Using
Feedback

The Using Feedback tab card states, “Processing feedback prepares you to use it, a skill built on turning insight into action through steady, adaptive practice.” And the suit’s guide is the otter. They are resourceful and willing to adapt to solve a problem. Using feedback relies on that same strategic persistence.

So here’s a gap almost nobody warns you about. I’ve worked with many people over the years who did everything right with feedback, up to a point. They sought feedback. They received it well. They processed it carefully and genuinely decided the change was best for them. And then, in some ways precisely because the change was hard, they never actually attempted it. The decision was real. The doing never began, though. That gap between deciding and doing is where this entire suit operates, and crossing it takes more than willpower. It takes strategy, which is why the otter guides this suit. Otters are famously resourceful, cracking shells with rocks, adapting their approach until the problem gives. Using feedback well asks for that same inventive, persistent spirit.

The arc of these 10 cards moves from starting to sustaining and then verifying. The early cards kind of get you moving, breaking the big rock of feedback into pebbles small enough to actually work on, because vague and enormous can feel unstartable, while, “This month I’m working on my pacing,” for example, can feel like a real thing. Treating each attempt as practice rather than performance, since the behavior you’re changing may have years of wiring behind it. And understanding change itself through Kurt Lewin’s model, unfreeze, change, refreeze, because the feedback process is complete when the new behavior has become your new norm, and honestly, not before that.

The middle cards keep you, I’d say, honest and adaptive along the way, expecting to over-correct or under-correct on early attempts and going back to the giver occasionally, if possible, to calibrate your aim. Tailoring feedback to its right context. A hammer is useful for nails, not windows. Signing contracts with yourself. Planting flags so others can watch for your change. Putting reps on the calendar, because readiness is usually a result of action rather than a prerequisite for it.

And the final cards face the part most feedback guidance skips: tracking how it’s going, wringing insights from every attempt through the discipline of writing, and accepting that genuinely good feedback from a genuinely qualified source may make you worse before it makes you better. Steph Curry’s worst summer built the greatest shot in basketball history. There’s a card where I share that story. Many of us retreat at the first dip in our performance. The people who grow are the ones who can tell a dip that’s part of the path from a path that’s actually wrong. That takes an immense array of skills, and those are skills that we’re trying to build in this suit.

That’s the Using Feedback suit. 10 cards for turning your hardest decisions into your most visible growth, one resourceful, adaptive rep at a time.

The Using Feedback experiment card states, “You may have spent years building the behavior that feedback is asking you to change. Treat each attempt at change as a form of practice.” And the card invites you to try what’s called the low-stakes pilot, which you can do by trying the new behavior in a low-stakes, safe environment, then asking yourself what happened, how did it feel, and learning from those insights.

So, when we receive feedback we’ve decided is worth acting on, there’s a tendency to treat the first few attempts as the finish line. Do it once or twice and assume the new behavior is locked in. But consider what’s actually being asked. You may have shot a basketball a particular way for five years. You may have presented in meetings the same way for an entire career. Changing that isn’t a task. It’s a process. And the mindset you bring to that process matters enormously.

Treating each attempt as practice rather than performance does two important things. First, it takes a little pressure off. Practice, by definition, is not perfection. It’s repetition with the intention to improve. Second, it gives you permission to fall back into the old behavior occasionally without concluding that you failed. It probably will happen. The old habit had years of reinforcement. You may have heard the phrase, “What fires together wires together.” Well, your old habit has likely had years of wiring itself into how you operate. The new one’s just getting started. Again, this concept applies whether you’re trying to improve the attitude you bring to relationships or how you study for exams.

But practice alone isn’t the whole picture. The card is also about reflection, and reflection as part of the practice, not separate from it. So decades ago, I was competing in Brazilian jiu-jitsu tournaments and I had a ritual. The moment a match ended, win or lose, I’d shake my opponent’s hand, take my mouthpiece out, sit down, and immediately open my notebook while everything was still fresh. Uh, I’d write about what it felt like to try a new move I’d been working on, something I’d received feedback on, what hurdles came up, whether it worked, how my opponent responded. Over time, that notebook became basically documented proof of improvement. And when I stepped into mixed martial arts then, where the stakes were significantly higher, those habits were locked in. I rarely fell back into older, less effective patterns because I had practiced and reflected my way to something new.

