142 sats \ 4 replies \ @Undisciplined 7 Jun \ on: How do you deal with negative feedback? Design
You handled it exactly how I was going to suggest.
I do think there's a useful distinction between "negative feedback" and "constructive criticism", although I'd say the later is a subset of the former. Feedback that suggests ways to improve is useful, whereas just being told your work sucks is not,
Dealing with negative feedback is a big part of academic life, because of the peer review process.
- First, you have to determine if the criticism makes sense. If it doesn't, you try to think of ways to more clearly describe what you're doing, so that it won't come up again.
- If the criticism is valid, you then have to decide if there's anything you can reasonably do to address it. If you can address it, then you do.
- If you can't feasibly address the criticism, then you need to explain what the constraint is.
- Ideally, you can also suggest how to avoid the constraint in subsequent work.
I think those steps generalize beyond dealing with peer review.
Thanks for taking the time to detail the systematic, somewhat clinical process. I think the benefit of going through this is that it divorces the personal pronoun “I” from my work. My mind is primed into thinking about the extent to which the areas of improvement can be addressed
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Our immediate hope is for a purely positive reaction, but the only way to really improve is for someone to notice that we have room for improvement.
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If the criticism is valid, you then have to decide if there's anything you can reasonably do to address it. If you can address it, then you do
I totally agree with this point. But Many people already have a mindset that I can never be wrong. Like I know a person here. So there is no option of improvement for such a person
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I think the key is that you make yourself address it whether or not it's valid. That way you can't just reject it as a way to avoid addressing it.
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