Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Bringing the future closer
Ask people how it went. How was that meeting, how am I doing, what did you make of it. Nobody enjoys asking, and the information is not available any other way.
Ask one specific person about one specific thing rather than the room in general. If your read on yourself has been bent out of shape by years of being told off, this matters more, not less: your self-assessment is the least reliable instrument you own. Take what comes without arguing with it, and decide later what to do with any of it.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'Will provide for them from an unexpected source' (Quran 65:3). Help turns up from places you were not watching, and another person's honest view is one of them.
وَيَرۡزُقۡهُ مِنۡ حَيۡثُ لَا يَحۡتَسِبُۚ وَمَن يَتَوَكَّلۡ عَلَى ٱللَّهِ فَهُوَ حَسۡبُهُۥٓۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ بَٰلِغُ أَمۡرِهِۦۚ قَدۡ جَعَلَ ٱللَّهُ لِكُلِّ شَيۡءࣲ قَدۡرࣰ ا
and will provide for them from an unexpected source; God will be enough for those who put their trust in Him. God achieves His purpose; God has set a due measure for everything
Qur’an 65:3read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Three field experiments found that framing learning around goals such as growth and health, rather than money or image, improved students' learning, performance and persistence. Asking for honest feedback is that same choice in miniature, growth ahead of how you look. Those experiments were with students and about goal framing, so read it as a nudge in the same direction rather than direct evidence.
Maarten Vansteenkiste; Joke Simons; Willy Lens; Kennon M. Sheldon; Edward L. Deci (2004). Motivating Learning, Performance, and Persistence: The Synergistic Effects of Intrinsic Goal Contents and Autonomy-Supportive Contexts.. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Other people can see the parts of your performance that you simply cannot.
When not to
If the person you would be asking tends to be cutting rather than honest, that is not feedback and you do not have to go and collect it.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Hang something small and near on the task. No coffee until the expense form is in. Not a treat later in the month, something you actually want in the next ten minutes.
A consequence has to cost the person whose behaviour it is, in something they actually care about. If missing the bus mildly annoys your teenager and wrecks your morning, the cost is landing on the wrong person.
Once a day, look at the whole day before it starts eating you. What is on, what is urgent, what is this day actually best used for. Morning or evening, whichever you will really do.