Asking for feedback
It’s finally the summer again, which means that there’s a little more room to read and write and breathe, away from the frenzy of the teaching term. As I rush to finish a proper draft of my book manuscript, I’ve been thinking a lot about whom we send our work to, whom we seek out for advice, and really, whom we even have conversations with about our work. I recently chanced across the diagram below from Adam Grant (one of my absolute favorite thinkers), which I’ve found so, so useful for thinking about which comments to prize:
Given the pretty rigorous criteria, it might be the case that there are only two readers whose feedback REALLY matters, even if a piece is written for a large audience, and it seems that that’s okay! What a liberating way of thinking about which comments we address, and which we discard. The book which contains the diagram, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things (2023), is also an absolutely delightful read.
