I was jealous of at a colleague because of a question he asked me yesterday. He was preparing for a small 2-minutes video. While shooting, he struggled to finish it in one take. After doing multiple takes, he was done with it and we were having a chat. He asked an insightful question:
"Whenever I do a talk at a conference or a meeting, I don't struggle at all. I am wondering and thinking deep on why I have this trouble before the camera."
I know it is seemingly a mundane question. But I really found it interesting. It shows that he is fully aware of the problem and acknowledges it. With a mindset to improve and not settling down, he is curious about himself. He is not beating himself up or he is not giving up. Next time, when the same shoot happens, he wants to become better at it.
This is a perfect example of continuous improvement and growth. My colleague is an avid chess and badminton player. He is pretty good at it. He is simply applying the logic of improving the skill by looking at the feedback and closing it. Like he is trying a lot to get better at serve or volley, he wants to improve in speaking before camera skills.
I was jealous of him. At the same time, I really admired this attitude. He is very good at sports, which is a closed feedback system. You immediately know if your action has an impact in the game and you also get a chance to improve it next time. Your feedback reinforces the learning. You rinse and repeat it, you become a master at it.
Now you apply the same logic in a slow-feedback-loop system like business development or product management you are going to be awesome. Areas like marketing and sales have a fast-feedback-loop.
I believe, almost everything in the world could be fixed by tightening feedback loops. Tighter the feedback loop, the rate of learning is really high. So I really admire and sometimes be jealous of people who have the opportunity to be in such a tight feedback loop environment.