Do you evaluate results after you make decisions? What can you learn by doing so?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Learning from experience is a powerful way to grow. Whether it’s a decision you made\u2014or a decision someone else made\u2014you should evaluate results and use them as learning opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read more to learn why and how to evaluate the results of decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Before you can learn from the results of your decisions, you have to figure out how much of the outcome can be attributed to skill, and how much of it was due to luck. We’ll discuss some of the obstacles that prevent us from accurately sorting outcomes into the “luck” or “skill” category, and how you can work around those obstacles by building more effective thinking habits<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To improve at anything, you have to update your beliefs and change your behavior<\/a> based on feedback. When it comes to decision-making<\/a>, you recalibrate based on your results<\/em>.<\/strong> We\u2019ve all heard the advice to \u201clearn from your mistakes,\u201d but how do you actually do that? (Bear in mind that you can learn from your successes, too.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n First you have to figure out when<\/em> a result is something you can learn from; not all of them will provide useful information. If an outcome is the product of luck or other forces that you have no control over, then it might not be able to teach you anything. But you\u2019ll find that most outcomes are the result of a combination of factors, some of which you can<\/em> control, like skill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can think of results as existing on a spectrum between luck and skill, with the majority falling somewhere in the middle of the two extremes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When you attribute a result to skill, you\u2019re taking the credit or the blame for it. <\/strong>You can learn from that by adjusting your behavior going forward. When you recognize that it was about luck, and it wasn\u2019t in your control, then you can discard it rather than changing your behavior<\/a> based on what happened. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In poker, a loss could come down to the fact that you made the wrong moves\u2014an issue of skill. Or it could be because another player drew better cards\u2014an issue of luck. The ability to tell those two situations apart differentiates good players from bad ones. Duke calls this sorting process \u201coutcome fielding.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n How you sort an outcome is a kind of bet, just like your decisions and beliefs. <\/strong>If you attribute an outcome to skill, you\u2019re betting <\/em>you can learn from it and thereby adjusting future decisions (other bets<\/em>) in a way that will impact future outcomes. It\u2019s a chain reaction. That\u2019s why it\u2019s important to get better at outcome fielding (evaluating results) and get it right as often as you can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s break down some of the hurdles we have to overcome for more accurate outcome fielding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s difficult to work backward from a negative result and pinpoint exactly what went wrong. Different causes can produce the same effect. <\/strong>Multiple causes can work together<\/em>, each with a different degree of influence, to produce a single effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, people who achieve great success or fame in the arts often attribute some degree of that success to luck. You probably have to have some level of talent and understanding of craft to make it as an actor. But you also have to hope that a casting director takes a chance on you when you\u2019re starting out, that you form the right connections, that roles are created that you\u2019re a good fit for, and that the projects you get cast in are well-received by the public. And a variety of factors other than the quality of the work can influence public reception, like current events or whether the release date of your film coincides with (and has to compete against) the latest installment of a popular franchise film. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When you\u2019re analyzing a complicated situation or outcome\u2014such as the trajectory of a career\u2014it might be impossible to draw clear conclusions about how much luck played a role as opposed to skill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These flaws in our thinking are habits that can be broken. There are three parts to a habit: <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you have a habit of biting your nails, the cue<\/em> might be stress. Nail-biting is the routine<\/em> that helps you cope. The reward<\/em> is a brief respite, or at least a distraction, from that stress. (Since reward are results, evaluating results is an important aspect of reshaping habits.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The trick to changing a habit is to replace the unwanted routine with something else.<\/strong> You can’t get rid of the cue (stress). And you don’t want to get rid of the reward (less stress). You just need a different routine to bridge the two\u2014like going for a walk or squeezing a stress ball when you get the urge to bite your nails, until eventually, the urge goes away altogether. You can deal with the habit of self-serving attributions<\/a>, toward yourself and others, in the same way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n (Shortform note: For more on how to understand<\/a> and change your habits, read our guide to The Power of Habit<\/em><\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The routine of blaming your negative results on bad luck and other people’s negative results on a lack of skill rewards you with a more positive view of yourself. So find ways to uplift your self-perception<\/a> without<\/em> that biased thinking.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n If taking credit for a success makes you feel good, learn to derive pleasure from interrogating those successes and identifying things you could have done better<\/strong>\u2014because that will set you up for more success later on, and isn’t that a good thing? If being better than others makes us feel good about ourselves, what if we focus on being better at judging people fairly, better at giving them credit where it’s due and compassion where it’s needed? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Self-serving bias and motivated reasoning<\/a> are routines that you can swap out for better ones, like self-reflection<\/a> and the ability to view situations from multiple perspectives. <\/strong>When you’ve confronted the fact that brushing off someone else’s success as a lucky break is not just a throwaway thought you can forget about, but a bad habit that can determine how fast or how much you learn, therefore affecting your ability to make better decisions<\/a> down the line\u2014then changing that habit becomes more important. More learning, better decisions, and ultimately more success are rewards, so it’s possible to build habits to produce those rewards more consistently. Like any routine, it takes practice to master and to turn into a habit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One strategy when observing someone else’s result is to ask yourself what you’d think in their shoes\u2014if it was your <\/em>result. Is it easier to see, then, what they did right? Is it more obvious what was out of their control?<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can take your own mistakes and successes and view them as if you were an outsider, too. When you picture someone else making all the same choices you did, can you see where there\u2019s room for improvement? Can you see where you got lucky? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Although training yourself to change the way you think can be hard, remember that you don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to completely eliminate bias from your life<\/strong>; in fact, that’s probably not possible. But small improvements can have a snowball effect that produces significant changes to your life over time. Learning a little bit more every week might mean learning a lot <\/em>more in a year. And being a faster, better learner gets you closer to pretty much any goal you can think of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Evaluating results is an important aspect of improving decision-making skills, and it must be done honestly, with a sincere effort to mitigate biases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Do you evaluate results after you make decisions? What can you learn by doing so? Learning from experience is a powerful way to grow. Whether it’s a decision you made\u2014or a decision someone else made\u2014you should evaluate results and use them as learning opportunities. Read more to learn why and how to evaluate the results of decisions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":47994,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,9,43],"tags":[481],"class_list":["post-47988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-psychology","category-self-improvement","tag-thinking-in-bets","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\nResults Are Learning Opportunities <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Categorizing Results as Luck-Based or Skill-Based<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Obstacles to Accurately Evaluating Results<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The Challenges of Working Backward<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
The Three Parts of a Habit<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Establishing New Routines<\/h4>\n\n\n\n