Feedback Thoughts

The first post I read for this week was the article Using Harsh Feedback to fuel your Career by William Treseder.  As the title suggests, he provides advice for how to properly take harsh criticism of us and our work in order to improve.  One of the key points is that people tend to take these criticisms as something negative on who they are, and not just the behavior or expression being criticized. This is a natural response, but one that is counter productive, because it precludes and honest look at ourselves because we go on the defensive.  Furthermore, he talks about how demonizing the one critiquing your work is another common flaw, just because it hurts us to see something we have worked hard on be shown to have flaws.  The takeaway from this is that we need to understand that most criticism comes from a person genuinely trying to help and is not meant to be a personal attack, just an observation for improvement. 

The other article I read this week was Recalibrating the Perfectionist mind by Dr. Jay-Lee Nair.  I understand her point about not stressing about achieving perfection, and avoid the "What if" pitfall of thinking, paralyzing ourselves into inaction by fear of failure. Furthermore, her idea of recovering from errors is a great idea to help us move on for mistakes.  However, a lot of her advice seemed performance oriented, rather than meant for everyday tasks or personnel work, so more time will be needed to determine how many of her tips are useful in everyday life

Perfection, from pxhere