1-21-21: 3 words that determine your positive feedback loop

Sent 1/21/2021

Today's Think Better Newsletter is about creating positive feedback loops in training.

The Idea

One of the common misconceptions about progress and improvement is that it's linear. It's not. Even when it appears to be, that's just an illusion.

Progress goes slowly and then rapidly and then slowly again. Those rapid portions I call leaps, and they are generated through positive feedback loops. Here's the diagram of a training feedback loop from the book.

You bring your energy, focus and skills to your training.

After your training you have changed yourself in some way: hopefully you've improved, occasionally you've set yourself back.

That change is then fed back into your training. If you improve and retain that improvement, your training has a chance to improve. If you injure yourself or cancel out your progress with a poor lifestyle, your progress will be stunted.

You need to build and sustain the best feedback loop possible.

The System

Use these 3 words to systematically ask yourself whether or not you are creating the best positive feedback loop:

Quality: Is the training you are doing high quality? Are you following a good plan and executing that plan as best you can? Are you doing enough to improve but leaving enough in the tank to have good workouts tomorrow? You want to get the most out of your workout and no more.

Recovery: In training, the "feedback" is primarily how much you recover. If you have a great workout and then stay up all night, you might lose all of the gains from the workout, and feed back nothing into the next day. How you recover is fundamental to how your feedback loop functions.

Consistency: One workout doesn't make a difference. It takes hundreds of workouts to make a leap, and thousands to reach your potential. Every day your positive feedback loop makes you better is one step closer to a leap. Every day you don't maintain that consistency is a day you fall further behind.

Quality. Recovery. Consistency. To make a leap you have to nail all three.

The Question

Of the three key words above, which one do you need to improve the most?

Go Be More,

Bryan Green
Author of Make the Leap: Think Better, Train Better, Run Faster and the companion Think Better Workbook
Co-host of the Go Be More Podcast

"I think it's very important to have a feedback loop, where you're constantly thinking about what you've done and how you could be doing it better."
- Elon Musk

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