You don’t need a tournament to use this approach. A low-stakes environment, a casual conversation, a team meeting that isn’t a high-profile presentation, uh, a practice session before the real one. That’s all you need to begin. Try the behavior, then reflect, write it down if you can. It’s that combination where real change happens.

That’s card 01 of the Using Feedback suit. Change rarely happens all at once, but practice plus reflection repeated over time has a way of quietly making the new behavior feel like it was always yours.

The Using Feedback signal card states, “Changing your behavior may go unnoticed. If you want particular people to be aware of your efforts to change, ask them directly.” And the card invites you to use what’s called the flag, which you can do by asking the feedback giver something like, “I’m working on X based on your feedback. Can you tell me if and when you notice a difference?”

Let’s get to the next level in this card. So, part of being an exceptional user of great feedback is that when possible, you circle back to the person who gave it to you. And this isn’t about appeasing them or getting on their good side. It goes far deeper than that. The person who gave you feedback worth adopting may also be great at telling you what they’ve observed since, how the change is actually landing.

But here’s the reality. Givers, like everyone else, can get busy. And many of them haven’t developed the skill of following up with the people they gave feedback to, checking in, seeing how it’s going. That’s a skill we cover in the Giving Feedback suit. So rather than waiting and hoping they notice, be proactive. You can go get feedback on how your feedback adoption is going. That’s what the flag does. It plants a marker. It lets them know exactly what you’re working on and invites them to watch for it.

And this card points to something even bigger in your growth journey. Once you’ve adopted feedback and you think it’s going well, maybe it has even become your new habit, you’re not limited to the person who originally gave it to you. You can also ask others you admire, people with a front-row seat to the behavior you’re changing. In my past days as a mixed martial artist, um, there were times when I learned a new move uh from one gym, and then weeks later, training at a different gym, sometimes in a different state, sometimes in a different part of the world, I’d get feedback from other folks on what they saw. Getting feedback from multiple angles like that allowed me to keep making improvements, even small refinements, and it gave me new perspectives, and ultimately it led to me being able to decide what worked best for me.

So that’s card 02 of the Using Feedback suit. Next time you’re actively working on a change, try planting the flag uh with the original giver, maybe with a few others who can see you in action. Um, this can help ensure those people around you become actual collaborators in your growth rather than just observers of it.

The Using Feedback micro card states, “Acting on adopted feedback may be harder than you thought. If you get stuck, try breaking it into smaller pieces and working on one at a time.” And the card invites you to practice the atom, which you can do by asking yourself, if this feedback were broken into pieces, what would they be? If I ordered them, which would I work on first? Why?

Let’s build on where we’ve been. So, you’ve worked through some of the thinking on processing. You may remember two moves that feel similar to this one. We sorted feedback into bins, and then we sifted for the biggest rock, the piece of feedback that, if truly worked on, could have the biggest impact on your growth. This card picks up exactly there, because now the question becomes, how do you actually take on that big rock?

And here’s what many people discover. The rock is heavier than it looked. You committed to it. You meant it, but then maybe you tried to lift the whole thing at once and got stuck. I’ve done this so many times I can’t even count anymore. That stuck feeling is sometimes a motivational problem, but it’s also a size problem, which we can address by kind of atomizing it.

Say your big rock is improving your ability as a public speaker. That sounds like one skill, but it’s really a bundle of all kinds of skills. Break it open and you might find your opening, those first 90 seconds where the nerves peak and the audience decides whether to lean in. Your pacing, the tendency to speed up when anxious, leaving no space for points to land. Uh, your body, where your hands go, whether your feet are planted or wandering. Your vocal variety, the difference between a monotone delivery and one that rises, falls, pauses with intention. And your audience connection, actually reading the room and adjusting rather than performing at people. This is just an example, but you can see that the big rock is already now at five pebbles. Suddenly, “become a public speaker,” which is vague, enormous, and can feel kind of unstartable, becomes, “This month I’m working on my pacing.” That’s a piece you can practice in a single meeting.

