How to Learn and Master Any Skill You Want Using Feedback Loops?

Do you recall ever hearing the saying, “Practice makes perfect?” It's a common saying that you have heard at least once in your life, and it's meant to encourage people who are learning or doing something new.

Since it is rare for people to succeed at things like riding a bike, learning to drive, learning a second language, or cooking on their first try, people may need to try multiple times before they succeed and finish the task correctly.

Undoubtedly, you want to master new skills quickly and effectively, so how can you achieve that?

This is just how learning works: you try, gain experience, learn from it, try again, get better each time over the previous one, and then you make progress. So, it may take days, months, or even years to master a skill fully. You experience what's known as a Feedback Loop each time you go through this learning process again. Before fully mastering any skill, you must go through several Feedback Loops.

What separates a fast learner from a slower one is not some innate, natural talent. Instead, it’s because fast learners understand how they learn and have a systematic way to apply it all the time to learn various things. They know how to use their Feedback Loop to accelerate their learning process effectively.

What is a Feedback Loop?

Simply put, feedback is information about your performance that you receive each time you attempt to practice or apply a skill. It informs you of what went wrong or what went right.

There are three stages to the Feedback Loop:

1. Practice/Application: This stage involves applying what you have learned.
2. Measurement: This stage is where you acquire information about your performance, which is also the most frequently skipped.
3. Learning: At this stage, you analyze your performance and make adjustments to improve and practice again.

Understanding these three stages and applying them each time you practice a new skill is critical. Many people complete the first stage and leave the second very vague or unclear, which causes the third stage to go poorly. The more smoothly and competently you execute a loop, the more you can refine each one over time, gradually increasing your comprehension of each skill.

How to Have an Effective Feedback Loop?

To ensure that the Feedback Loop is effective, you must consider three main factors: consistency, speed, and accuracy.

1. Consistency

Being consistent means having a regular way to get the same quality of feedback. You should compare each practice or learning experience with the feedback you received to measure, learn, and make adjustments. If the feedback is inconsistent, it will be difficult to know what happened correctly.

For example, let’s say you’re learning to play the guitar. You will receive very inconsistent feedback if, in each practice session, you play a different song. Because every song has a different rhythm, pace, and degree of difficulty, you won’t have a reliable way to compare how well you played the current song versus the last. Therefore, the best way to learn is to play the same song repeatedly until you reach a certain level of proficiency.

While this instance may seem clear-cut, it's only an example of how learning can frequently be challenging when we neglect to maintain a consistent environment or set of procedures.

2. Speed

Receiving feedback quickly is crucial because the longer it takes to receive it, the longer it will take to improve a skill. This explains why some people practice for a long time but still progress slowly.

However, the most effective feedback is immediate. The Feedback Loop should finish as quickly as possible to allow for more attempts and advancements within the same time frame. Therefore, the key to getting quick feedback is to analyze the skill or knowledge. Try to break down the skill into different components and divide it into steps, sub-skills, processes, or obstacles.

For example, if the skill you want to learn involves a sequence, you can break your learning down by each step. Create a Feedback Loop for each step individually instead of as a whole process. Divide the processes into manageable chunks you can concentrate on and work on individually.

Suppose you’re learning to cook. You can break this skill into steps, such as finding fresh and suitable ingredients, preparing and handling the ingredients, preparing condiments and sauces, serving and plating, etc.

Or, let’s say you’d like to learn how to play football. You can identify the sub-skills that make up the larger learning techniques and create Feedback Loops for each of them individually. So, you could start by learning how to dribble the ball, pass, and shoot.

3. Accuracy

For many learners, receiving accurate feedback is a common weakness because accuracy is not always simple to define. Therefore, you need a measure of accuracy to receive accurate feedback.

We occasionally receive poor feedback because we’re trying to measure our progress without quantifying our performance or because we are applying the wrong metrics to assess the feedback we get. Worse yet, it might just be that you were never measuring or recording your performance at all. Have you ever experienced this?

You should be able to compare your current performance with your previous performance to increase your chances of improvement. This implies that you have a benchmark or something to compare yourself to identify improvement opportunities.

Quantitative measurement is a way to accurately measure your performance, which involves putting it into numerical form and ensuring consistency and objectivity when comparing it to other things. Measuring feedback can give you constructive information that can help you improve during each cycle of the Feedback Loop.

Let’s say you’re practicing how to dribble in basketball games. Your coach tells you that you are good the first time. In the second round, you improve, and your coach confirms by saying that you did a great job.

Everyone knows that your dribbling skills have improved, but how much? And how can you get better at dribbling? Good versus great doesn’t indicate how well you performed and how much better you performed.

However, in the second scenario, your coach will tell you that you did well if you can dribble the ball from one end of the court to the other four times in a row without letting it slip. In the second round, your coach will instruct you to dribble the ball from one end of the court to the other eight times in a row without letting it get out of your control. If you can accomplish that, your coach will tell you you did great. The number of times you could dribble the basketball across the court will now measure your progress.

With a specific quantity linked to your performance, you can now advance by learning to dribble the basketball court 16 times or more. Also, you can introduce new challenges, like dribbling while an opponent tries to steal your ball. If you succeed, you can then try dribbling while two opponents try to steal the ball, and so on, until you can determine where you can improve.

Improving the Feedback Loop

Are you prepared to use the Feedback Loop now that you are familiar with it? Which new skill are you interested in learning?

As you learn this new skill, put all of the Feedback Loop's stages into practice and see if you can learn things more quickly. Maintaining your passion and avoiding the diminishing productivity trap requires you to refine your Feedback Loop constantly. Improving your own Feedback Loop means knowing what to measure next and what questions to ask to find out the answer.