How to Get Better at Doing New Things: Successive Approximation, Not Perfection

When we set out to learn something new, most of us fall into the same trap: expecting ourselves to be perfect right away. Whether it’s a new skill at work, a leadership practice, or even a new habit at home, we demand too much, too soon. And when perfection doesn’t happen, we get discouraged, give up, or label ourselves as “bad” at it.

Behavioral science offers us a much better model: successive approximation.

Jennifer training a dolphin in Hawaii while in college

What Dolphins Can Teach Us About Learning

When I was training dolphins, we used an approach to training new behaviors called successive approximation. Which basically means, you reward approximations of the wanted behavior and over time, fine tune it. We aren't rewarding perfect behavior. We are rewarding approximations of the behavior we want.

When trainers teach a dolphin a new trick, we don’t expect the animal to leap out of the water and spin on day one. That’s never going to happen. Why? Because dolphins don't speak human. If we want them to do something, we can't just say - please jump out of the water. We instead, have to help them figure out what we are asking for by both showing and rewarding behavior that is closer to what we want. 

We reward small steps that move the dolphin closer to the final behavior. These are called approximations. If the dolphin swims near the right spot—reinforcement. If it jumps a little—reinforcement. If it starts to spin—reinforcement.

Each attempt doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be a little closer to the desired behavior. Over time, those approximations add up  and lead to the behavior we have been working towards them learning. 

And ... I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Dolphins never do any behavior perfectly. They may do something reliably (like - more often than less often when given the signal). But perfection is not something any animal trainer expects from their animals. It's just not a realistic goal. 

Humans work the same way.

Stop Chasing Perfection. Start Rewarding Progress.

The key insight is this: no behavior is ever truly perfect. We’re always refining, always improving. The healthiest mindset shift you can make is to stop expecting perfection from yourself and instead aim for incremental successive progress.

Did you do a little better than last time? That’s success.
Did you move one step closer to your goal? That’s success.
Did you learn something useful—even from failure? That’s success too.

By celebrating small wins, you create momentum. By focusing on improvement instead of perfection, you unlock resilience. 

If you are a leader - please apply this to your team! Reward them for improvement. Don't punish them for not being perfect. 

Applying Successive Approximation to Yourself

• Break it down. Don’t aim for the whole behavior at once. What’s the next small step you can take or learn?

• Track progress, not perfection. Keep your eye on improvement over time, not flawless performance.

• Reinforce the attempt. Acknowledge and celebrate your effort, even if the result wasn’t ideal.

• Never “finish” learning. Even once you’re skilled, you can keep refining. Improvement never stops.

This approach doesn’t just reduce stress—it makes learning stick. You’re rewiring your brain through practice, repetition, and reinforcement.

A Humanistic Shift in Perspective

Instead of saying, “I failed because I wasn’t perfect,” you begin to say, “I’m succeeding because I’m improving.”

That’s a radical, freeing shift. And it’s not just about learning new tricks—it’s about how you approach leadership, relationships, and life itself.

Want to Learn How to Apply This in Practice?

I teach these techniques in my course, Mastering the Five Managerial Superpowers. It’s all about using behavioral psychology to hack your brain, improve your leadership skills, and create lasting change—not by aiming for perfection, but by practicing better.

Because the goal isn’t to be perfect. The goal is to improve.

Understanding and Retraining Conditioned Reflexes: The Toilet Trigger

 Have you ever walked past a restroom, thought you might need to go, and then the second you opened the door, it was like your bladder hit the panic button? You went from "maybe I could pee" to "I need to pee NOW!" in a matter of seconds. If you're nodding your head, you're not alone. This isn’t just a quirk of aging—this is your brain doing exactly what you accidentally trained it to do.

The Toilet Trigger: A Case of Classical Conditioning

What’s happening here is a form of classical conditioning. Just like Pavlov's dogs began to salivate at the sound of a bell, our brains associate certain environments or stimuli with specific responses. In this case, the sight of the bathroom (or even the door) becomes a trigger for your body to prepare for urination. Your brain has learned: bathroom = time to pee. The reaction is automatic. It bypasses conscious thought.