And here’s the second gift of atomizing. Progress becomes visible. Improving as a public speaker is hard to perceive week to week, but pacing, you can feel that. The moment you deliberately pause after an important point and let the silence do its work, and you notice the room actually absorbing what you said, that’s meaningful improvement. You can recognize the day it happens. And recognizable progress feeds the motivation that carries you to the next piece.

That’s card 03 of the Using Feedback suit. If a piece of feedback you genuinely committed to has you stuck, the commitment probably isn’t the problem. And it might be the size. Break it down into atoms. Order them. Pick one. A rock that was too heavy to lift can almost always be moved a piece at a time.

The Using Feedback loop card states, “The feedback process is complete not when you’ve made a positive change once or twice, but when that change has become your new norm.” And the card invites you to set the checkpoint, a reminder for 30 days out. When it arrives, ask yourself, is this behavior my new reflex, or am I still forcing it?

So perhaps nothing brings more joy and suffering to our lives than change. Despite it being a fundamental law of the universe, we often cause ourselves immense pain either by wanting everything to change instantly or by fighting tooth and nail to ensure nothing changes at all. Other cards across this deck have talked about disrupting existing habits and defaults when they’re no longer serving us. This card is about the other side, actually forming the new one.

And for that, I want to bring in Kurt Lewin. Widely considered the pioneer of social and organizational psychology, Lewin understood that we aren’t just isolated individuals. We’re systems held in a state of equilibrium. And in the 1940s, he proposed a simple but profound three-stage model of change. Unfreeze, change, refreeze. Think of an ice block. If you want to change its shape, you can’t just force it. You have to unfreeze it, mold it into the new shape, and then refreeze it to lock in the new state.

I’ve used this concept at work and in deeply personal areas, like reframing my relationship with my social anxiety. For years, as an introvert, standing in front of a classroom of smart, hungry master’s degree students terrified me. The dread was heavy even though my heart felt fuller after every class. And for years I tried to fix this anxiety with a sledgehammer. I tried to force the change all at once, demanding that I simply stop being anxious. Of course, that never worked.

So I looked to Lewin. I stopped trying to break the ice block and started trying to thaw pieces of it one at a time. I identified the specific frozen pieces of my fear. There was the piece that feared my background wasn’t specialized enough. I applied heat to that by seeing my nonlinear background as a strength. There was the piece that felt anxious about how I was dressed or how yellow my teeth were, whatever. I worked to thaw those slowly, dressing and grooming to a reasonable standard, then focusing on the value I provided rather than the aesthetics. Seems obvious, even absurd, but it’s such a human thing, especially in the, you know, filtered and advertised world we live in, to get caught in anxiety swirls where we spend more time stressing over the shade of our teeth than on what matters most. By unfreezing those specific blocks little by little, the change happened naturally. I didn’t have to force confidence. I just had to melt the specific insecurities that were freezing me in place.

And then comes the stage this card lives in, refreezing. Forming the new behavior into habit until it becomes your new frozen norm. This is why the checkpoint matters. Doing the new thing once or twice is kind of like water that hasn’t refrozen yet. And water flows back to old shapes easily. 30 days out, ask the honest question. Is this my new reflex, or am I still forcing it? If it’s a reflex, the loop has closed. If you’re still forcing it, it just means the refreeze needs more time, more reps.

That’s card 04 of the Using Feedback suit. Where in your life do you feel frozen? And has that part been frozen a long time? Instead of the sledgehammer, ask, “What’s one small, practical way I can apply heat today to begin thawing one small piece of it?”

The Using Feedback adjust card states, “First attempts are rarely perfect. In our attempts to change, it’s easy to over-correct or under-correct. Seek input on how you implemented the feedback.” And the card invites you to practice the dartboard, which you can do by trying the new behavior, then asking, “I tried to adjust X today. Was that closer to what we discussed? Do you have any further guidance?”

