---
id: ins_no-such-thing-as-long-feedback-loop
operator: Annie Duke
operator_role: Author, Thinking in Bets and Quit; former WSOP poker champion
source_url: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/making-better-decisions-annie-duke
source_type: podcast
source_title: Decision quality, explicit thinking, feedback loops
source_date: 2026-04-28
captured_date: 2026-05-01
domain: [research-discovery, growth-demand]
lifecycle: [process-cadence, attribution-measurement]
maturity: applied
artifact_class: framework
score: { originality: 4, specificity: 4, evidence: 3, transferability: 5, source: 5 }
tier: B
related: [ins_make-intuition-explicit]
raw_ref: raw/podcasts/annie-duke--decision-quality-explicit-thinking--2026-04-28.md
---

# There is no such thing as a long feedback loop, find a correlated short signal

## Claim
"Long feedback loops" are usually a failure of measurement design, not an inherent property of the question. For any outcome, find an early signal that correlates with it and measure that on a short interval.

## Mechanism
Decision velocity is bounded by feedback velocity. If the only signal arrives in 12 months, you get one update per cycle. But almost every long-horizon outcome has earlier proxies, engagement, retention curves, qualitative interview signals. Operationalising a leading indicator gives weekly or monthly checks on a quarterly or yearly bet, raising the rate of learning by an order of magnitude.

## Conditions
Holds when:
- The outcome has identifiable leading indicators (most do).
- The team has the discipline to track the indicator without over-fitting to it.
- Leadership accepts proxy signals as input to decisions, not just final outcomes.

Fails when:
- The leading indicator decouples from the long-term outcome (Goodhart's law applied).
- The proxy is too noisy to drive decisions at short intervals.
- Management treats the leading indicator as the goal and forgets the actual outcome.

## Evidence
> "Did this positioning resonate?" is a long loop. "Did we get 3+ qualified demos from this week's outreach?" is a short loop.

· Annie Duke on Lenny's Podcast, 2026-04-28

## Signals
- Decision cadence shifts from quarterly to weekly without losing rigour.
- Teams identify two or three leading indicators per major bet and track them in a shared dashboard.
- Long-term outcome reviews show that the leading indicators were directionally right.

## Counter-evidence
Some outcomes are genuinely lagging (retention at 24 months, brand perception, deep behavioural change) and any short-term proxy will mislead. Archie Abrams' Shopify holdout discipline is the pair to this, short signals can lift while long signals stay flat.

## Cross-references
- `ins_make-intuition-explicit`, the prediction discipline that uses these loops
- `ins_long-term-holdouts-30-40-evaporate`, Archie Abrams' counter-pair on long signals