A big part of learning involves receiving feedback as you develop your skills over many repetitions. Ideally, this feedback would come from someone who is interested in your continued growth and who is already skilled in the task you’re working on. Also, they would have a clear vision for your progress and be adept at observing and giving constructive feedback.
Self-learners are no different in this need for feedback. While the internal drive to learn and the access to resources is certainly helpful, we still need help in evaluating our progress. This is a dilemma for those who are internally driven to learn, or have limited access to the kind of qualified feedback that I mentioned above.
And as the rate of change increases, it creates a need to learn skills which are too new to have mentors available, so it becomes even harder to get qualified feedback. You may be working in an area that is still in the early stages of maturity, or you may be developing a skill that is not yet well understood.
Fortunately, the changing technology also makes it very easy to put your work out for anyone to provide feedback. No matter what skill you desire, you can probably find a place on the internet where people can give you the feedback which you cannot give yourself. Unfortunately, not everyone who provides feedback has the ideal set of skills (or intent) to give you the best feedback. Weeding through the unqualified feedback requires a bit of a thick skin. Occasionally, it requires the ability to ignore the truly counterproductive advise. For the most part, though, there is enough good feedback to make it worth it, and it’s not too hard to tell when someone isn’t giving helpful feedback.
In order for there to be “experts” in emerging areas, the people who will eventually become the those experts will be the ones that exposed their attempts and failures publicly. Because they were willing to let their undeveloped skills be exposed to the elements, those skills could be honed by the kind of feedback that is only available from a more general audience. Why can’t YOU become one of these “experts”, if you’re willing to do the work?
If you’re stuck in the kind of thinking that you couldn’t possibly share your creative talents because you’re “not good enough” yet, then I will counter by telling you that you may never be “good enough” if you don’t get that feedback. It takes courage, but don’t be afraid to take the first step on your journey.
One caveat is to be aware of the permanence of doing things in public, and to specific pitfalls that could have irreparable negative effects. You can still avoid particularly sensitive areas of expression, or things in which failure could have serious consequences. But with a bit of effort you should be able to find an area where sharing your raw talents will have productive instead of harmful effects.
Of course, I realize that blogging falls into this kind of learning. I’m honing my skill of trying to put my thoughts into words. It’s inevitable that I’ll make mistakes. That’s just the way it is. I hope that if something I wrote stirs your thoughts that you will comment here to let me know. It’s the kind of feedback that is hard to get anywhere else.
