How to Use Feedback Loops for Personal Productivity

This is one of the most powerful tools in my toolbox for powerful productivity: It's the Friday Reflection Habit from the Agile Results Productivity System. How powerful is it? Powerful enough that I shared it with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella after reflecting on 20+ years of high performance at Microsoft. It's more than productivity--it's also a tool for personal transformation and career growth. The Friday Reflection Habit actually helped me become an innovator at Microsoft. It's a key to what helped me become the head coach for Satya Nadella's innovation team. 𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗜𝗦 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗙𝗥𝗜𝗗𝗔𝗬 𝗥𝗘𝗙𝗟𝗘𝗖𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 𝗛𝗔𝗕𝗜𝗧 The 𝗙𝗿𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝗥𝗲𝗳𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗛𝗮𝗯𝗶𝘁 is a weekly routine where you pause to review your week, extract key lessons, and plan actionable steps for the future. It's designed to inspire your continuous growth and improvement by regularly evaluating your progress and refining your approach. 𝗪𝗛𝗬 𝗣𝗥𝗔𝗖𝗧𝗜𝗖𝗘 𝗙𝗥𝗜𝗗𝗔𝗬 𝗥𝗘𝗙𝗟𝗘𝗖𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 1. 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻𝘂𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁: It helps you learn from your experiences, turning setbacks and successes into insights for growth. 2. 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁: Keeps your actions aligned with your long-term goals, ensuring consistent progress toward your future self. 3. 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗙𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀: Regular reflection sharpens your focus, making sure you’re working on what truly matters. 𝗛𝗢𝗪 𝗧𝗢 𝗣𝗥𝗔𝗖𝗧𝗜𝗖𝗘 𝗙𝗥𝗜𝗗𝗔𝗬 𝗥𝗘𝗙𝗟𝗘𝗖𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 1. 𝗦𝗲𝘁 𝗔𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲: Dedicate a specific time each Friday for reflection, typically 15-30 minutes. 2. 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗪𝗲𝗲𝗸: Ask yourself questions like: What went well? What didn’t? What did I learn? 3. 𝗘𝘅𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀: Identify patterns or lessons from your week that you can apply moving forward. 4. 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗡𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝗪𝗲𝗲𝗸: Set intentions or goals based on your reflections to make the next week more effective. 𝗕𝗘𝗖𝗢𝗠𝗘 𝗬𝗢𝗨𝗥 𝗙𝗨𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘 𝗦𝗘𝗟𝗙 To become your Future Self with Friday Reflection, follow these steps: 1. 𝗩𝗶𝘀𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘇𝗲 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗙𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗳: Clearly define who you want to become—your goals, skills, habits, and values. 2. 𝗪𝗲𝗲𝗸𝗹𝘆 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁: During Friday Reflection, assess how your actions and decisions from the past week align with the vision of your Future Self. Identify progress and gaps. 3. 𝗘𝘅𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝗟𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗻𝘀: Review what worked and what didn’t, drawing insights from your experiences that can guide you closer to your future self. 4. 𝗦𝗲𝘁 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀: Based on your reflection, set specific, actionable goals for the coming week that will move you toward your Future Self. Adjust habits and strategies accordingly. By consistently reflecting and adjusting your path, you ensure steady progress toward becoming the person you envision. 𝗚𝗘𝗧 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗢𝗢𝗞 𝗧𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗡𝗚𝗘𝗦 𝗟𝗜𝗩𝗘𝗦 I wrote Getting Results the Agile Way to share the ultimate productivity system.

