with my content will recognize this as active recall. However, high-quality feedback goes beyond this.
For example, let’s say you’ve gone through your chapter and instead of making notes, you used the app Notion to create questions and answers from the material.
After completing this process, you attempt to answer each of the questions and mark the ones you got right with a checkmark and the ones you got wrong with an “X”.
Notice here that you’ve received high–quality feedback. You can see in black and white what you know well and what you don’t.
Take that incredibly valuable information and spend a few minutes reviewing the sections of the text where you got questions wrong.
🗓️ Then, the next day or a couple of days later, go back through to try to answer the questions you got wrong.
It will take a lot less time since you’re incorporating the feedback from the previous day and only focusing on the ones you got wrong.
Once again use check marks (✔️) and ❌’s to identify which ones you got right and wrong.
Go back until you get all check marks.
There are lots of opportunities to apply a version of this. You can get questions from
- Practice questions in the text book
- Make up your own practice questions
- Practice exams
- Previous years’ exams
The bottom line is that you should absolutely be using active recall to study, but make it more powerful by using the feedback from active recall and improving on what you’re getting wrong.
Essays, Projects and Exam Prep
Of course, not all questions are single-item questions.
It’s not as easy to get feedback on a written assignment you’re working on.
Beyond that, you’ll have to prep for essay-type exams, which, again, don’t obviously lend themselves to feedback.
There are ways to get high-quality feedback, though, if you get creative.
First off, written assignments should be done in three stages,
- 📕 Researching
- ✍️ Writing
- 📝 Editing
These are three separate tasks and should be done separately.
This is also a useful approach because it allows you to get feedback early on to prevent wasting time going down the wrong path.
Research and outline your project, and once you complete that, schedule a time to speak with your instructor. Show them what you’ve got, discuss it with them, and get their feedback.
Three good things happen
- You get very high-quality feedback (from the person grading it)
- Once you incorporate their feedback, they’re invested in your success
- Their impression of you improves because of your proactiveness
After incorporating their feedback, you can go ahead and write your paper confident that you’re on the right track.
📢 Once you get to the editing stage, another way to get feedback is to read it out loud. You’ll be amazed at the “feedback” you get by hearing yourself read your essay out loud.
Take a similar approach to exam prep, especially if it’s a written exam rather than multiple-choice or short answer.
🧑🏫 Prepare early, discuss with your professor the type of topics you’re focusing on, and try to get a sense of whether you’re generally in the ballpark.
Conceptual Material That Brings Things Together
🧠 Finally, there’s conceptual material that is neither simply right/wrong nor a written assignment.
An example of this might be understanding how the Discounted Cash Flow model works.
Alternatively, it might be about analyzing a process flow and identifying the bottleneck.
Or any one of a hundred other examples.
A great way to get feedback on your understanding is to use the Feynman Technique.
The Feynman Technique, named after famed physicist Richard Feynman, is a simple 5 step process that incorporates feedback as part of it.
- Step 1: Explain the material to someone without using industry lingo or complicated phrases. Explain it in a way that a 10 year could understand
- Step 2: Identify the areas where you weren’t able to explain it simply — this is your feedback; you don’t know these sections clearly
- Step 3: Go back and review the material that you weren’t able to explain simply
- Step 4: Try again to explain the material very simply
- Step 5: Repeat as necessary
None of these methods should prove too big a burden, but whether it’s right/wrong questions, written work or conceptual material, these methods of generating feedback will help you get higher grades without much more work.
2) Improved Job Search Results
You can also improve your job search outcomes with high-quality feedback.
The first and easiest application of feedback is to 🎤 record a few practice interviews.
You don’t even need someone to ask the questions. You can just record yourself answering them.
The purpose of these early practice recordings is to fix basic problems.
The feedback is a slap in the face from all the times you say “um” or “ah” or whatever your verbal tick. (FYI, we all had to fix that one)
🛠️ Incorporate that feedback and fix those basic issues.
The next step can be to do a mock interview with a classmate. Give them the list of questions ahead of time, and then let them throw in a couple of their own.
Don’t forget that you are trying to get reps in with certain questions initially and then building from there.
Once you complete and record the mock interview, ask the mock interviewer for feedback. Take this with a grain of salt since they may have no idea what they’re talking about. There are many terribly wrong ideas people have about interviewing.
Take your recording to someone in your career office and ask them to review it and give you feedback.
Finally, while the career office person is reviewing it, review it on your own. See if you come to similar conclusions as the career office staffer.
At this point, you’ll have used lots of feedback to start to hone in on some of the things you can do better.
More ways to get interviewing feedback:
Career services: Sometimes, career services staff are willing to do mock interviews with you.
This is a great opportunity to get feedback.
Just make sure you’ve worked out the easy stuff on your own first. You should be long past the point where you’re saying “ummm” when you take advantage of this resource for feedback.
After-action report: I’ve met few people who take advantage of one of the most valuable sources of feedback and improvement — the after-action report.
Right after you finish a job interview, spend 15 minutes in a coffee shop and make notes on
- 👍 What went well
- ☹️ What went poorly and needs to be fixed
- ❓What questions they asked you
- ❓What questions you asked them
- 🤔 Anything else that was worth noting from the interview
This will give you the opportunity to learn from your real-world experience.
Be sure to be brutally honest with yourself. You’ll never get better if you don’t critically analyze your performance.
I’ve built a tool in Notion to help with this and keep all of your job search info organized. You can learn more at this link.
Informational Interviews: I’m torn on asking an interviewer for feedback.
Some people think that these are more casual conversations, so asking for feedback on how you can improve your interviewing might be no big deal.
Alternatively, you may want to save the feedback question for something like, “When I am actually interviewing for this job in the spring, what is the biggest thing I can do between now and then to make myself a stronger candidate?”.
I’d rather leave the person with a broader opportunity to give me feedback on how to become a stronger candidate.
Closing Thoughts
Archimedes said
“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”
Leverage is one of the most powerful forces around. Feedback is a way to apply leverage to all the hard work you’re already doing in school and in your job search.
Be sure to take advantage of it.
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