On Day1 I mentioned the 3 key things that I believe helped me change my financial behaviour: Habits, Feedback and Accountability. I went through Habits in more detail on Day2 and today I want to talk about Feedback.

I’m the proud father of two young boys (aged 4 and 5). One of the things that being a father has really taught me is the importance of feedback when trying to achieve anything with young children. I think anyone in the situation of helping a child take their first steps would instinctively give positive feedback. There’s no way you’re going to sit there watching them with stern indifference as they haul themselves up against a chair and launch out into the fearful world of walking. You’re going to hold out your hands , let them know you’ll look after them, and then call them forward. And as they hesitate teetering on the brink you’ll call them softly and positively. “That’s it, That’s it”, “Good boy come on”, “Almost”, “good try” etc. Positive Feedback is clearly a great way to encourage children to try something new and keep trying it until they master it.

Likewise, you’re not going to sit watching with bland disinterest as a young child picks up a sharp knife and starts playing with it. If you walk over and ask them to hand it to you, surely you wouldn’t just quietly take it to the kitchen without explaining why. Well I assume you wouldn’t. I’ve found myself launching into a 30 minute conversation with my boys, explaining the dangers of the knife, whilst giving them the uneasy sense that I might demonstrate it to them directly. Maybe you wouldn’t, but I’m guessing that one way or the other you’d give a child some Negative Feedback about the potential dangers of playing with sharp knives.

These are clearly important things to do. How likely were we to be here today just as we are if our parents hadn’t done the same thing to us?

Well I believe that this remains important no matter how old we are. We’re likely to do the things that give us Positive Feedback. Positive Feedback makes us feel good. The mindless inner us that I talked about on Day2 lives for these good feelings. If we don’t create our own Positive Feedbacks, then we’re just left with the raw functional feedbacks built into our bodies, and the (sometimes bizarre) psychological associations we’ve made as we grow up. That’s nothing but the mindless subconcious running the show again isn’t it. That’s what I’m trying to stop for me. Mindless Dave’s been running the food & fitness show for far too long and hasn’t done a great job so far. I want to reclaim ‘me’ back, it’s my turn to try.

So I want to make my own decisions about what behaviours I do and don’t want in my life. I know how powerful these good and bad feelings are. I want to set things up so that I get good feelings (Positive Feedback) when I do the things I’ve consciously chosen to do. I want bad feelings (Negative Feedback) when I do the things I’ve consciously chosen not to do. Now I get to choose how this works, and I like that. I get to take some control back.

Put simply, Feedback allows us to decide to align our feelings with what we want to achieve. There is an art to this though. You get to design it. Choosing the right ways for the feedback to work is vitally important.

Here are some things that I think are essential in choosing and setting up your feedback systems:

1. Keep it simple in every way
2. Make it regular and often
3. Make it very measurable (time/length/count/weight/kCals etc. If it’s a touchy feely thing do max of 5 categories eg. Mood: Ecstatic,Happy,Neutral,Sad,F*#&€d)
4. Define it properly so you can’t change the rules later
5. Set a target that is only slightly unrealistic
6. Remove opportunities for excuses (don’t rely on others, get spares, have a box to keep everything in etc)
7. Record it immediately every time (write it down then and there, and type it up later if you have to)

So I’ve got 2 feedback systems now. I’m going give each one it’s own page (links at the top just under the big picture), and then summarise progress in a blog post every time there’s an update.

Feedback 1: Habits List. I started this on Day3. It’s a list of all of the Habits I’m committing to, and my progress on each.

Feedback 2: Body Statistics. This includes stuff like blood pressure & waist size. And will soon include weight, body fat, muscle mass and more (once I manage to dig out my fancy scales)

So keep coming back, keep me Accountable (and there’ll be more on Accountability soon). Next post (in a few minutes) will be a Habits list update.