他人的意见既能变成帮助我们学习和成长的工具。也可能成为阻碍我们前进的阻碍。保持理性独立思考能力，学会在利与弊中取舍。

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If we never listen to feedback, we’ll never improve. That’s certainly true, but in a world where everyone has an opinion (whether it’s about Hillary Clinton’s wardrobe or Ellen Pao’s leadership style), who should you actually listen to?

如果我们从不听取他人的意见，我们就永远不会取得进步。这自然是真理。然而，当每个人都在发表自己的观点时（无论是关于希拉里·克林顿的衣橱，还是关于鲍康如的领导方式），谁才是我们真正应当倾听的对象呢？

Over the past several months, I’ve appeared on more than 130 podcasts to promote my new book, Stand Out. Most of the queries are the same, but when someone recently asked me about the role of feedback in my life — a question I’d never received before — my own answer surprised me. “I try not to listen to feedback,” I told him. “Most of it is either useless or destructive.”

在过去几个月里，我上了130多次播客来宣传我的新书《出色》（Stand Out）。很多提问都相差无几，但最近有人问了我一个从来没有人问过我的问题：你如何看待他人的意见在生活中扮演的角色？而我自己的回答令我感到惊讶。“我尽量不去听取别人的意见。”我告诉他，“大部分意见要么没有用处，要么只会带来坏处。”

Of course I can point to useful pieces of feedback I’ve received over the years: my friend Eric the TV producer counseling me on how to present myself onscreen, or my former client Andrea suggesting a better way to do email introductions.

我当然可以说出几条过去几年里收到的有用的意见：我的朋友艾瑞克是一名电视制片人，我向他咨询如何在荧幕上展示自己；或者我的前客户安德里亚，她建议我以一种更好的方式通过邮件作自我介绍。

As my business has grown and my visibility has increased, I have received a steady stream of feedback. And for the sake of my own sanity — and accomplishing the goals that are most important to me — I’ve generally decided to tune out other people’s suggestions and advice. Here are the strategies I use to determine when to ignore feedback.

随着事业的发展和眼界的扩展，我收到了源源不断的意见。出于我自己的理智以及完成最重要的目标愿望，我已经渐渐决定不再理会其他人的建议和意见。以下这些技巧帮助我决定何时该忽略别人的意见。

In my first job out of graduate school, I was a political reporter. I had a reasonably good feel for language, but I was in my early twenties and had never been a professional journalist before. In short, I’m sure there were myriad ways for me to improve. But it was incredibly hard to figure out how because my editor, frustrated with the shortcomings of my prose, would simply snap at me to “Make it different!” Since she was my boss, it was my job to try to decode her meaning, so I’d try, often fruitlessly, to create different story openings and see which irritated her least.

我在研究生毕业后找到的第一份工作是政治报道记者。我有着相当不错的语感，但那时我才二十出头，并且在此之前从未当过专业记者。简单来说，我相信我可以通过多种途径得到提升。但弄清楚怎么做超乎想象的困难，因为我的编辑对我文章的缺点感到很失望，而她只会怒气冲冲地对我说道：“去改稿子！”由于她是我的领导，理解她话的含义是我的责任。所以我会努力去写出不同的文章开头，看看哪一种能最大限度地减轻她的怒火。然而这些努力往往是徒劳无功的。

As I’ve advanced in my professional life, I’ve found that many people who don’t have authority over me also want to share maddeningly non-specific feedback (“I didn’t think it was as strong as it could have been” or “There was just something off”). If they can’t tell you exactly what the issue is, it’s not your job to figure it out (unless they sign your paycheck).

当我在职业生涯中更进一步，我发现许多职位不在我之上的人也想向我提出模糊的、不具体的建议（“我认为这篇文章还可以更激烈一点”或者“似乎缺了点什么”）。如果他们不能明确地指出问题所在，你就无需去弄明白他们的话（除非他们是发你薪水的人）。

Just the other day, I got an email from a disgruntled reader who was unsubscribing from my email list. “I enjoy your work,” she began. But she found my emails “overly familiar,” which I’m guessing is a critique of my decision to open them with a greeting of “Hi there!” and occasionally include pictures of Beyonce. Indeed, those aren’t choices that most business authors would make—which is exactly why I’m making them.

In the marketing and branding world, it’s standard-issue advice that “If you’re trying to appeal to everyone, you’ll appeal to no one.” But the harder- to-swallow corollary is that in appealing to some people a great deal, you’re going to alienate others. Clearly this woman wasn’t a fan of my approach, and that’s perfectly OK. It simply means she’s not my target audience, and her unsubscribing—which would be easy to take as a rebuke or rejection—can instead be taken as feedback that my goal of being a different kind of business thinker is working.

