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

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121–130 of 653 posts

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

#121
Don't feel like you're the only one. It seems very common for people to have different flavors and degrees of feelings like this. Some inexpert questions to maybe consider:

* Where you work, does it feel safe in general to acknowledge mistakes? Is there a culture of humility, and the team supporting each other? Are the most skilled/experienced/respected the first to point out when they made a mistake? How do managers/leads react when learning of a mistake? Do you feel a general sentiment like mistakes are human, and that everyone i supporting each other and wants everyone to succeed? (This might not be just you, but something the company can improve.)

* Do you have a feeling about how your skills/performance relate to the needs/expectations of the team? Do you feel like you're appreciated enough? Do you feel the Impostor Syndrome? How does your current experience level fit in your team or company?

* You said "unintentionally snarky", but do you ever feel that someone is being mean, overly critical, or disrespecting? What about that being your initial reaction, and then later you decide it was unintentional?

* Do you feel like the perception of others when you make a mistake threatens your future?

* Do your thoughts seem to be mostly about meeting your own internal expectations of yourself, not so much what others think? Were you raised with high expectations put on you?

* Have you worked with a therapist/counselor on this? I'd think it'll take them awhile to get enough context about your work situation, but that's normal, and they have a lot of relevant training and experience that we don't. Your health insurance probably covers this.

* Have you talked about it with a trusted colleague where you work, maybe a trusted manager? They probably won't be as skilled as a therapist/counselor at all facets of this, but they have direct information about some of the context.

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

#122
Focus on the opportunity being presented to you to improve your work. It's a gift. Embrace the fact that ultimately your work can only improve thanks to feedback. Realize that by taking feedback personally, you're actually discouraging future feedback and indirectly you are actively decreasing the quality of your work.

Changing your perspective can make it easier to take feedback non-personally in the future.

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

#123
A big development for me with this was realizing that good engineering is not about constant perfection, but about making pragmatic improvements and adapting to constantly changing circumstances. Seek the 20% effort solution which solves 80% of the problem and let day-to-day disagreements slide.

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

#125
First of all, everyone takes them personally on some days/circumstances and to varying extents.

I try to categorize these bits of feedback by “is it at least partially true?” and “was it well-intended?” If it’s either of those things (most are both), I want to figure out what I can learn from it and realize that I’m the only possible person who will care about this feedback in 2 weeks’ time, so it’s up to me whether to care about it or ignore it.

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

#126
Spend time thinking about times you got criticized but instead of trying to justify, explain, rationalize or just ignore it turn toward it and just accept it. Relax and just let all the thoughts (and more importantly) feelings run over you. Don't resist and don't turn away. Just let all those feelings out. Our thoughts and feelings create an imaginary world that most of us live in in our waking life but that's all it is; thoughts and feelings. Its subjective, transient and temporary. When you can just indifferently witness you'll see how temporary and subjective (and silly) it all is. This removes the person. You (the person) is the one that reacts, reaches and resist the thoughts and feelings. Stop that and the person disappears. It's hard at first because you have to sit through all the uncomfortable feelings. It is worth it though.

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

#127

I've a Manager who loves one thing - Ask questions. No answer ever comes from him, but he keeps on asking questions. And as you can imagine, I am always at the end of it giving him answers. If I ask clarification questions back, he counters that with a "Five Why" type questioning and most of the time I get frustrated, owns it up to give answers and cut the conversation. After a few months working under him, I started…

I thought this was going to be a positive story about how his approach helped teach you to explore solutions via the Socratic method, I wasn't expecting your reaction at all. Many people would hate a manager who only gave solutions, often described as micro-managing. Here we have a manager who seems hated because he only asked questions.

Yes, same! My approach to less-critical PR comments tends to involve asking questions instead of saying "this is wrong/bad" so I was hoping it would be a positive story too.

I can see how a manager never providing actual guidance could be very frustrating though! I do recall a similar situation in the distant past, and in that case the manager was completely out of his depth and could do nothing but bluff.

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

#128
post #7

For me, I put my mistakes in perspective. Did anyone die? No? Then on the scale of important consequences the mistake was statistically inconsequential. My day is ok.

This is a double edge sword because this perspective makes me not try hard at my job or take it less seriously. Especially when my boss is griping at me about some mundane task or detail.

I think the thing you have to do is look around and figure out how seriously your bosses & colleagues take their jobs. Caring more than everybody else leads to extreme frustration, and caring less leads to eventual dismissal.

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

#129
To me it has been immensely helpful to work with my own projections. As I've realised how much of my own inner world I project onto others, I've become more forgiving and unaffected by other people's projecting onto me.

There are many types of therapy that works with projections: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

Personally, i've done the work through ManKind Project, a non-profit for men's work.

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

#130
post #69

I have a lightning talk (each person takes turns giving a ~5 minute lecture on something useful) I sometimes give when the opportunity arises, jokingly titled “How to be Sincerely Grateful for any Criticism”, it might be helpful for you here. It goes like this: When you notice that you’re receiving criticism, pay attention to your emotions. You’re looking for defensiveness, anger, etc. When you notice that feeling, b…

Thank you for sharing that!
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