A random comment and your best friend’s concern don’t weigh the same. Don’t treat them equally.

REFLECTION

WHAT THIS MEANS

Feedback arrives without labels, so it all lands with roughly the same force unless you do the sorting yourself. A stranger’s throwaway line and a worried sentence from somebody who has known you for years are completely different objects, and the second usually took courage to say. Treating them equally means overweighting the first and, more expensively, underweighting the second.

Sort by two things: how much the person knows about your life, and what it cost them to tell you. High on both deserves a long think. Low on both deserves a minute.

A QUESTION TO SIT WITH

Whose opinion do you give more weight than it deserves?

MORE IN PERCEPTION & ATTENTION

Free, with nothing to buy inside it.