有一天我收到了一封来自读者的邮件。她满腹牢骚，正打算退订我的电子邮件。“我喜欢你的作品。”她这样写道。但她认为我的电子邮件“过于亲密了”。我想这大概是在批评我每封邮件都以“嘿，你们好！”来开头，并且时不时会附上碧昂斯的照片。事实上，这并非大部分商业作者所为——正因为如此，我才会选择这么做。

在市场营销和品牌推广的世界里，有这样一条标准建议：“如果你试图取悦所有人，你将无法取悦任何一个人。”然而，当你花费了很多精力去取悦一些人时，你势必会疏远另外一些人。这是难以下咽的必然苦果。很显然这位女士并不喜欢我的方式，这完全没有任何问题。这仅仅意味着她不是我的目标受众，而她的退订——或许很容易被视作一种指责或者排斥——恰恰说明我为成为一个与众不同的商业思想家的所作出的努力的确有效。

It’s easy to fixate on critiques; one friend I knew used to quote verbatim, at least every other week, a negative review of her work dating back more than a decade. But the opinion of one person, no matter how influential that person is, isn’t always reliable. You should be wary of such advice until you get confirmation (or not) from other people. It’s quite possible that their feedback isn’t about you at all; it could be the result of them having a bad day, or their own personal bias (you’re an abstract expressionist and they only like figurative painters), or the fact that you remind them of their mother-in-law. One person’s opinion isn’t a trend.

人们很容易执着于对自己的批评。我的一个朋友从前至少每隔一周便逐字逐句地引用一份十多年前对她工作的负面评价。但一个人的看法——无论这个人有多么大的影响力——并不总是可靠的。在你从其他人那里得到证实之前，你应当提防这样的建议。他们的意见很可能完全与你无关，可能只是因为他们今天过得不太愉快，或者只是出于他们的个人偏见（你是个抽象表现主义艺术家而他们却只喜欢具象派画家），抑或是因为你让他们想起了他们的丈母娘。一个人的观点并不代表一种大趋势。

Especially on the Internet, where people don’t have to look you in the eye when they render their verdict, it’s easy for people to be snarky or snide in their commentary. It isn’t that your facts are wrong, it’s that you’re stupid. It isn’t that they disagree with your strategy, it’s that you’re ugly. (One Twitter user recently sniped about my haircut.) Is it possible there’s a grain of solid critique inside their schoolyard rhetoric? Maybe. But—per the policy of only listening to feedback when it comes from more than one person—you can safely ignore the overt haters. If they have a point, you’ll hear it eventually from someone else, in a form that’s more professional, respectful, and less damaging to your psyche.

特别是在网络上，此时人们不必以审慎的目光看待你。他们很容易在评论时变得尖刻讽刺。在他们眼中，不是你说错了话，而是你脑子笨；不是他们不同意你的想法，而是你长得丑。（最近有位推特用户在讽刺我的发型。）在这种学生气的言辞中会有真正的批评意见吗？或许吧。但是你完全可以忽略这些明显带有敌意的人，因为正如上一条原则所言，只有当不止一人向你提出这样的意见时，你才应当虚心聆听。如果他们的话有道理，你终究会听到别人以另一种方式向你表达同样的观点，而这种方式可能更专业、更尊重人，对你的心智造成的伤害更小。

Here’s the most important reason why you should ask for feedback from people you trust. Everyone may have an opinion, but that doesn’t mean it’s useful. Just as, in the Internet era, it’s easy to drown in information overload if you don’t meter your intake, the same is true of feedback. The best way to sort the wheat from the chaff is to decide in advance who you respect, and only choose to listen to those people. If your friend who’s a speaking coach tells you how you can improve your stage presence, you may want to listen; a random audience member, not so much.

这就是你应当听从那些你所信任的人的意见的最重要的原因。或许每个人都有自己的想法，但这并不意味着这些想法是有用的。就像在网络时代，如果你不加克制，就会很容易陷入信息超载的境地。对于收集意见而言也是如此。取其精华的最佳方式就是先确定哪些人是你所尊敬的，然后只倾听这些人的看法。如果你的朋友是个演讲教练并且乐意指导你如何提升舞台形象，你或许愿意听听看；而如果是随便哪个观众想这么做，那还是算了吧。

Feedback is a tool that can help us learn and grow. But it’s become a bit of a religion in the corporate world to believe that it’s always a good thing. Feedback from the right people—who are informed, helpful, and have your best interests at heart—is invaluable. But when it comes to everyone else, the best thing we can do is learn to ignore them.

他人的意见是帮助我们学习和成长的工具。然而公司们现在都习惯于相信意见总是积极的。如果意见来自对的人——那些信见多识广、热心相助、并且永远将你的最佳利益放在心上的人，那么这些意见将是无价之宝。但如果这些意见来自他人，最好的做法是学会忽略它们。

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