Indian Epics

Simple praise like "Good Job!" may feel good to give, but isn't very helpful. ( Source ) The first article I read was " The Difference Between Praise and Feedback ". I think it did a good job of succinctly explaining the difference, and further, explaining why feedback is preferable to praise. The author, Anya Kamenetz, pointed out how commenting on effort rather than results encourages the one receiving feedback to continue to put forth an effort, whereas if results are praised, then the individual may feel downtrodden if they don't get the results they want. Implicit in this idea is that we have a lot more control over our level of effort than we do the results we produce. Kamenetz also noted that specific feedback was better than general feedback, as it is also easier to make changes when we know what to change. Instead of saying "I can see you worked really hard on this!", saying "I can see that all of that practice on *this very s...

" So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life."  This Neil Gaiman quote from the article " Make Good Art: Neil Gaiman’s Advice on the Creative Life, Adapted by Design Legend Chip Kidd " really stuck out to me. As an engineer, making mistakes is part of the process. If you are trying to solve a problem, it is virtually impossible to get a solution that works the first time. Humans just don't have the omniscience to predict every problem that will arise with your solution. Those problems can really only be detected by trying something and failing, but by trying something and seeing how it fails we learn. We understand the problem better and can create a better solution in the next iteration. For my line of wo...