12 | don't confront me with my failures

I was recently listening to Tom Petty’s Buried Treasure so I could prepare a Tom Petty Is My DJ post. On this particular episode, Petty played the Gregg Allman cut of the Jackson Browne-written THESE DAYS. Because Petty had played Jackson Browne’s recording of the track on a previous show, I was ready to join in for the last two bars:

Don't confront me with my failures
I had not forgotten them

jackson browne THESE DAYS

With the song fresh on my mind, I jumped over to email to catch up on newsletters. That took me to Dr. Daya Grant’s FAILING FORWARD ISN’T THAT EASY. I have no desire to go the way of Mel Robbins, so my first suggestion is that you read Grant’s entire piece for yourself at some point. In the meantime, I want to focus on the research she highlighted, which suggested that we often learn more from success than failure, perhaps in large part because we fail to learn from failure. The combination of Browne’s lyrics and Grant’s take on the research sent me time-traveling back to 2009 and my time in the University of Tennessee Motor Behavior Laboratory…

At that time, I was involved in studies that explored the effects of allowing learners to determine when they received feedback about their performance. The task? Key pressing. In other words, participants were asked to learn to press a series of number keys on the computer in a certain pattern and stick to a certain timing while doing so.

After each attempt, participants were allowed to get feedback about the accuracy of the attempt. The catch was that they would be tested the following day without any feedback. With that in mind, they were instructed to only ask for feedback when they felt like they needed it.

When the results were analyzed, participants reported asking for feedback primarily on attempts they thought were good. Additionally, their timing data confirmed that they had asked for feedback on more accurate attempts. It seemed that people knew - even in these arbitrary, mind-numbing, pointless tasks - when they had messed up. They didn’t need to see it on the screen. Instead, they craved confirmation of success.

In the real-world, however, success isn’t typically something that can be achieved in a 45-minute, 60-trial protocol. It may take hours, or days, or weeks, or months, or years to confirm meaningful progress. The path to success is also typically paved with repeated failure. Understanding that intellectually, however, doesn’t prevent many of us from simply turning around! Grant highlights a reason for the disconnect. Failure, although potentially instructive, is emotionally loaded:

We’re all familiar with the emotional ick that bubbles up when we fail to reach our goal or meet expectations. Shame, confusion, frustration, embarrassment, disappointment, fear. It feels pretty awful. We’ve let ourselves down or perhaps we’ve negatively affected other people. The emotions are unpleasant, but the real tragedy is that they’re doing more than just making us feel bad: they’re holding us back.

Dr. Daya Grant | FAILING FORWARD ISN’T THAT EASY

Taken together, my experiences in the lab and Grant’s commentary highlight the complex relationships at play when learning something:

• You can learn a lot from failure, but the emotional stakes prevent many from engaging with those lessons

• Individuals may prefer to learn from success, but success usually comes slowly for complex, real-world tasks

Grant provides excellent guidance to address the psychological barriers around failure, so I want to focus on supplementing her suggestions from a skill acquisition perspective. Just as Grant offered advice to help shift individual focus, we can design instructional environments to shift the focus of learning experiences in ways that frame failure as either: (1) a neutral byproduct of exploration, or (2) the goal of the task.

failure as a neutral byproduct

When the goal is a specific movement outcome, success becomes a narrow target. Even if given technical advice to correct repeated failures, the unspoken measuring stick is typically still the outcome. Approaches that promote variability, however, put success/failure on the sidelines. Instead of offering a specific instruction to meet the desired outcome, a coach can instead treat that instruction as a category to be explored. Take free throws as an example. Rather than telling a player whose shot is flat to add more arc, a coach could approach a training session with the instruction to “experiment with different arcs to see what you observe.” The athlete will still attempt to make the free throw, but now the make/miss is tethered to the different arcs rather than to their ego! This example is consistent with differential learning approaches that favor exploration and variation over repetition of singular technical solutions. It is equivalent to handing someone a multiple choice test for which every single option is correct!

failure as the goal

As odd as it sounds, it is also okay to make failure the goal. Consider the classic example from THE INNER GAME OF TENNIS, where Timothy Gallwey recounts his solution for students who were struggling to make solid contact with the ball; he would ask them to swing and miss. They would be confused, but were also easily able to swing over or under the incoming shots according to Gallway’s instructions. After doing this, he would tell them to hit the next one. Usually, they would make solid contact. No technical instruction needed. Because it wasn’t a technical issue. It was an issue with focus of attention. Gallway’s instructions helped them re-connect with the key environmental information: the ball. And what Gallwey learned through intuition back in the 1970s continues to be supported by research to this very day. Most recently, skill acquisition researcher Rob Gray had a paper accepted for publication that showed learning was better when hitters were instructed to produce non-ideal outcomes (e.g., pop ups, weak ground balls) but given no technical instructions than when they were given technical instructions and directed to hit the ball squarely. It seems that intentional failure is often a viable way of helping learners lock in on the perceptual information that will ultimately produce desired outcomes. And when failure is the goal, can you really fail!?!

