‘We thought you were seventy!’ said the boys on the side of the pool.
That wasn’t the feedback I was expecting, or in all honesty seeking, as I clambered out exhausted after what I thought had been an energetic swimming session.
Let me explain.
Since I knackered my foot (my medical diagnosis) last November, I’ve been unable to run, walk any distance or cycle. A nightmare for me, given my love of exercising (pre-injury circa 150km per week on my road bike). I’m still in a medical boot eleven months later. That was the reason why I was in the swimming pool that day. Swimming the only stroke I can do, which is breaststroke.
I had been ploughing up and down the pool, as fast as I could manage, trying to beat my previous best times for 1500m. So the feedback from these teenage boys from the local elite swimming club took me aback.
‘Seventy?’ I spluttered.
‘Yep, you swim like an old man!” was their brutal feedback, as they went on to tell me, ‘You’re swimming the breaststroke all wrong.’
Now at this point I was bewildered. The breaststroke has its’ name for good reason, I thought. It’s done by making wide sweeps with your arms, whilst doing a frog kick. Yep, you thought so too eh? Well it turns out, this is completely wrong – indeed I’ve been unconsciously incompetent about this since childhood.
The correct arm movements are quite different.
If I’ve piqued your interest, there’s a video below that gives you a breakdown of the arm movements…
Two points fascinated me from this exchange on the side of the swimming pool.
Firstly, I reflected as to why I was so open to such brutal feedback from this pair of teenage boys? It wasn’t because of the subtlety of the feedback! That’s a topic I’d like to explore in a future post.
The second point was that we can do things in certain ways for years, without realising that there are far more effective, less time consuming alternatives. As a result of this single change in technique, my swimming times for 1500m are now more than four minutes faster. This experience reminded me of that famous Daniel Kahneman quote, ‘We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.’
One of the key causes of inattentional blindness, according to Kahneman, can be actions that we repeat regularly. Repetition leads to habits, and these can progressively become unconscious. If these unconscious habits are effective, then great. It’s eased our cognitive load. However, it is also possible that we are vulnerable to the development of less productive, unconscious habits that, if we were not blind to them, we might seek to change.
Kahneman points to other causes of inattention blindness. These include working tired/stressed. It’s the reason those motorway signs ask us to take a break if we feel tired. He also cites a further risk factor is working alone with few points of comparison. It’s no surprise, given these risk factors, that those working in schools, be they whole teams, individual leaders, or teachers can be vulnerable.
So is it possible to maximise the potential gains that can come from being better at noticing/hearing? And how can we make seeking this feedback habitual? One great technique is to make a habit of engaging in slow thinking. This aims to avoid inattentional blindness, by engaging in deliberate self-checking to ensure that no useful information has been overlooked. Some self-prompts to aid this process include:
- What information am I ignoring?
- What am I not noticing that could be important?
- What other sources of information/feedback could I tap into that might confirm/disconfirm what I think I’m seeing?
- What have I missed?
But it isn’t only being better at noticing, it’s how we interpret what we see/hear. As Anais Nin is quoted as saying, ‘we see the world as we are, not as it is’. Hence it is important to ensure that we avoid pre-conceptions and assumptions skewing our interpretation of what we see/hear. Some questions to ask, to avoid this pitfall, include:
- Are there other ways of interpreting the information I’ve got in front of me?
- Could I look at this in a different way?
- What assumptions have I made?
- Are the assumptions I’ve made valid?
- How can I check my assumptions are accurate?
- Am I allowing pre-conceptions to cloud my opinion here?
Slow thinking can become an addictive habit too. Individuals begin to see the limitation of not noticing key information that is right in front of them. They see how they make better decisions because they have more accurate feedback on the situation they are in. ‘I need to work out how to be much, much better at noticing these things in real time’ and ‘I’m definitely going to listen with more of an open mind to feedback from others in future,’ were two thoughtful reflections from leaders I’ve worked with this year. This in-the-moment awareness is crucial if individuals are going to be effective at receiving more accurate and timely feedback about the world around them. Similarly I’ve worked with teachers recently who have reflected that they now take much more care in avoiding assumptions about their learners’ level of understanding.
Nurturing and sustaining the habit, both individually and collectively, of slow thinking, can potentially bring massive gains. It can enhance the quality of reflection and decision making, as well as fostering a culture where existing habits are evaluated in terms of their effectiveness. And for that reason alone, as we start a new school year, slow thinking might well be a great ‘plus one’ to make a habit…
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