The 'Imperative of Feedback' - a cautionary tail

When I was younger, I had a near-insatiable hunger for feedback from other people.

I suspect it provided me with a sense of safety. The hope that, even if I was unworthy and ‘not enough’ in how I was there and then, I was improving. So - eventually - I would be worthy and enough. As long as my direction of travel was pointing upwards, as long as I was on a journey of constant and relentless improvement, all would be okay. I would be okay. Feedback was fuel, the direction-giver on that journey. The only salient signal that could indicate to me that I was still broadly travelling in the right direction, thereby giving me an (albeit perverse) sense of okayness and legitimacy ‘on-credit’.

Today, I feel different about feedback. Most of all I notice that I no longer have this relentless graving for feedback from others. I no longer need others to tell me how they think I am doing and how I could become better.

It’s not that I no longer think improvement and error correction are valuable. I do. It is two other things that have changed in how I orient to feedback.

First, I no longer need external feedback to give me that feeling of safety. Caring about growth is no longer an existential matter. Caring about growth is one - only one - of many things I care about.

In retrospect, feedback was a bit like a drug for me. I was reward-hacking myself. Feedback gave me a sense of safety - emphasis on sense - but said sense was importantly mistaken about something. Receiving people’s feedback is not the same as actually improving. People might think I am doing really well, or they might think I am doing poorly. But they can be wrong – and in fact often are. People’s beliefs about reality are the same as reality itself. The typically map-territory error. I craved feedback because I wanted to be okay, but all it got me was a momentary, dissipative and not appropriately-grounded feeling okay. But the feeling of okayness other people’s feedback could buy me was always a thin substitute of the real thing.

The second change of orientation I observe is that, while I still care about feedback (even if in a less existential manner), I am today significantly less interested in feedback from people, and significantly trustful that reality will provide me with most of the feedback I need.

I still think people-feedback can be useful, but I consider it useful in a much more narrow and specific set of cases. If I am writing a piece I might ask some specific people for feedback because I respect their takes on the topic. If I run a project I might be interested in checking whether the people I work with, or other people I respect, have noticed things I haven’t such as to expand and deepen my models of how to do this sort of thing well. In other words, the way I orient to people-feedback today tends to be more focused on moving me ahead on specific things I am trying to do, or on drawing on specific areas of expertise that other people might hold - rather than on say ‘my overall performance’.

What I am basically entirely suspicious of now – as opposed to back then – is other people giving feedback on what my goals should be in the first place. It’s not like I used to go around asking people to give me feedback on what I should care about. But, as a matter of fact, I did pay insufficient attention to keeping separate what are my goals from what are other people’s goals. And feedback played an important role in this confusion.

I was overly eager to receive feedback and to act on that feedback to change my behaviour. Afterall, just receiving feedback isn’t enough to make you improve; you also have to integrate the feedback, let the feedback trickle through your entire being, let it change you! So, in all that over-eagerness, my ability to ask one important question started to fade away; whether the feedback was relevant to what I personally cared about.

The ‘imperative of feedback’ developed from an imperative to elicit and take seriously to an imperative to consume all fully, and any omission to incorporate and act on the feedback was considered a failure of character. Disagreeing with feedback, or – even worse – agreeing with feedback but still not acting on it became equivalent to a moral shortcoming; a vice, a sign of laziness, a sign of pride, a lack of dedication to the imperative of eternal betterment.

What all of this missed, however,—and importantly so!—is that what feedback is relevant to you depends on what you’re trying to achieve or what you care about. This is also why there are cases where even if I agree with the feedback, it might not be right for me to incorporate it. Let’s say I could have presented myself more professionally at that event, or given a more sleek presentation. That may very well be true. But I might just not care. Maybe, given my goals, I don’t need to hone my professionalism or presentation skills. Maybe, given my goals and other things I care about more, it’s just not worth it for me to focus on this. Maybe—Sacre Coeur!—the feedback is accurate and incorporating it would help me move closer to my goals and also, I choose not to. Turns out you can do that. Turns out your choices can have many, many reasons – and not all of them are readily captured by narratives of improvement and performance.

It is through subtle narratives and dynamics like these that you can come to lose touch with what you care about, what you value – with yourself. What is more, in that process, you risk becoming the extension of someone else’s goals – like a little string puppet. I don’t think it has to be a bad thing to help with the furthering of someone else’s goals. But I do in fact believe it tends to be a bad thing to confuse other people’s goals for one’s own goals. There are few more fundamental ways for one’s agency and freedom to erode away.

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As such, I want to value feedback for what it is – an occasionally useful tool to move you closer towards what I value. But also, I want to be firm in my knowledge of what feedback is not. It is not a substitute for the process of exploration and self-dialectic through which I come into contact with what is important to me. Feedback does not have to but can become a means of alienation from one’s own value. Don’t let that happen. Nor do I want to confuse feedback from others for feedback from reality.

Lastly, in my desire to grow and evolve in who I am, I don’t want to forget that there are many other things beyond improvement that constitute deep and rich sources of value – including the savouring of the journey itself.