Obsess over the feedback loop. All the learning you need is in the feedback loop. Most people don’t fail because they lack talent. They fail because they lack a system for learning from failure. Every success story rests on a foundation of failures that were properly ↳ Analyzed ↳ Iterated On ↳ And Improved Most of us don’t hit these important marks. We move move past failure too quickly, avoiding the embarrassing discomfort of reflection. We take failures personally instead of treating them scientifically. We assume trying harder is the answer when we need to try harder to design a better approach. I focus on one core truth: Learning more from failure is how we ultimately win. Failure is a feedback loop, and if yours is broken, you won’t just fail, you’ll repeat your failures over and over. Here’s how to fix that. 👇🏼 1️⃣ Pause & Reflect ↳ Before you move forward, stop. ↳ What went wrong? ↳ What did you assume? ↳ What was unexpected? 2️⃣Capture Data ↳ Write everything down. Future-you needs this information. 3️⃣ Remove Your Ego ↳ This isn’t about you, it’s about the process. ↳ Failures are feedback, not character judgments. 4️⃣ Get External Input ↳ Find people ahead of you who will tell you the truth. ↳ No sugarcoating. ↳ No yes-people allowed. 5️⃣ Identify the Root Cause ↳ Surface-level problems aren’t the real issue. Dig deeper. ↳ What’s the pattern behind your failures? 6️⃣ Make One Small Change ↳ Not everything needs an overhaul. ↳ Start with one adjustment and test the impact. 7️⃣ Test & Observe ↳ Don’t make assumptions. Run your new approach. ↳ Measure the results, and see what actually works. 8️⃣ Iterate with Consistency ↳ One correction doesn’t fix everything. ↳ Keep adjusting, keep improving, keep refining. 9️⃣ Build a Culture of Learning ↳ Winners review their losses more than they celebrate their wins. Every failure contains data. Every mistake contains insight. Are you learning? If you’re not, you’re setting yourself up to fail the same way again. DO. FAIL. LEARN. GROW. WIN. REPEAT. FOREVER. What do your feedback loops like? Which of these ideas might be most helpful to your work? Drop a comment below to share your experience. 👇🏼 _____ 🔗 Subscribe to The Failure Blog via the link in my profile (💯🙏🏼) ➕ Follow me, John Brewton, for content that Helps (💯🙏🏼) ♻️ Repost to your networks, colleagues, and friends if you think this would help them (💯🙏🏼)

Want to be more productive? Approach your work week like a science experiment. Every Friday, I set aside 15 minutes to reflect on my week. I use a simple process: 1. I review my timeboxed calendar and note when I did what I said I would do and when I got distracted. 2. I use my distraction tracker to identify what pulled me off course. Was it an internal trigger like boredom? An external trigger like a notification? Or a planning problem? 3. Based on this data, I adjust my strategy. For example, I may need to remove an app from my phone or schedule office hours to reduce interruptions. Treating your productivity as an ongoing, iterative process will help move you closer to the most effective, focused version of yourself.  My weekly newsletter shares other science-backed productivity and focus insights. If you liked this post, you’ll love the newsletter. Subscribe at the link in my bio!

Progress is a tricky thing. Sometimes we’re unaware of how much we’ve progressed, sometimes we’re just stuck (and we all know how bad that feels). This is where tracking my progress has helped me. Once you start documenting everything, when you look back- you can see how much you’ve actually progressed (or not). For me, it looks like a lot like: 1. Keeping track of my weights at the gym 2. Saving Raw footages of me dancing 3. Tracking how many milestones I’ve completed till date. But mostly, collecting the data isn’t enough. We might need to review it, glance at a whole month’s overview, or start combing through every inch. I probably have hours of footage of my dance that I haven’t gone through. That’s probably 100s of mistakes I’ve missed to correct till now. Honestly, its hard to keep track of everything. But if I document it, once I feel like I’m not progressing or even regressing, I can always refer back to find out what went wrong (this is an excellent example of me reviewing my videos the day before a dance recital). There are some situations where our progress cannot be objectively tracked by us. Either we don’t have enough experience to know if we’re progressing, or we don’t have enough knowledge to know what to progress in. For me, its my work life. This is where feedback loops help. You do the work. Every 2-4 weeks ask your manager what you could have done better. Let it be your code, your emails, your white paper. Ask about everything. Ask the same to your seniors at work or people whose opinion you value. (It’s hard not to take everything personally, but I’ve found that it gets easier over time.) A feedback call isn’t necessarily a performance review. You get to know what areas to improve on, you implement suggestions and get back to them again. I end up, 1. Getting a lot of new insights 2. Being less afraid at work and growing a thicker skin. 3. Inviting constructive criticism (still trying not to take things personally). It’s hard not to take everything personally, but I’ve found that it gets easier over time. Hope you’re all progressing on what you want :) #progress #feedbackloops