I’m a big advocate of getting feedback when it comes to learning. Practice without some kind of feedback has limited benefit at best, and at worst can be counterproductive by reinforcing bad habits.
But it’s important to distinguish between evaluation and judgement. The former is useful and necessary while the latter adds unnecessary and harmful baggage to the learner.
A primary component of evaluation is that it looks at the skill as something which the learner is still pursuing, while knowing that it takes dedicated effort to acquire that skill. It holds the practice up against an established standard and helps the learner guide their continued effort. It has empathy for the fact that that learning a skill takes dedicated and repeated effort…for all of us.
Judgement however, gets personal. Instead of focusing on the skill, it directly or indirectly compares the learner against some arbitrary standard for the rate of skill development. It implies that practice that isn’t good is not worthy of effort, and that the person who is not performing perfectly must be flawed as a person.
It takes wisdom to notice the difference sometimes, as judgement can be subtle and insidious. And often times we can turn constructive feedback from others into judgement as we process it in our own thoughts. If the feedback motivates you to keep trying, then it’s probably the kind of evaluation that you should keep listening to.
You can recognize judgement because it makes you feel like giving up. It makes you feel defeated, like there is no way that you can ever acquire the skill, no matter how hard you try.
So keep getting feedback as you work on developing your skills. Remember, though, that all feedback is not the same. Hang on to the type that is about the skill, and let go of the kind that gets personal.
When we practice, we get better. Good feedback supports this simple truth.
