Glance at the scoreboard and you know who’s winning. Watch the game and you know why.

Results tell you the outcome and nothing about the mechanism. The score, the grade and the finish time are summaries, and summaries cannot be learned from. Causes live in what actually happened: the spacing, the second effort, the question you misread, the ten minutes you lost at the start. People who improve spend their attention there.

After the next result this week, give five minutes to the why rather than the number. Watch the clip, reread the paper, ask somebody who was there what they saw. Name one cause you could change, which is worth more than any amount of staring at the mark.