On Feedback

You consistently overload yourself with shiny new projects, yet rarely follow through.”

Jesus Christ, dude.

Fuck YOU.

I wanted to argue. To justify.

I didn't say anything, though. This was just a normal exchange, during a normal Monday, with the robot I had asked to give me brutal feedback.

Consistently, time and again, I notice:

People who are incredibly good at what they do are extremely good at taking feedback.

Most of us are great at taking feedback. "Give it to me straight," we say. We all like to believe we're open-minded, receptive, eager to grow. Yet, the moment genuine critique hits, most of us respond by shutting down or pushing back.

Then we actually get the feedback we're asking for and it all goes sideways.

We fight feedback because deep down, we’re wired for acceptance. Evolution didn’t reward those who admitted weakness; it rewarded those who projected certainty. To the subconscious, being wrong feels like exile. It hurts.

But defensiveness carries a cost. We shut ourselves off from fresh data, insights, and improvements that could transform our outcomes. We lose an opportunity for connection and retreat into an illusion of perfection.

Every piece of critical feedback strengthens your viewpoint or reveals its flaws.

If someone offers better-informed data or sharper reasoning, adopting it improves your decisions.

If their argument sucks, defending yourself helps crystallize your position.

Again: intellectually, we nod our heads and content ourselves with how well we handle feedback.

In practice, things look very different.

We interpret feedback as judgment on our worth. Being wrong feels like a status downgrade—from capable to incompetent, from smart to stupid. Our hearts race, our pulses quicken. The nervous system prepares us for fight or flight.

But feedback is simply new data. Your current position isn’t about you as much as it’s about the information you have access to at this moment.

Don't mistake my writing a blog post about accepting feedback as an indication that I have this all figured out. I don't. I struggle with real feedback - not praise masquerading as hard truths - like everyone else.

So, recently I've been using AI to practice, leveraging ChatGPT for a low-stakes way of being exposed to difficult feedback.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT now has persistent memory. It remembers your interactions, picking up patterns, biases, and recurring blind spots. We can use this fact to access direct (and often confounding) feedback at will.

Interestingly, Mikhail Parakhin recently tweeted about the reaction of testers to this fact:

"When we were first shipping Memory, the initial thought was: ‘Let’s let users see and edit their profiles.’”

Quickly learned that people are ridiculously sensitive: “Has narcissistic tendencies” - “No I do not!”, had to hide it. Hence this batch of the extreme sycophancy RLHF.

I remember fighting about it with my team until they showed me my profile - it triggered me something awful :-). You take it as someone insulting you, evolutionary adaptation, I guess. So, sycophancy ... is needed."

Most people do not want direct feedback.

But we're not most people, are we? :-)

Let's wade into the fire directly. Ask the bot to expose your cognitive biases, your repeated mistakes, your blind spots—and insist it be brutally honest.

Notice if you feel defensive. Notice what you feel the urge to argue against or "correct."

This is where the growth happens. You’re conditioning yourself to process critical input without emotional recoil.

Think of ChatGPT feedback as a low-stakes sparring session. There’s zero risk. Hate how you responded? Delete the conversation. Memory erased.

Here’s what you’ll notice in the short time I’ve been doing this:

- Better decision making

- Better resilience and more confidence

- Most importantly: deeper real-world relationships.

Vulnerability fosters trust. When people see you genuinely engaging with feedback—rather than deflecting or reacting—they trust you more deeply. They feel safe to speak because they know you can hear it.

Whether you use AI or not, get in the practice of asking for - and actually accepting - brutal feedback.

It's worth it.

Yours,

Dan

SOMETHING I'M READING:

Everything Is Fast, because brother, is it ever.