The more feedback hurts, the more helpful it often is
Summary
- It is hard to improve because we don't know what we are bad at
Details
- When someone gives us feedback, its painful.
- Especially if the person can give specific area of our craft that needs to be improved on
References
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Quotes
Writing as a skill has no ceiling. You can and will get stuck on plateaus, but the amount time you spend on them is up to you.
You can’t move past your plateaus, though, unless you know where the steps off are. And while the smaller next steps are often obvious, the biggest areas for improvement are not where you think they are. They’re in your blindspots, the aspects of your craft you don’t even know are lacking.
What’s tricky about improving these blindspots is that since you’re unaware of them, you might react emotionally to hearing they need to be improved on. If you know you’re terrible with commas and someone tells you that you need to work on your comma placement, then you won’t be offended. But if you see yourself as a great explainer and someone tells you that your explanations make no sense, you might tune out the advice because it upsets your self-image.
So there’s a useful heuristic you can use if you want to improve at anything: the more a person’s feedback hurts, the more helpful it often is.
There are obvious caveats: if they’re being a dick it doesn’t count, if they don’t understand the skill they’re giving feedback on then it might be useless, but in general if they can point to a specific area of your craft that needs to be improved on and you get upset over hearing it, then it’s at least worth reflecting on.