Let’s make this concrete with a scenario. So, imagine you’ve determined you want to improve how you structure your team meetings. You’ve run them informally for years. People jump in when they have something to say. Topics flow into each other, and honestly, mostly it has felt like it worked. But you’ve received feedback, maybe from a few directions, that the informality is causing real challenges. The same voices dominate. Quieter team members rarely get in. Uh, and the meetings often end without clear progress on what actually needs to be decided. You process the feedback. You decide it’s valid. You commit to change.

Now watch the two ways the first attempt commonly goes sideways. The over-correction. You swing hard. Next meeting, there’s a rigid agenda with timed segments, a formal speaking order. Maybe you’re literally going around the table requiring everyone to contribute two minutes whether they have something to say or not. Hands must be raised. And the meeting that was too loose is now so stiff that the natural collaboration, the actual good part of what you had going, is gone. The team leaves the room feeling sort of robotized rather than heard. And maybe the awkwardness of all that convinces you that the feedback was wrong. So you discard it.

The under-correction, the opposite move. You add a loose agenda to the calendar invite, mention, “Let’s make sure everyone gets a chance to weigh in” at the start. And then the meeting uh goes exactly as before. Same voices dominate, same patterns play out. You’ve technically responded to the feedback, like in a check-the-box kind of way, so it feels handled. But the people who raised the concern see nothing meaningfully different, and now they may also think that giving you feedback doesn’t lead anywhere.

Both misses are normal, genuinely. First attempts at behavioral change are throws at a dartboard, and almost nobody hits the center on throw one. What separates people who actually improve is what happens after the throw. That’s the dartboard practice. You go back to the source. I tried restructuring our meeting this week, added the agenda, actively invited a few folks in. Was that closer to what we discussed? Any further guidance? That kind of follow-up does two things at once. It calibrates your next throw with real information instead of guesswork. And it shows the feedback giver their input mattered enough for you to check in, to check your aim, which, as we cover elsewhere in this deck, strengthens the entire feedback relationship.

That’s card 05 of the Using Feedback suit. After your next first attempt, try to resist grading it yourself in isolation. Ask the person who gave you the feedback whether the dart landed closer. This is all about adjustment. It’s those micro adjustments where growth happens.

The Using Feedback tailor card states, “Feedback is data meant to be applied to a specific context. A hammer is useful for nails, not windows. Apply the insight where it belongs, not everywhere.” And the card invites you to run the context check, which you can do by asking yourself, in which specific situations will this feedback help me the most? Where might it actually not be that helpful?

So, back in the Processing suit on the emotion card, we talked about how emotions are data, information to be understood rather than obstacles to avoid. Well, feedback is data, too. And all data has something in common. It was collected in a specific context. The feedback someone gave you emerged from watching you in a particular setting, doing a particular thing with particular people. That’s where its accuracy lives. And here’s the mistake that even, maybe especially, diligent feedback users often make. Taking a genuinely good insight and applying it everywhere, in contexts far from where the data came from. Let me give you three examples of how well-intentioned this mistake usually is.

First, you receive feedback at work that you need to be more direct. Stop softening your recommendations. Get to the point. Say what you mean. It’s valid. You work on it. Your meetings improve. Then you carry that same directness home into your relationship. But your partner sharing something vulnerable isn’t a stakeholder needing your bottom line up front. In this way, it’s like the directness that made you a clearer leader can make you a colder listener in a different environment. Same skill, wrong window.

Second, let’s say you are praised for your incredible attention to detail. Your careful review catches what everyone else misses. Genuinely a strength. So you begin applying that detail orientation everywhere, including your team’s early brainstorming sessions. And now every half-formed idea gets audited by you the moment it’s spoken. Brainstorming, true innovative brainstorming, runs on a kind of permission to be wrong out loud. In this way, it’s like the precision and attention to detail that makes you a star at the finish line can mean you are stifling innovation at the starting line.

