Here is an article written by Laura Vanderkam for CBS MoneyWatch, the CBS Interactive Business Network. To check out an abundance of valuable resources and obtain a free subscription to one or more of the website’s newsletters, please click here.

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(MoneyWatch) You and your team pitched a project to a potential client. She shot it down. Everyone’s feeling a little sore about it. So the last thing you want to do is relive that meeting play by play, right?

That’s human nature. But if you have a tendency to tell everyone to just move on, not to worry and that you’ll do better next time, you could be missing a huge opportunity.

In the sports world, coaches often make their teams watch footage of past games. They study what plays worked — and which could work better with some tweaking. They figure out vulnerabilities. This post-game analysis is key to improving. It’s expected as part of practice.

I’ve written before of how few people practice in work contexts, which is a shame, because practice is one of the things the most successful people do at work, daily if they can. If one person is actively trying to get better at her job, and another is not, it’s not hard to guess who will eventually do the job better.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Laura Vanderkam, a Philadelphia area journalist, is the author of 168 Hours and All the Money in the World: What the Happiest People Know About Getting and Spending. To check out all articles by Laura Vanderkam on CBS MoneyWatch, please click here.