The importance of honest feedback
Hi dear,
Its a pretty usual Friday evening here. I had a pretty busy day today, but I will keep to my schedule and the promise I made to you. I have thinking about what to write to you today and the events that transpired today presented a great subject before me. I have been thinking about it all day, today - The importance of honest feedback.
Today, I visited the violin shop to check for any defects with my violin and to make my life easier while trying to learn this instrument. The uncle at the violin shop convinced me to buy some really expensive violin equipment, but at the same time gave me some honest feedback - my progress has been slow. I took the feedback calmly which is quite unusual because I usually get sad and frustrated on any criticism. I was quite happy with this feedback, because it helped me understand where I was going wrong.
Then, I started thinking of all the places we should take regular constructive feedback - not just corporate appraisals or academic settings, but in life, relationships and other activities as well. I will not dwell on corporate feedback here, because there are many resources on the internet explaining it in detail. Rather, I would like to discuss about approaching the idea of feedback and learning from it in every sphere of our lives.
In all relationships (friends, parents, partners, etc), we can ask the other person whether our actions disappointed them or just what we could do better, because these are the people who know us best.
In any activity, cooking, cleaning, playing a sport or an instrument, gymming, photography it is important to get feedback and more importantly to incorporate that feedback into actions which make us better.
I hope one day, you give me feedback on how to be a better dad as well, because feedback can come from anyone big or small :)
Love,
Dad
P.S - The picture is of our boat on Halong Bay, Vietnam and all the lights and flags which indicate if something goes wrong - giving feedback to everyone on board.
P.P.S - If you ever take up computer science and artificial intelligence, you will learn that learning from the errors machines make, is what makes them smarter and AI possible. An AI system calibrates itself ever so slighlty, with each error that it makes.