Third, uh, a mentor tells you that you undersell yourself in negotiations. You need to state your value with more confidence, hold your position, stop conceding early. You practice it, and your next salary conversation goes noticeably better. But then that same posture starts showing up with friends, holding positions in casual disagreements, treating a debate about where to eat like it’s a negotiation to win. What made you stronger across the negotiation table can make you exhausting across the dinner table.

Notice what all three have in common. The feedback was never wrong. The person applying it was never careless. Really, if anything, they were being admirably committed. The miss was purely contextual. That’s what the context check protects against. And it’s just two questions asked before you generalize. Where will this help me the most? And where might it actually not be that helpful? Naming even one situation where the feedback doesn’t belong can sharpen exactly where it does.

That’s card 06 of the Using Feedback suit. Take one piece of feedback you’re currently acting on and run the check to see if you’re inadvertently hammering a window elsewhere.

The Using Feedback commit card states, “Once you adopt feedback, hold yourself accountable. People who use feedback to grow make commitments to themselves and others.” And the card invites you to sign the contract, which you can do by filling in the blanks. In the next time frame, I commit to practicing behavior change when specific event happens.

Let’s talk about a gap almost nobody warns you about. So, I’ve worked with many folks over the years who did everything right as it relates to feedback, up to a point. They receive feedback. They process it carefully. They genuinely decided the change was best for them. And then, in some ways because the change was hard, they never actually attempted it. Their decision to try was real, but the doing it, the hard work of trying, never happened.

This gap between deciding and doing arises for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes it’s a lack of motivation. It’s like the energy that was present in the feedback conversation fades by the following week. Sometimes it’s simply not knowing how to start, so the change feels like a wall with kind of no door in it. And then sometimes the, the sense of urgency vanishes. Maybe there’s no deadline attached to it, uh, attached to, let’s say, becoming a better listener. So because of that, it just perpetually loses out to things with deadlines. Things with deadlines are not necessarily the most important thing. It just means they have a deadline attached to them. And then sometimes it’s fear, because once you attempt the change, you can fail at it. And not starting can be a way to protect yourself from that. And sometimes, honestly, there’s a part of us hoping that the whole thing will just dissolve. That the, the gap will stop mattering if we wait long enough.

The contract is one way to close that gap. And I want to be clear about what it’s for. This is not about piling additional pressure onto yourself. You likely have plenty. It’s something I think more interesting. When you build an accountability mechanism, you become far more inclined to think creatively about what actually needs to happen to bring the change to life. A vague intention lets your mind stay vague. But, “In the next two weeks, I commit to practicing my fallback phrase when I receive critical feedback in a meeting.” That specificity forces problem solving. Which meetings? What will I actually say? What might get in the way?

There’s a beautiful parallel here from poetry. Iambic pentameter. Ten syllables, strict alternating rhythm. Sounds like it should suffocate creativity. But many poets have found for centuries that the opposite happens. The, the rigidity sparks creativity. The constraint forces choices that freedom never would have demanded, and the work can get better inside the form. The contract works the same way. Time frame, behavior, trigger event. Three constraints that can turn uh a wish or want into a design. And notice the card says commitments to yourself and others. Telling one person about your contract adds a gentle second layer. Just the reality that another person knows can have a kind of powerful gravity to it.

That’s card 07 of the Using Feedback suit. If there’s feedback you decided to adopt weeks or months ago and still haven’t attempted, don’t blame yourself for being lazy. That’s not likely to help build the short and long-term change you need. Instead, fill in the three blanks. Maybe post it on the wall somewhere. That structure might get you started and keep you going.

The Using Feedback momentum card states, “Waiting until you feel ready to try a new behavior based on difficult feedback may lead to avoiding it. Taking action could bring the readiness you want.” And the card invites you to take the next rep, because the perfect moment may not exist. Identify an opportunity on your calendar to try the new behavior, even a small one.