The good news? If your brain was trained into this pattern, it can also be retrained out of it.

How to Retrain Your Brain

Retraining your brain takes intentional practice. If you want to stop the near-accident urgency that hits when you see a toilet, you can.

Here’s how:

1. Awareness – Recognize that this is a reflex, not a true emergency. You have more control than it feels like.

2. Delay the response – When you feel that strong urge upon seeing the toilet, pause. Take a breath. Wait a few seconds. You’re teaching your body that the trigger doesn’t need to equal immediate action.

3. Gradual desensitization – Practice walking into the bathroom without immediately going. Do something else for a moment. Over time, this helps break the tight link between stimulus and response.

4. Consistency – Like any habit, retraining takes time—typically around 30 days of consistent effort. So practice. 

Why This Skill Matters

This isn't just about bladder control. This is about brain control. Once you understand how your brain is constantly reacting to triggers around you—often without your permission—you can begin to take your power back.

Your emotional responses to stress? Conditioned. Your defensiveness in conflict? Conditioned. Your impulse reactions when things go wrong? Conditioned.

Just like the bathroom example, all of these responses can be retrained.

This Is What My Book Is All About

In Mastering the Five Managerial Superpowers, I walk you through exactly how to retrain your brain to respond more strategically to the world around you. The foundational skills of self-awareness, compassion, and self-control allow you to stop reacting automatically and start choosing your responses with intention.

Whether you’re leading a team or just trying to lead a more centered life, understanding how to rewire your reflexes is a superpower worth mastering.

So the next time your bladder tries to boss you around, remember: it’s not magic. It’s just conditioning. And you can hack it.

Ready to learn how? Check out Mastering the Five Managerial Superpowers and start hacking your brain today. https://humanistlearning.com/mastering-the-five-managerial-superpowers/

A Conversation on A Thousand Brains and Behavioral Modification

Had a fun conversation with Jeff Hawkins of Numenta about the Thousand Brain theory and behavioral modification. #ai #behaviorchange #learning #brainscience It's a really good book, I highly recommend it. The theory explains a LOT.

Does culture influence performance? Or not? And can it be changed?

I really enjoy the reviews of literature that the Center for Evidence Based Management puts out. This one is on culture and performance. Is there a link?

https://www.cebma.org/wp-content/uploads/REA-Organizational-Culture-Performance.pdf

Findings:

1) Study quality on this question is quite poor.
2) No one seems to know what culture is or how to measure it in an organization
3) There is no evidence (or rather no studies done) that show a link between culture and behavioral outcomes.
4) No one knows what the tools actually measure. They may purport to measure culture – but they are actually measuring effectiveness. But they do correlate with outcomes and so can be helpful.
5) Organizational culture is a weak predictor for performance when compared to other factors (level C)
a. Demographics, and personality traits showed stronger links, and general mental ability stood out as a remarkably good predictor (ρ= .54) of performance
6) There is no evidence that specific outcomes are sensitive to organizational culture
7) There have been no studies that assessed whether interventions to change culture even work.

Conclusion: organizations and practitioners should be careful spending time and money on company-wide culture change programs as they are not likely to increase performance

The last bit to me is interesting and also not surprising. I teach how to use behavioral modification to change behavior -  and most people don’t know the science of how behaviors are changed so it’s likely that most programs are not actually teaching behavioral change at all. And – honestly – a training in and of itself – won’t change behavior. It can give people the tools they need to change their own behavior though.

What you should know is that the science on behavioral modification is clear – behaviors can be changed. So maybe we shouldn’t be looking at culture – as much as being really really really specific about what behaviors we want to reinforce, and which we want to eliminate entirely.

This is especially true as it relates to bullying/harassment. We do know bullying and harassment have a negative impact on productivity. So - it makes sense to try and eliminate it. Often - when people talk about culture - THIS (bullying/harassment) is what they are trying to change.

Let me help with these online courses.  - https://humanistlearning.com/category/bullyingharassment/