September 2018 – Tool of the Month – Getting Targeted Feedback: The Tracking Chart

The tool-of-the-month for this month is a description of the process by which we all learn, and the critical factor of getting and taking feedback. In doing this, having tools to help track our progress is important to correct for distortions in our own very human self-assessment, and to build confidence in our own ability to learn and change. This template for a “tracking chart” is applicable to virtually any definable change, and though it is not a panacea or change in itself—we are the ones having to do the hard work—it is an important support in the process.

Getting Targeted Feedback:  The Tracking Chart

One of the key factors in learning is feedback: having an idea about something, doing that something, analyzing the results of that something doing, and taking the results of that analysis as feedback (and then iterating back into the next cycle with a slightly modified “idea about something”). Without that feedback, you will be simply going around in a circle, repeating the same action without modification. I.e., not learning.

For example: say you are wanting to improve your free throws (your “idea about something”). So, you go to the free throw line on the basketball court, and shoot the ball at the basket (the “doing that something”). You miss, and in analyzing the actions leading up to that result, notice that you were holding your breath as you shot (the “analyzing the results”). Fetching the ball, you experiment with intentionally breathing as you shoot (the “taking the results of the feedback”), and sink this one, and start incorporating that open breath in your practice (the “modifying your ‘idea about something’”).

This same protocol can be used with anything you are interested in changing, whether something external or internal. For instance, maybe you want to shift your reactivity to your roommate not doing the dishes (you have decided that in the scheme of things, you have a good relationship, and that this is more your issue than his). So, your “idea of something” is to decrease reactivity to the situation. Thus, next time you encounter said dirty dishes, you notice the initial conditioned response (emotional irritation), and then experiment with holding gratitude for what a good person your roommate is (“do that something” here meaning trying what you are intending). You then examine how you feel after that experiment (“analyzing the results”) and in this case, notice that the irritable feeling decreases. You then incorporate that feedback (“taking the results of the feedback”) and see that you can indeed have some control over your own reactions (“modifying your ‘idea of something’”) and use that insight and proof to continue experimenting and practicing.

So, in designing tools to help with the feedback stage, the “tracking chart”, which is a simple grid that allows you track changes in a selected factor over time. It is frequently used to track mood (the “mood chart”), which is often useful to track on paper because anxiety and depression distort our sense of time and history, such that the paper version of reality can help correct for those distortions. But the same tool can be used for tracking any change we are working on.

With our two examples, take a look at the sample charts below.

You can see how the relevant information is charted over time, to allow for feedback on the desired goal to be clearly depicted in the relationship between the quality you’re wishing to change (free throws, irritation) as a factor of a defined change (breathing, gratitude practice). The chart allows you to see the correlation, to either see that there is no relationship (“Huh, so breathing doesn’t really relate to free throws”) or that there is (“Wow, so gratitude practice really cuts the level of irritation”), and then iterate your practice accordingly. The charts are also there to help correct for our human ability to wildly get reality wrong (“Huh! I could have sworn I was shooting better than that!”), as well as to build confidence in the observable fact of change.

Without such feedback tools, we are quite likely to paddle around the same circle, thinking we are moving downstream. Or, we are in danger of deciding that there is no progress happening at all, get dispirited and quit, when actually, if we were charting the feedback, we would get the information we would need to either confirm the usefulness of our path, or change paths to something more effective.