Let’s get honest about waiting. So, here’s a story we often tell ourselves when facing a difficult change. I’ll do it when I’m ready. It sounds responsible, prudent even, and sometimes it can even work. But if you are anything like me, you may have experienced how ready never really quite happens. Or if it does, you don’t know what it feels like. And this way, whether we meant for it to happen or not, waiting sort of becomes the plan. And weeks later, the only thing we’ve practiced is postponing.

Because there’s a sort of mechanism underneath this. Often with difficult feedback, the discomfort we feel doesn’t come before the action we take to change. It comes before the thought of the action we are going to take to change. A lot happens emotionally and otherwise in the thoughts that come before our actions. So waiting to feel comfortable may never happen. Readiness, more often than not, is a result of reps. Just putting them in, just trying something.

Now, how do you actually generate that first rep? Back on the routine card in the Seeking suit, we talked about calendarizing your feedback seeking. The same move works here, and for the same deeply practical reason. For many of us, our days happen based on what’s in the calendar. Parent-teacher conference, uh, the dog’s vet appointment, work calls, project due dates, people’s birthdays. Meanwhile, the things that live only as intentions. Someday, when things calm down, when I get ready. Those get bumped by whatever’s actually scheduled. You likely care a great deal about developing and improving in some way, but all of that may be competing against the calendar stuff.

So, put it in there and make it specific. Not work on delegation floating in on a Tuesday, but details on exactly what you’ll try and when. Uh, Thursday’s project kickoff, hand the timeline section fully to Maya, including the client questions, and don’t take it back when it gets uncomfortable. That specificity matters twice. It removes the how-do-I-start friction in the moment, and the calendar entry itself elevates the importance of your development, especially during the exact stretches when it’s easiest to deprioritize your growth. Busy weeks on the calendar can chew into unscheduled intentions.

This card says even a small opportunity counts. The point of the first rep is to build momentum. One small completed attempt does what six weeks of preparing to feel ready never did. Right? Um, it gives you evidence you can do this, and evidence is what readiness is actually made of.

That’s card 08 of the Using Feedback suit. Open your calendar. Find one real moment this week and schedule the smallest honest version of the new behavior.

The Using Feedback track card states, “If you don’t monitor the impact of your changes, you won’t know if they’re working. Strive to wring insights from every attempt at change.” And the card invites you to keep the log, which you can do for one week. Each time you use the feedback, rate how it went on a scale of 1 to 5, and add some brief notes about why.

Some years ago, I spoke at a major industry marketing event. And for various reasons, I gave the worst presentation of my life. I felt terrible about it. And here’s the strange part. There was literally a line of people waiting to thank me afterward. But I knew. I could feel it in my bones. And the feedback results came in from the event organizers, and the audience scores confirmed what my bones already knew. It was not a great presentation.

For months later, I kept telling myself I would address what happened. I’d sit down, figure out what went wrong, extract the lessons. And each time I brought it to mind, the pain and embarrassment were too hard for me to sit with, and just as importantly, too easy to distract myself from. There was always a snack, a scroll, a task, something more important or something I could rationalize as being more important for me to do. The emotion card from the Processing suit covers this exact avoidance loop, and I was living in it. It wasn’t until I put a journaling plan in place, a structured, simple written practice, that I could actually make progress on it. And I literally only did this for a few days in a Word doc.

That experience taught me something about a phrase we all use, hard-earned insights. We usually assume the, the hard refers to the failing, that insights are hard-earned because something went badly. But I don’t think that’s quite it. The, the failing is just an event. What makes an insight hard-earned, I think, is two things. Having the courage to go for it in the first place, and then having the capacity to reflect on how it went honestly, in, in detail, close enough to the discomfort to learn from it. Then course correct or double down and go again. Plenty of people fail and learn nothing from it, precisely because the reflection step is the one that hurts.

