Episode Transcript
The Processing Feedback Sleep card states: Whether pressure to respond comes from yourself or others, it can make feedback harder to process. A night of sleep may give you new ways to think about it. And the card invites you to practice the twenty-four-hour rule, which you can do by making a rule for yourself.
Something like, “I will not commit to any next steps for twenty-four hours.” Let your brain work on the problem while you rest. Okay, so let’s unpack this a bit. So if someone gives you feedback about fixing a comma, you don’t need much time to process it. You fix the comma and move on. But challenging feedback is different.
Maybe it was unexpected. Maybe it highlighted a weakness you already knew you had and were a bit sensitive about. Maybe, and this can be the hardest one, it revealed something that you saw as a strength was actually working against you. Maybe you even received feedback that was asking you to do something that goes against your values.
Feedback like that can stir up complex, deep emotional states, and trying to respond from inside those intense states can mean we don’t bring our best selves to the situation. Researchers have a term for the exact moment feedback is delivered, the feedback intervention, and this card is about getting some space from that moment.
A literal night of sleep may help. Your brain genuinely does continue working on problems while you rest. But the card is pointing at something broader than sleep alone. It’s about space, which could be a walk, a workout, a bath, even playing video games. Anything that allows you to separate a bit from the feedback, because that separation matters.
When you bring the feedback to mind later, you will likely be able to see it from different angles, approach it from a more grounded emotional state. My own passion for this part of the feedback process comes from personal experience. Years ago, I was a high performer at a Fortune one hundred company.
I had recently won a department award and then boom, I was hit with feedback from my manager that I could not make sense of. It was the kind of feedback that went against my values and actually went against, the qualities that I think made me a great team leader capable of winning that award in the first place.
So I went looking for resources or research on how to process it, and basically nothing existed. Almost all of the feedback guidance out there spoke to the feedback intervention, that moment of receiving it. And the guidance was say thank you, ensure you understand what the giver is asking, build a plan, act on it.
None of it addressed what I actually needed, which was how to determine whether the feedback made sense for my career, even my sense of self. What I wanted to know was how to decide if I should use it at all, and then how to approach the person who gave it to me about what they said, et cetera. The sleep card is one step toward getting the space that kind of processing requires.
So that’s card zero two of the processing feedback suit. The next time non-urgent but challenging feedback comes your way, try the twenty-four-hour rule. No commitments, no next steps, just space.
P.S. A resource worth sharing: The web’s most comprehensive Feedback Guide
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