—

By framing failure in these ways, you redefine success and lower the bar to a height more easily cleared by those learning something new. Such approaches help preserve failure’s informational value while at the same time lessening its capacity for emotional damage. Even better, the approach will likely lead to more adaptable, competition-ready athletes than one built around the idea of perfect execution of narrowly defined technical/tactical solutions.

Now back to Jackson Browne…

I can’t confirm this, but I am guessing that Jackson Browne didn’t do any time in a motor behavior laboratory. Even more telling, he didn’t write THESE DAYS as a old man with regrets. He was 16 when those words left his pen! And yet, despite his lack of years (and advanced degree in human performance), he recognized that failure is often felt even in the absence of external feedback. In other words, people usually know when they fall short. In the absence of contradictory instructions, individuals may judge themselves harshly for a perceived lack of success. By changing the standards, however, we can create learning environments where failure can truly be the teacher it is often assumed to be.

Sarah R. Chipperfield and Paul Bissell. 2023. ‘I hear the music and my spirits life!’ Pleasure and ballroom dancing for community-dwelling older adults. Journal of Aging and Physical Activity, 31, 276-288.

summary: This study explored the effects of social ballroom dancing on the health and well-being of community-dwelling older adults. Twenty-six participants completed 3 semi-structured interviews over the 12-month period (baseline, 6-month, 12-month). Baseline interviews focused on the influence of dancing on health and well-being, initial motivations to start dancing, and dance experiences across lifespan. The 6- and 12-month interviews focused on the influence of dancing on health and well-being, progression in dancing, and adherence to continue dancing or reasons for cessation. Thematic analysis centered around the idea of pleasure, with the authors identifying 5 subtypes of pleasure associated with ballroom dance.

• Sensual: pleasure from the sound of (self-selected) music, the touch of dancing with a partner, proprioceptive confirmation of technical improvement, and visual aesthetics of ballroom dance

• Habitual Action: pleasure from dance providing structure and an anchoring activity in their schedule and as a source or regular, physical activity

• Immersion: pleasure from being in the moment and temporarily setting aside life’s worries or even physical pain that would normally occupy their thoughts

• Practice: pleasure in the form of gaining competence in a skill

• Community: pleasure in the form of engaging in an activity alongside their life partner and in the form of gaining a new social circle among other dancers

potential translations to sport: Sport participation lends itself to 4 of the 5 types of pleasure detailed in the study: habitual action, immersion, practice, and community. Music, a form of sensual pleasure, is often part of a sporting experience, but, outside of sports involving choreographed routines, is seldom central to it. This study highlights the pleasure that music can provide on its own, but also speaks to its capacity to serve as a catalyst for the other categories. As music and sport researcher Costas Karageorghis says, music is a “legal performance enhancing drug.” Rather than treating it as a distraction or as something to be tolerated, coaches may find value in looking for ways to use music more intentionally as a way to enhance more obvious outcomes.

While watching WE BEAT THE DREAM TEAM, I noticed that Christian Laettner gave his interview surrounded by guitars. I searched a bit, but couldn’t find much on Laettner’s connection to music short of one reference in a write-up about his basketball camps:

I coach my own son and I teach him guitar. I find that I have a lot more patience with him on the guitar than the basketball court.

Christian Laettner, DUKE LEGEND LAETTNER ENJOYS TEACHING THE GAME

Laettner’s comments about patience jumped out at me. So often, we find ourselves teaching something we know very well. It may be hard to relate to new learners once you pass through that period yourself, which can make us less effective instructors. In TEACHING WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW, author Therese Huston addresses this very issue. Throughout the book, Huston highlights the benefits of being in a place more closely aligned with those you are teaching when designing instructional experiences. It makes me wonder if Laettner’s enhanced patience when teaching the guitar reflects the fact that his guitar prowess is likely far below his basketball expertise. The proximity to his student, however, might enhance his ability to teach. Rather than being frustrated at the inability to arrive at his destination, maybe he finds himself in the role of co-navigator. This isn’t to say that you can’t teach what you know well, but rather that putting yourself in the shoes of a new learner may produce a superior learning environment. In other words, start from the perspective of the individual being taught rather than the knowledge to be learned.

I turn to Rakim for a reminder that success comes with its own burden, so perhaps I should be more grateful for failure!

You think it's rough at the bottom
It's even rougher on top

rakim UPLIFT

For whatever reason, the tracks on this playlist either put me in a good mood about the idea of not hitting the mark or provide company for my occasional misery! Happy to add more if anyone has suggestions.