Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Do you dare to get feedback from others?
[00:00:08] Do you dare have your work or ideas evaluated, even taken a look at?
[00:00:15] I'm Bradley Sharpen and this is Thursday Thunder. And today we're talking about feedback and the power of evaluations and the power of third party perspectives.
[00:00:25] You can think about your idea, your project, your book idea, your company business plan. You can think about it all day and convince yourself one way or the other. I am sure of it, just because I can too. And I can have the greatest book idea of all time, and yet it's the greatest book idea of all time in my head.
[00:00:48] And yet someone else might say, what is that you are saying?
[00:00:54] And they have no idea what you're talking about.
[00:00:56] So do you share your work? Do you put your work out there? Do you ask for feedback, for commentary, for evaluations, for critique, Dare I say, for.
[00:01:09] What's the word? Constructive criticism?
[00:01:13] It's hard. It's probably the scariest thing of being a creator. See that guy? That's my accountability partner. Yet he is a limited accountability partner because he doesn't critique my work. He might critique if we don't go out early enough in the morning, but he's not there to say, you know what, we really should have gone left at the last turn in the woods.
[00:01:40] He might give me a look. That's about it. Whereas a third party perspective can really change the trajectory of your energy.
[00:01:55] So ideally this is a person or a group. For example, in writing, it's often a writer's group where you share it either in person and live, or it's online in a writer's group and you share a bit. Or this could be an editor or a proofreader or any sort of that level. And there's different levels, right? There's a developmental editor.
[00:02:21] Hold on. What is that? It's freaking me out.
[00:02:25] There's a dead something.
[00:02:26] What is that?
[00:02:30] What is that?
[00:02:33] Okay, I don't. I don't know what that is.
[00:02:37] It's like Godzilla threw up or something. Okay.
[00:02:43] Not getting feedback on that thing. I don't know what that is. Come on, Pipe. Not going to eat that thing.
[00:02:48] So here's a thought.
[00:02:51] Do you have humans? Do you have people who you know will give you honest feedback? I live in the Netherlands. I don't think I will offend too many Dutch people when I say that they are very direct.
[00:03:05] Some would call them rude, but some, most call them direct. And they will share their opinion. They will tell you what's up. They will give you the straight and narrow and Say I think your idea is Krappola, that's fine. And you can take it or leave it, right? Just says you can take any advice or leave it.
[00:03:25] So I would like to mention something here where I have had some excellent feedback from.
[00:03:33] It's interesting because I'm not even necessarily asking for it, but there is a tool called NotebookLM and it comes from Google and at the moment it's, it's still free I think, I mean it is free, but I don't know, probably limitations. And I, I, you, we can upload some work and what's super fun is as with any AI, you can then give it a prompt and say, hey, from the critical perspective of a PhD in psychology, you know, what would you think of this document? Or something, that's all great, but what I'm talking about with NotebookLM and I'm gonna, if I remember I will share a link.
[00:04:17] I you put stuff up in NotebookLM and then what happens is if you choose this option there, there are like two AI bots, I call them Alex and Jordan, two people who then have a conversation about the information that you shared.
[00:04:38] So Alex and Jordan, I'm going to call him Alex and Jordan. Alex and Jordan will have a dialogue, it's rather amazing by the way. They will have a dialogue about whatever you uploaded. So you upload, you know, a how to guide on how to take photos in the woods. And it will say, so Bradley Charvener there was, was uploaded a detail, a document about how to take photos in the woods. And you know, in that first part, you know, he really thought that you should use a wide angle lens, whatever. And then the other guy says, yeah, I noticed that. And you know what he said then blah blah, blah, blah blah. So it is a, a voice, an audio dialogue of the content you share. So I often will share a YouTube video. So for example, I did an hour and 40 minute recording of helping fearful Fiona, my character, my villain, helping her write her one word, one word yearbook, helping write her yearbook. And I walked through the entire process complete with way too much commentary on my end about the philosophy and the strategies and the psychology of this project and why you should do it and why the benefits are and how it can help solve problems, blah blah blah. And so I uploaded the entire hour and 40 minute thing. I actually shared a YouTube link. And then Alex and Jordan can started by having they had a 17 minute dialogue about my topic.
[00:06:18] And I gotta tell you, I, I will happily share these two links below. But the I, I got more.
[00:06:27] Okay. I'm gonna say something scary and daring here, but I kind of got more out of their 17 minute dialogue than my hour and 40 minute thing. So I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, bradley, are you saying that their content is better than your content? Come on, is their content better than your content? No.
[00:06:49] I created the content. I had the idea. I created the initial content.
[00:06:56] They are giving me feedback in the form of a dialogue between two kind of people.
[00:07:03] And then I can listen to their dialogue to understand the feedback they're talking about.
[00:07:10] You follow what I'm, what I'm saying here? So rather than a, you know, a written out analysis of what I'm talking about, it's a dialogue. So I find this very easy to consume and to digest.
[00:07:28] And frankly, audio and video guy that I am, audio guy especially, I really like hearing the two voices have a conversation. It's very casual conversation too. Have a very casual conversation about my big piece of work.
[00:07:44] So there you have it. I started out this little chatterama here with feedback. And I go way back to when I lived in San Francisco and I was in a writers group. And we went in and there'd be 10, 12 people sitting in a circle and you read, remember, six pages, six pages double spaced, and you read aloud. You read aloud your six pages, double spaced, and you got feedback. And a really interesting element of that was that the author was not allowed to say anything.
[00:08:18] You can't rebuttal, you can't explain. You just sit there and take it. And it was fantastic.
[00:08:27] When a little trivia, a little name dropping.
[00:08:30] A few people in that group have made it quite big. In fact, one of them, he wrote about some kites in Afghanistan. His name was Khaled Hosseini. Yep. He wrote the Kite Runner. And in fact, we heard about that book for the first time in that writer's workshop in San Francisco. How's that for a little name drop in there, huh? He's an awesome guy, doctor. And success was crazy. Super cool. So that was feedback. I mean, that is ultimate, like brutality feedback. Right? You are listening on the spot to other authors, soon to be very famous authors, critiques piquing you on your work. Wow.
[00:09:10] With something like Notebook Lm I. I don't know if you can change the settings or say, like, be nice or, you know, be critical, but it's not the craziest idea. In fact, you can tell your AI or your chat CBT or whatever to have a certain voice or have a certain experience, like, you know, B a PhD in this topic. Right.
[00:09:30] So there you have it. There we have it. On feedback and why. It's.
[00:09:35] It's difficult. It's really hard. It is one of the hardest things and I really struggle with it. I. I've written several books. I didn't show a soul and yet I should have. Do I regret it? Yeah. Would they be better with feedback? Yep.
[00:09:50] There you have it. This is Thursday Thunder. I come here live every Thursday and share and look for your feedback. Bye for now.
