"Hi I'm Jake, a Product Designer, professional skeptic and well-practiced daydreamer. I spend a lot of time thinking about things that, by my own admission, probably don't warrant the level of scrutiny I give them. I also ask a lot of questions, often about things of dubious importance. However, every so often, something genuinely interesting (admittedly by my assessment alone) starts to take shape."
"Like a vague cloud of raw thought, it's that sense that there's something more to an idea or experience. It floats around my head, bumping into walls until, eventually, my brain connects the dots and packages it into something worth exploring. It's a bit like trying to herd smoke, or like getting a hundred angry bees to march, single file down a straw."
"So... after a few important people in my life called out my tendency toward self-criticism. Basically, I couldn't take a compliment.. This, in true Jake fashion, provoked a pretty solid period of self-reflection. Which eventually led me to the thought: "You believe your self-criticism is objective, while dismissing others' praise as distorted by psychological biases and social pressure. " That realisation was valuable on its own. It shifted how I interpret positive feedback."
A product designer and daydreamer routinely overanalyzes trivial matters and asks many questions. Occasionally a promising idea forms from vague thoughts coalescing into shape. That idea inspired the first blog post attempt. Repeated self-criticism and inability to accept compliments triggered self-reflection. The core insight: people often treat their own self-criticism as objective while dismissing others' praise as biased or socially pressured. That realization alters how positive feedback is interpreted and prompts questions about trusting user feedback given human biases and context. This has implications for design research, user testing, and product decisions.
Read at Medium
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