What Jane Austin can teach us about feeding notes

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The word “reactions” can be described either an unpleasant screaming or an accusation produced by an amplifier, or an opinion on whether something is good. In the modern world, the huge amount of the latter means that it has begun to feel like it was somewhat similar. We live in Cacophony of reactions. We are expected to offer it after every vacation, meal or delivery to our door. We are expected to receive it from the presidents, from colleagues, and for anyone who puts a product, service or creative endeavor in the world – from strangers who spread their opinions on the Internet.

Whether all these notes make anyone better perform out of clarity. The answer can be summarized by academic literature as follows: that depends. One twisting analysis of hundreds of experiments I found it In 38 percent of cases, not only reactions to improve performance, but also made it worse. The Legal Institute for Workers and Development – UK Professional Authority for Human Resources – Research distillation In the context of the workplace: in order to be useful, the comments must be “specific and related to the job, construction, reliable and non -biased.” But not every president or colleague behaves on this, and we wish you success in expecting anything like him from the general public. It is unfortunate that the novelist who receives a review on the one hand on Amazon from a member of the public because the delivery courier is late.

Be able to move through this world from loud feedback without losing your mind or your motives is an important life skill. But how? As a person who has been subjected to public comments for nearly two decades, I think I am qualified to provide some advice (most of them learned in the difficult way, and I still cannot always follow them). It also attracted some wisdom from an unlikely source: Jin Austin, who took notes seriously to collect and copy the opinions of the people who read their novels.

Why did you do this? For the same reason, I think it is worth paying attention to comments today, especially about something I put in the world: curiosity about people’s response. After all, if you don’t want to reach people, what is the point? According to Austin’s biography, Claire Tomalin, the novelist was “separate enough to write notes as well as praise, and without adding any defensive responses.” It seems as if it had created its own version of the reader’s comments section online. While the family members and the acquaintances who gave them were unknown, they were not ashamed of criticism. Austin recorded that her mother found the protagonist Mansfield Park “Infipid”, for example, while another relative “cannot bear it.”

Sometimes, criticism can teach you a useful thing, especially if he comes from a person you respect, or if many people respond in the same way. If a large number of people misunderstand your point of view, for example, your chances did not explain it well enough. If many people are insulted, you are likely to be offensive. I was inadvertently disturbed a number of people from Iceland with an artistic observation. My manager also told me the next day: “It is okay to offend people, but only if I do it on purpose.”

However, bad or lazy criticism should be ignored. Some consolation may be to know that even Austin had to bear some of this. One of his acquaintances, “Read only the first and final chapters” whateverAccording to her notes, “because he heard that he was not interesting.” I hope you are laughing when I wrote it.

This leads me to my final advice, which is to extract what is useful from the comments without mistake in an accurate evaluation of the quality of your work (and certainly not in your quality). For one reason, any reactions will only reach your ears a small and non -representative sample of people’s feeling about your work. For another, it is not possible to simply please everyone. You can just satisfy yourself. As says Austin’s heroine called whatever: “Half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.”

whateverOf course, she was generally welcomed as “the most ideal” Austin Book “, according to her biography,” it was implemented from pregnancy to end. ” However, Austin’s reactions to the novel at the time were somewhat different. Of the 43 opinions of the novel that I noticed, it was 12 hostile, and six gave unbelievable praise, and 17 said they preferred pride and prejudice. We can only hope that Austin will take reactions in a way that we can look at all: seriously – but not seriously.

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