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Earlier this week, I was at the hairdresser when a nasal voice drifted in through the door, which was followed by the entrance of a middle-aged woman who added a period after every word and spoke with an intonation that pierced my ears on-beat.
Her voice was so peculiar that I was enjoying conversing with her the way one enjoys discovering a new species at the zoo, until a pattern became apparent that nearly prompted me to prematurely leave and show up to my sister’s wedding looking like Anthony Bardem in No Country for Old Men: She had the insufferable habit of disagreeing with literally every single statement.
A snippet of the conversation:
Me: “Where should I go to dinner?”
Hairdresser: “I love X.”
Woman: “I. Hate. X. You. Should. Go. To. Y.”
Hairdresser: “Yes, Y is great.”
Woman: “But. Actually. Because. Of. Your. Age. You. Won’t. Like. It.”
Hairdresser turns on the tap to rinse my hair, making it harder for us to hear each other.
Hairdresser: “Oh, actually Z might be great.”
Woman: *indecipherable over the noise*
Hairdresser (attempting to pattern match from the beginning of the conversation): “You don’t like it?”
Woman (pulling off the ultimate contrarian move, likely switching her answer on-the-fly based on his response): “No. I. Love. It.”
Here’s the thing that got me: nothing she said was malicious and nothing indicated that she was morally repugnant in any meaningful way—she just had this easily resolvable blindspot that no one had pointed out to her for the entirety of her life.
She reminded me of my wonderful friend who consistently struggled on dates because she chewed so loudly that the sound stuck in your ears, and there was so much moisture in her mouth that she would have done well with a dentist’s saliva ejector. Of course, none of us—the people who purported to be her friends—told her this, and thus we were all accomplices in her shitty dating life.
All of this made me realize that it’s unfortunate that people might be great in countless dimensions, but suffer because of a few stylistic errors that could easily be corrected. Then I realized that I must have some of these blind spots myself.
Why is it that we regularly engage in unpleasant, beneficial activities (i.e. cleaning our apartments), but avoid the most high-leverage one? Why is it so rare to give and receive well-communicated, loving feedback?
The incomplete answer is that it’s because of our egos. While it’s true that we like to avoid the stomach-sinking conversations that attacks on identity produce, we’ve all had some that we’ve found both manageable and beneficial. And, in my experience, when you make the effort to have an open critical conversation with someone, they generally go quite well. We aren’t avoiding feedback just because of our egos.
Instead, the root of the problem seems more cultural than psychological. We make time every Sunday to watch football with our families, but the only time for communal introspection comes once a year on Thanksgiving. We drink thousands of beers with our friends, but it’s only when things come to a head that we criticize them. We spend hours each day with our co-workers, but only find time once per year to comment on the experience of working with them. The problem is that our society doesn’t have a culture of feedback.
The solution then is to create routines around beneficial criticism. Over the past year, my friends and I have been doing this through a weekly Man’s Dinner where we are expected to ask for and receive candid feedback. These sorts of rituals should be one of the cores of our family, social, and work cultures. Of course, they don’t need to happen every week, but monthly drinks with your family at a cozy pub to talk about something fundamental seems more interesting, unifying, and beneficial than watching the Giants lose for three hours regularly.
Making feedback fun and frequent is the nucleus of growth; it would be a shame to live a life without it.
Thank you for writing this. I stumbled upon Back to Humanity a couple of weeks ago, I was yearning for this kind of article in this world of algorithmic chaos. I especially like Quitting the internet, something that I am struggling from the past couple of months after reading Deep Work and Digital Minimalism. Looking forward to more of these.