Feedback | 1802

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Feedback

Well, well, well. Three holes in the ground, and along comes episode two.

I must admit, starting episode two is a lot harder than starting episode one. It’s interesting, that. Not quite sure why. I guess it comes back down to the fear of perfection—wanting it to be a duel. But then I remembered that the whole point of this thing was just to sit down and do something in an hour.

So here I am, beginning again. After fannying around with some levels, we’re ready to go.

It was definitely something that was on my mind because I’m sitting at my desk here, and I pulled out a copy of Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. I wanted to read you a quote. It’s on perfectionism:

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life. It is the main obstacle between you and the shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is, you will die.

And it’s on that cheery note that we address some of the feedback sent through from last week’s episode:

So, first of all, Kei Kreutler from keikreutler.net
“I don’t fuck with short podcasts.”

My brother, whose entire web presence is under a pseudonym:
“I think it’s a cop-out that the intro is 20+ seconds.”

Huw Lemmey of twitter.com/Huw Lemmey:
“Its tone seems very much for friends.”

Stephen Fortune of stephenfortune.net:
“Time well spent on the opening jingle, IMO.”

Alex Andrews of alexandrews.info:
“I like to hear the sound of your voice. Maybe call the episodes the total time elapsed so far.”

Benedict Singleton of Rival Strategy:
“You should try and be the crypto-agro Joe Frank, late-night radio style.”

Dr. Kane Bidwell:
“You should move your face away from the mic when you breathe.”

Well, thank you, Kane. I’m surprised you didn’t tell me to stop breathing altogether.

And thank you to everybody else who sent through encouraging feedback—I really appreciated it. Especially to my girlfriend, Eve, who said she was proud and really glad that I got up off the couch and was doing something, putting it out on the net instead of just writing it in a Word document where it would never see the light of day. That was really nice. It’s one of the reasons I’m here doing this second episode.

And that concludes the back-slapping part of the show—making myself feel good from all of your kind words. Thank you very much. Appreciate it once again.

One of the things I was thinking about moving into was just the idea of feedback in general.

Feedback is good. It’s helped me a lot in my career and in my life—hearing the opinions of other people about the work I’ve produced. But there’s also a fear of it. I don’t want to receive bad feedback or negative feedback.

And yet, it was negative feedback that had the biggest influence on me. I remember being told at an office job that a thing I produced was shit. Just straight to my face: shit. And that I needed to stop writing like a philosophy graduate and start writing more like someone who worked in an office.

There was a lot of that. I used to get a lot of feedback about my emails at work—being too overly flowery, and that I should get straight to the point. Then I moved to another company, and suddenly I was told that my emails were too short and that I should add some of the flowery stuff back in, so as not to hurt someone’s feelings.

Feedback, feedback, feedback.

It’s a weird word, isn’t it? I just looked it up on Google Ngram, and it kind of didn’t exist before 1940. It reached its average peak in 1980. Such a weird word.

And if you Google it and look for quotes, almost all of them are Silicon Valley and tech founders talking about how feedback is very important—blah blah blah.

What did people call it before? Does anyone know? I guess we called it criticism. Or constructive criticism.

But, you know, that’s just a thought.

Speaking of which, I’m thinking about doing this podcast twice a week instead of just once—Tuesdays and Thursdays.

What do you think?

Sounds like a challenge.