Constructive criticism has value, but most criticism doesn't as it is either not constructive or betrays a lack of understanding as to what you have written/said. Pareto Principle comes into play here, which is why it is best to ignore most of it, otherwise you bog yourself down addressing it and lose focus.
And I would add that the existence of constructive criticism is frequently used to rationalize the non-constructive/self-indulgent kind. "Oh, I'm just trying to help you because I'm so nice." The reason that doesn't fly is that the people who say it are generally criticizing strangers. And that's not plausible because you have to know someone very well to effectively criticize them. It takes a lot of work to understand a person or a thing well enough to criticize it constructively. Most people don't put in that work.
I am less depressed now than I used to be, due to medication, therapy, better habits, having a more active social life, lucking out with a nicer boss in my new job, and earning more money. That said, I can still model depressed-me's mental reactions to things pretty well. So it's interesting to see the discrepancy between depressed-me and current-me in how they react to your two things. Depressed-me thinks they're self-evident and anyone who thinks otherwise is either kidding themselves or naive. Current-me thinks thing one is empirically repeatedly falsified by past experiences (although the ratio of falsification to overall experience count is more like <10% than >50%) and thing two just isn't me (current-me feels bad calling others fools unless it feels justified eg in retaliation to them calling me a fool, and feels rewarded by calling others good as long as it refers to concrete examples other praisers overlook). Depressed-me and current-me disagree on pretty much everything from emotional valence to predictions to recommended actions, but they do agree on your last paragraph's "safe outlook" moderated take.
Constructive criticism has value, but most criticism doesn't as it is either not constructive or betrays a lack of understanding as to what you have written/said. Pareto Principle comes into play here, which is why it is best to ignore most of it, otherwise you bog yourself down addressing it and lose focus.
Precisely!
And I would add that the existence of constructive criticism is frequently used to rationalize the non-constructive/self-indulgent kind. "Oh, I'm just trying to help you because I'm so nice." The reason that doesn't fly is that the people who say it are generally criticizing strangers. And that's not plausible because you have to know someone very well to effectively criticize them. It takes a lot of work to understand a person or a thing well enough to criticize it constructively. Most people don't put in that work.
Most people don't put in the work, as you say. Experience has taught me to just plow ahead and damn the critics.
I am less depressed now than I used to be, due to medication, therapy, better habits, having a more active social life, lucking out with a nicer boss in my new job, and earning more money. That said, I can still model depressed-me's mental reactions to things pretty well. So it's interesting to see the discrepancy between depressed-me and current-me in how they react to your two things. Depressed-me thinks they're self-evident and anyone who thinks otherwise is either kidding themselves or naive. Current-me thinks thing one is empirically repeatedly falsified by past experiences (although the ratio of falsification to overall experience count is more like <10% than >50%) and thing two just isn't me (current-me feels bad calling others fools unless it feels justified eg in retaliation to them calling me a fool, and feels rewarded by calling others good as long as it refers to concrete examples other praisers overlook). Depressed-me and current-me disagree on pretty much everything from emotional valence to predictions to recommended actions, but they do agree on your last paragraph's "safe outlook" moderated take.