“In my experience…”

For many people, experience is a wonderful thing! Almost from birth, we are brought up to respect age since greater life experiences are supposed to bestow wisdom. There is no doubt that, under the right conditions, breadth and depth of experience can provide you with a great education. BUT things are not quite as simple as they seem. There are, however, a number of factors which can make experience an optical illusion for your brain. In short, without knowledge and reflection, experience can lead you up some very dark alleys…

First of all, let’s just stress the importance of thinking carefully about what has happened to make sure that you take the right messages. Called ‘Critical Reflection’, there are many books about how to do this although, like many such self-help manuals, they seem to delight in making such things more complicated than they need to be. In simple terms, critical reflection just means thinking through (reflecting) on what has happened, accompanied by a careful ‘weighing up’ (the critical bit) what the messages might be. There is enough written about cognitive biaises, our tendency to jump to conclusions in a whole load of different circumstances, to show one that it’s rarely valid to immediately take the obvious implication.

Take using Twitter for example. We all tend to link up (and listen to) people who we agree with – called confirmation bias. Does that mean that we listen to and automatically agree with EVERYTHING they say? Their latest Tweet MIGHT be correct, but it is surely worth checking. Asking several other people’s opinion is one good way to meet this criticality criterion. The main point is that you DO sit down and think through what has happened. As Aldus Huxley said “Experience is not what happens to a man… it is what he does with what happens to him”.

The second problem with experience is that you need to decide on your criteria for success before making judgements on what has and hasn’t worked. For example, as we discuss in another blog, there are different criteria which can be applied when coaching athletes. Many coaches subscribe to a bunch of coaching tools which generate rapid change because ‘in their experience’ the learners improved quickly through the session. Therefore, the tools used must be great. Unfortunately, however, there are a DIFFERENT set of tools which, although progress seems to be slower, result in ‘better’ learning. Use these tools and learners seem to remember things more effectively over a longer period and be able to tweak and modify the skills learned to meet other challenges. What scientists refer to as Retention and Transfer.

Of course, one set of tools are neither better nor worse than the other, just like a hammer isn’t better (or worse) than a screwdriver – they just do different jobs! So, ‘quick’ learning tools are perfect for ski instructors who want people to have a fun (and safe) time on their week long holiday. These same tools are less than perfect if you are coaching skiers or boarders for the next Olympics, however!

So, just two reasons why experience CAN play tricks on you. Avoid these by using Critical Reflection, auditing your learning with others and making sure you are very clear on what the goals of the process are. These simple rules will help you to benefit from your life experiences and use them to help others.

Want to know more?
See Abraham, A., & Collins, D. (2011). Effective Skill Development: How Should Athletes’ Skills Be Developed? In D. Collins, H. Richards, & A. Button (Eds.), Performance psychology: A practitioner’s guide. Kidlington: Elsevier.

Author: Dave Collins