This is where writing comes in, and why the log asks you to write rather than just think. Writing is a disciplined form of thinking, and it can externalize, literally get on paper, what’s floating around in your mind. Making it real this way, a thing you can see as separate from yourself, can itself feel like a massive step forward. Um, a vague mental “that went okay, I guess” can float away and take its lessons with it. But a written three out of five, uh, maybe notes like the new opening worked, lost the thread when questions came early, need a plan for interruptions. That’s thinking with a spine. The rating forces an honest assessment. The why captures the insight while it’s fresh. And even a few days of entries like that can become something a memory never can. A, a visible record of whether the, the change is actually working and exactly where it’s breaking down. And notice the card says wring insights from every attempt. The two-out-of-five days aren’t failures of the log. They’re often its most valuable entries.

That’s card 09 of the Using Feedback suit. Pick the change you’re currently working on and run the log for one honest week. You may find, like I did, uh, that the structure is what finally lets you sit with what you’ve been avoiding, and that the insights, as they usually are, are right beside the discomfort.

The Using Feedback outcome card states, “Adopting challenging feedback may make you worse before you get better, but the end result of implementing it must be improvement.” And the card invites you to run the progress check, which you can do by asking yourself and those you trust, since making this change, has my performance improved? And if it got worse, am I on the right path?

Let me tell you about a 15-year-old Steph Curry in the worst summer of his life. So, there’s an article in The Ringer I keep coming back to. It’s more than just a shot, and it’s about Steph Curry, but not the NBA champion Steph Curry you think you know. It’s about the 15-year-old version, 5’6″, 130-something pounds, playing JV basketball at Charlotte Christian High School in North Carolina.

Steph was already a good shooter. Making shots was never the issue. But his father, Dell Curry, who had just retired after 16 seasons in the NBA, noticed something that was going to become a serious problem as the competition got tougher. Steph’s release was way too low. He was essentially pushing the ball from his chin, and against longer, stronger athletes, it would get blocked. So Dell told his son, “We need to rebuild your, your shot completely this summer.”

Steph later described that summer as the worst summer of his life, basketball speaking. For about three months, he shot almost exclusively from the paint because he couldn’t yet shoot from any further out with his new form. He didn’t have the strength or the muscle memory yet. Imagine that. Going from a shot that had worked for him, the one that allowed him to begin separating himself from just about everyone around him, to getting measurably, visibly worse. And then gradually, painfully, he got better. Better in ways the old form never would have allowed. And we know what followed. Davidson, the Warriors, MVP awards, four championships, and not just becoming the greatest shooter in basketball history, but sparking a revolution that changed how basketball is even played.

Here’s what I keep coming back to. Several things had to be true for Steph to stick it out that summer. First, the feedback came from someone with legitimate expertise. Dell had 16 seasons of shooting at the highest level in the world. He wasn’t guessing. Second, Dell had to deliver that feedback with sufficient care and detail. Had he vaguely said, “Your shot is terrible. Won’t work in college,” it would have likely left a 15-year-old confused, maybe disheartened. And third, the part this card lives in, Steph had to have the grit and patience to stay in the discomfort long enough for the new form to take hold. He didn’t bail when things got worse, and they did get worse.

This is one of the most underappreciated aspects of being feedback literate. Sometimes genuinely good feedback from a genuinely qualified source will make you worse before it makes you better. And most of us, when we notice that performance dip, take it as evidence that the feedback was wrong or just not for us, and we retreat back to what was comfortable. That’s exactly what the progress check is for. It doesn’t pretend the dip isn’t happening. It asks the more precise question. Has my performance improved? And if it’s currently worse, am I on the right path? A dip with a sound source, a clear why, early signs of the new form emerging, is a Curry summer. The check, run it by people you trust, helps you tell the difference between a dip that’s part of the path and a path that’s actually wrong.

That’s card 10, the final card of the Using Feedback suit. Think of one skill you’re currently developing and ask yourself two questions. Is the feedback coming from someone with genuine expertise in this specific area, not just general credibility, but real lived experience? And am I willing to get worse before I get better? If the answer to both is yes, stay with it a little longer than seems reasonable. You might eventually decide to drop it, and that’s fine. But it could also turn out to be your version of Steph Curry’s worst, but arguably most important, summer.