If you’re doing something creative, something important or something new, you’re certain to be rejected along the way.
It’s a signal. It might be proof that you offered it to the wrong person, or that the right person saw something about your work that didn’t serve their needs. Without learning from this signal, we’re doomed to experience it again and again.
What do we know for sure?
It was rejected.
What else?
Nothing. The reasons listed in the rejection letter are almost certainly made up. Perhaps they’re insulating themselves from being re-sold (“you said you didn’t like the color, but we have other colors!”) or perhaps they’re protecting your feelings. It could be that they aren’t telling themselves the truth, or don’t want to be hassled for telling you the truth.
Few people explain their rejection with, “I’m afraid,” or “I wanted to do it but my boss won’t let me,” or “you have bad breath and I don’t like you.”
Being rejected hurts, and we’re likely to marinate in the pain. We imagine that the person who rejected us understands everything about what we offered, is a rational actor and cares as much as we do. While we’re at it, we personalize, amplify and multiply the rejection.
But all we really know is that this person, on this day, in this situation, hearing the story the way we told it, said no.
Years ago, I self-published a booklet for political activists. My timing was good, and I had a chance to sell the books from an organizer’s booth at a march on the very topic my book was about. It was a beautiful April day, and I stood on the side of route as the march went by. More than 400,000 passed my table, and I sold four books.
That’s 399,996 rejections. Maybe more.
Was it the price? Halfway through the march, I lowered it from $10 to $1, just to have a good story to blog a few decades later.
Sales did not increase. Perhaps it was the color of the jacket, the page count or the typo on page 32? None of those things.
What did I learn? That people at a march are at the march to march, not to shop.
Watch what people do, not what they say. And if you really want to learn something, change the situation and see what happens the next time.
Learning from rejection begins with understanding the lesson that’s being offered.
The uncanny valley is the place where an image that’s almost human creeps us out:
Sorry to share that.
Human beings evolved to have a distaste for things that are almost, but not quite, the usual thing. It takes a while for someone who wasn’t raised with cilantro to like it–the same with hot sauce. When Edison first showed people his moving pictures, people screamed. Our brain is warning us that categories are getting surprising and we should be on alert.
As AI spreads through the culture, we’re seeing plenty of mediocre AI-style writing. And then humans subconsciously start writing in that style because they see it so often. And finally, a grudging acceptance that it sounds okay. We’ve been through this a hundred times before.
No one asks to get creeped out. It’s usually done to us, not for us. But, over time, the creep fades.
Like most warnings, we ought to keep two things in mind:
The creepiness fades.
But at the same time, there’s a creeping change as trusted and expected elements of our culture fade away.
The ebook of The Knot is on sale today for less than $5 in the US.
Thanks for checking it out.
Also, here’s a preview of the three-book holiday bundle. It’s limited to the first 170 folks.
When an organization is struggling, it’s tempting for the boss to blame the team.
I’m not sure the evidence supports this. After all, other similar organizations are thriving–drawing from precisely the same labor pool.
Sure, it’s easier to be a coach if Michael Jordan is on your team, but it turns out that creating the conditions for commitment, learning and resilience are the boss’s job, not the people you hired to follow along.
Design of any kind requires empathy. If you’re making it for yourself, it’s a hobby. Everything else is for someone else.
Great designers know who it’s for. And the design is for them, not for the designer.
Annie Jean-Baptiste teaches us about restrictive design. This is what happens when the designer fails to identify and recognize who the work is for, and then leaves people out. “Exclusion is a business decision, even when you did not mean to make it.”
Not everything needs to be designed for everyone. But all well-designed experiences and products are designed for someone.
Name your people, invite them in and give them what they need.
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