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Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?

#221

Post by leohonexus »

molly0 wrote: post #164
kukkeliskuu wrote: post #148

What you have encountered is actually one of the necessary steps to really become "a senior developer". And congratulations, you have already passed the biggest part of that hurdle: becoming aware of the issue. There are things that are fragile, things that break when they encounter a shock. Such as porcelain, when transported. There are things that are non-fragile, things that do not break when they encounter a simi…

Thank you, it sound to me like meditation could be a way of developing an anti-fragile attitude?

I would recommend "Focusing in Clinical Practice: The Essence of Change"[1] if you're into reading books. I once took a semester-long course on emotional-based therapy taught by one of its practitioners and it really helped in processing and engaging with my own emotions.

One of the core techniques is to visualize the emotion as another person as you try to talk to it and discover more about what it is you're feeling, eventually coming to a strong connection with the feeling. It's been an epiphany trying to process emotions this way for me.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Focusing-Clinical-Practice-Essence-Ch...

Re: Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?

#222

Post by Decabytes »

Stoicism has a lot of information about how to react to the world and your emotions. A lot of people think it’s just have a stony outward appearance and burying your emotions, but it’s actually much deeper than that. Recognizing that you ultimately choose how you react to a piece of criticism is the first step. Understanding that the flairs of emotions that you have and your thoughts are not you is another. Once you understand that it becomes easier to practice (and you have to practice) stoicism in your everyday life, including during criticism

Re: Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?

#223

Post by switchbak »

red75prime wrote: post #189

> But I just hope to learn to stop feeling bad for honest mistakes. What a strange idea. Or maybe not. I always thought of "feeling bad" over my mistake as a way I perceive the brain doing processing of negative learning feedback. So, "stop feeling bad" equals "stop learning" to me. Now that I think of it, maybe there's a way to detach processing from feelings, but I'm skeptical. Feeling of accomplishment when you've…

It's one thing to feel a pull and drive to do better, and to feel a little bad because you've unintentionally not reached your objective.

It's another to feel shame or unworthiness, especially if that's being loudly injected from an external source.

The former can be a good impetus for learning and growth. The latter is the opposite, and can build such that it can make a negative impact on your overall growth trajectory.

I have co-workers that are able to deliver constructive feedback in such a way that I only feel curiosity and a desire to improve things. Often there's no bad feelings present at all. Much of that is also dependent on my state of mind too.

Re: Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?

#224

Post by graderjs »

Here’s an approach you can try with yourself:

When people criticize you, how do you feel? “Bad” is not an emotion, it helps to be more specific.

Do you feel the way you do way because you’re unhappy with your own performance and you wish it was better? Or because you’re unhappy with the other person’s unnecessary (or unkind) criticism of your innocent, honest mistake?

Or other reasons?

Often these kind of personal investigation questions can help. You may get clarity. Once you figure out clearly what’s there for you, try the same “why approach” on the other people involved, in your own head, without asking them. Why did they say what they said? and how did they feel at that moment? And why did they feel that?

If you find it hard to know a reason, try using your imagination.

Maybe there are insights that you will arrive via this process that will transform How are you see it, and that’ll help make everything seem better for you.

I hope you figure it out and get some peace. :)

Re: Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?

#225

Post by Detrytus »

informalo wrote: post #155
dusted wrote: post #95

At some point, I realized that there's a disconnect between "me" and "my work". My work is a result of circumstance, like, what my mood was when I did it, how well I know the particular domain, if I've seen solutions to similar problems before, what tools were available and understandable to me at the time. In other words, the quality of my work depends much more on what the particular task was, than on some inherent…

There is an excellent TED talk on the relationship between self-worth and procrastination that also, like you, makes a point about separating "me and my work" [1]. Watching this about a year ago was eye opening to me and I wished I'd found this video when I started studying in college! [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52lZmIafep4

Well, I have a problem here, because other than work there's not much going on in my life. No wife or kids, no fancy hobbies... I guess I really need to get more social :)

Re: Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?

#226

Post by gtirloni »

kukkeliskuu wrote: post #148

What you have encountered is actually one of the necessary steps to really become "a senior developer". And congratulations, you have already passed the biggest part of that hurdle: becoming aware of the issue. There are things that are fragile, things that break when they encounter a shock. Such as porcelain, when transported. There are things that are non-fragile, things that do not break when they encounter a simi…

> So you need to develop an anti-fragile attitude towards criticism

The most common way I've seen this done is by becoming numb and not caring at all or thinking others are worth less than you so you shouldn't listen to them. Not options I'd choose for myself.

Re: Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?

#228

Post by not_alexb »

pjc50 wrote: post #210
endorphine wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes all criticism is made with good intentions. However that is not always the case.

But that's not under your control. Whereas your reaction to the criticism is under your control.

That probably flies straight in the face of neuroscience.

Re: Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally?

#229

Post by noisy_boy »

davidguetta wrote: post #217
kukkeliskuu wrote: post #148

What you have encountered is actually one of the necessary steps to really become "a senior developer". And congratulations, you have already passed the biggest part of that hurdle: becoming aware of the issue. There are things that are fragile, things that break when they encounter a shock. Such as porcelain, when transported. There are things that are non-fragile, things that do not break when they encounter a simi…

As much as i like the concept in general in life, in this case its just "you are not your lines of code". Also people who criticize people make a mistake kind of. Always criticize the code, not the person.

For those who are passionate about their work, some of them they put their person in their code. As someone else pointed out in a comment in this thread, it is about acceptance that none of us is perfect, we don't/can't write perfect code and that is totally ok as long as you did what you could (both in terms of the output and the effort to improve the quality of the output). Unfortunately this is largely conditioned by upbringing so easier said than done. But awareness of this itself can be a helping factor in coping with criticism.
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