Negative Feedback
Negative Feedback
I have been relatively sheltered. I have been writing on the internet about medicine since 2005. More recently, I have populated this blog with content regarding personal finance and financial independence. Believe it or not, until this week, I have gotten almost no negative feedback. Maybe an unhappy comment here or there. Possibly an unsubscribe from time to time. But very little.
Up until this week. This week, out of nowhere, I have gotten a bunch. It is not that it hasn’t been constructive, just unexpected. It has taken me somewhat by surprise.
Blogs are Bland?
I’m wondering if some of the reason is that there is a certain blandness to blog writing. Unless you are going out of your way to be controversial, there is only so much to argue with.
Writing about medicine gave little to disagree with. I wrote often about the importance of the doctor patient relationship and how the healthcare system was changing. Not much controversy there. Maybe I was just preaching to the choir.
Personal finance has been similar. Buy less, save more, be intentional. Who is going to argue with such things? Sure, I have taken an occasional controversial viewpoint. Almost no one agrees with my stance on travel hacking. But there has been little negative feedback. More respectful disagreement.
Podcasting is Public
I think the game changer has been podcasting. It is a much more public venture and seems to engage a different group of content consumers. Maybe unlike the crew that reads my blogs, most of these people don’t know me. Therefore there is no deep and extensive knowledge about me and my viewpoints that they can draw from.
The other issue is The What’s Up Next Podcast episodes generally have three to four panelists. In the past, any criticism would be leveled at my writing or my viewpoints. But now, I have become responsible for what is said during our recordings even if it doesn’t come from me. Even the choice of panelists can draw ire.
There are a lot more moving parts, and thus many more things that can go wrong. And certainly many more opinions that people can disagree with.
Why It Matters?
Many argue that negative feedback is a good sign that you are saying something important, or that you have made it. But to me, it also carries deeper worries. Whenever, in my life, I get negative feedback I have the strong compulsion to try to fix it. To take that feedback and make changes,
Yet sometimes those voices that speak the loudest are not carrying the sentiment of the majority. Often, in fact, these voices are more peripheral, but their producers happen to be more outspoken.
There is a definite danger of changing in less than optimal ways because of a few outliers. Sometimes it is the outliers that make the most noise.
Final Thoughts
It’s not so much that I don’t like negative feedback, it’s that I don’t know what to do with it. Following it religiously may change my content in ways that are more displeasing to the majority instead of bringing improvements.
Currently I’m undecided. I hear all the voices giving feedback both positive and negative.
Not sure how and when I will change things.
Were it me I would just take my vision where I WILL and care less about the feedback. This is the problem when you monetize your vision, suddenly you become co-dependent on the analytics and they start running the show. People come and go for all kind of reasons. I’m pretty religious about reading your blog but I don’t spend much time on the podcast because it’s basically an hour of committed attention and I’m not an hour of committed attention kind of guy. I don’t watch TV also for that reason. That’s what suits me. You’re doing OK so just enjoy the ride.
Notably, this blog is very minorly monetized and I no longer pay attention to analytics. But I get your point.
I think the risk of being targeted by negativity is higher for high earners simply because so many people think life is easy for them. I’m not a doc but I earned a similar income and the fear of coming across as elitist has constrained my blog content quite a bit. In your case, I’ve never detected any out of touch or preachy content. Just a lot of wisdom and well crafted prose. And the podcast is no different. This community is generally kind and positive but I think it is to be expected that being transparent about a high income and net worth puts you in some unhappy people’s cross hairs. On the plus side, this is a remarkably positive and kind community so it is a rare occurrence.
I never thought about the high income part. Definitely food for thought.
Why don’t you share some of the negative feedback with your loyal followers and we’ll make suggestions on what to do?
To me negative feedback means that you hit a nerve. Something said was a trigger or an uncomfortable topic for that person , to voice their opinion. I believe, mostly , it’s all about the other party’s own issues. And represents an opportunity for them to look at this and also why they felt the need to say what they said. This usually doesn’t happen though. The other side is , That we don’t all agree on everything. The negative feedback made, may or may not hold a morsal of a new perspectives or truth. Either way , It’s something to look at and then let go of.
Interesting idea. I’ll think about it.
That’s a good point about the lack of negative feedback unless you go out of your way to be controversial. I had some over the years, but I mostly ignore them.
If it’s not constructive, it’s not useful to me.
Yes, it is hard to tell how useful the feedback is. Is it a universal belief or just one person’s opinion of something you wrote.
I think you misspelled the word “Rebell” on your website. If you want to keep errors off of your site we’ve successfully used a tool like SpellPros.com in the past for our websites. A nice customer pointed out our mistakes so I’m just paying it forward :).
I was looking at your website and noticed it appears the word “Rebell” is spelled wrong. I had similar problems on my site until someone mentioned it to me and I also now use software from SpellPerfect.com to keep my site error free.