the feedback fallacy of writing on the internet

or: how to stop mishearing all the nice things people say to you

I suck at getting feedback. Always have. I'm 'too sensitive' to it, people say, but obviously they’re wrong. Buncha idiots.

If you say, "I loved everything except the last line which didn't exactly land," I hear "you're the worst writer that's ever lived."

I can't help it. That's how my ears work. And yet no ear doctor in the West is willing to help so I went to the oldest doctor I know: the librarian, who pointed me to the medicine I sorely needed…a book called, “Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well” by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen.

I haven’t finished the book, nor have I figured out how to handle feedback well, but - but! - I did stumble into an explanation for why I am so obsessed with “the numbers” (likes, comments, etc) on Substack AND how I might just stop.

All this and more after a short commercial break:

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aaaaand we’re back.

what we mean when we say “feedback”

The book’s thesis is simple - we use the word ‘feedback’ for a lot of different things. Our issues come from misunderstanding the type of feedback we're getting.

Specifically, the authors say, there are three types:

1. Appreciation - omg looooove this

2. Coaching - love this, here's how you can make it better

3. Evaluation - you're doing a great job

We need all three types, but here’s the stinker: we need to know where we stand (evaluation) before we can hear coaching and apprciation.

And if we don't, well, then we spend our times in a vacuum of uncertainty, unsure of how the heck we’re doing, taking any and all other things that we receive, aka appreciation and/or coaching, and treat it as evaluation.

for example, the internet

Substack, specifically.

The hearts, the love, the comments, all of the kind amazing things people say to me about my work - all of that is appreciation - that’s it! It is not coaching and it is certainly not evaluation. My audience (hi!) is not evaluating my work.

But because I don't have any other way of evaluating my work, I end up taking the appreciation AS evaluation. The numbers become how I determine whether I've done well or not, which is like deciding whether a meal you cooked was great or not by how many people screamed “yummy stuff!!”

Sure, they might scream it, but they also might not, and in either case it may have been great or terrible.

get this his man some evaluation

What I need, then, is a way to evaluate my work before I share it with the world.

Cool idea, but how? What am I to do? Give myself a performance review for each essay? "Alex we love this, we do, but we just don't see us being able to work together long term. Good luck and (Giant Man appears behind Alex) Rizzo here will take you to your desk to collect your things and escort you out of the building."

I’d then fight back, kneeing Rizzo in the nuts (“My nuts!” he’d scream) and then making a run for the big boss’s office where there’s a button that says DO NOT PUSH so I’d push it and usher in an age of utopia the world hath never before seen).

No.

But I do have an idea. It came from this YT video from Mr. Clark's Classroom in which Mr. Clark, a teacher turned philosophy book deep-diver on YT guy, lays out a method of evaluating his own work that he calls a SMaC (Specific, Methodical, and Consistent) Recipe. It’s got 15 tenets, but here are a few of my favs:

Here are a couple of my favs:

1. Focus on lesson quality, not algorithm data

2. Pick one platform and stick to it

3. Track depth of engagement, not subscriber count

I love this approach because it:

• focuses mostly on what Mr. Clark can control BUT

• doesn’t disregard the numbers, but has an opinion on which ones matter and why.

my list of principles for evaluating my own work

My hope is that if I can evaluate my work BEFORE I put it out into the world, I can treat everything that happens after as both appreciation and, when it makes sense, part of that evaluation.

So, then, here’s my first try at a list.

Note: that these are things I want to believe, and am actively striving toward.

1. Answer truthfully the question, "do I like this?" before publishing anything.

2. Resist the pull of “this’ll be a banger.” If you write something thinking it’ll be a banger, it won’t be. It’ll end up simply being something that the author thought would for sure be a banger. Instead, tell the truth (see below).

3. Tell the truth even, and especially, my inability to do so.

4. Re-read the piece before publishing it!! You’d be surprised how often I don’t actually do this.

5. Post before it’s ready - as a counter-balance to the idea above — post while the piece is still alive, while it moves through you. Even if its sloppy, it is alive and that means it’ll have a much better chance of living its way into other people’s brainsouls.

6. Don't make decisions out of anxiety. Make them out of excitement and even fear and really anything BUT the piglet-style sky-is-falling anxiety of “oh god I gotta get this out now if I don’t everything is doomed.”

7. Celebrate other people's work. I've had the pleasure of feeling how great it is when someone, anyone, tells you how much your work meant to them. Do that for others, but only when you mean it.

8. If you’re not having fun, you’re probably the asshole. Comedy often comes from anger, but that doesn’t mean you need to be an asshole while doing it.

9. Write more, organize less.

10. Write without wifi on.

11. Befriend the unknown as a guidepost that you're on the right track. Also know that it won't ever not be scary, it's the fucking unknown, but you can get better at dancing with it.

12. Focus on the quality of the reception, not the quantity.

13. Control what you can control and keep the main thing the main thing.

14. Zoom out - check analytics over longer time scales, not day-to-day (once a week? a month? this one is really hard).

15. Keep going don't stop - when you get stuck make a note to come back to it but don't you ever fucking stop.

16. Do the next thing - don't think too far ahead when writing unless the next thing is to think far ahead.

17. Choose analogy over digital - I meant to write ‘choose analog over digital’ but sorta love that I wrote analogy. Now I’ll spend the rest of time figuring out what the fuck that means.

18. Read books, not phones. Consider this a gift to future you.

19. Honor past you's work and effort - Right now this practically looks like me picking ten essays to write and actually publishing them before allowing myself to work on anything else.

20. Remember that what is obvious for you may not be for others and, at one point, wasn't for you neither.

21. Ask and answer these questions for yourself before publishing:

    1. am i having fun?

    2. am i pushing myself?

    3. how good do i feel this is?

    4. what can i do to make it better ?

    5. do i need a nap?

22. Take a nap. It’ll all make sense when you wake up.

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comments

1. I’d love to hear if this evaluation vs appreciation thing tracks for you?

2. How do you evaluate your work?

3. What would be on your list of SMaC principles (weird name i know)?

4. What struggles around feedback or appreciation do you have?

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