This is one of the most important untaught skills available to each of us.

Three times in a row, a salesperson is rejected by one prospect after another.

A customer complains to a company that its website is not working with her browser.

An editor rejects the manuscript from a first-time novelist…

What to do?

How do we deal with the troll who enjoys creating uncertainty? Or the person carrying around a bagful of pain that she needs to share? How do we differentiate between constructive, useful insight and the other kind? How do we decide which feedback is actually a clue about how our core audience feels, and which is a distraction, a shortcut on the road to mediocre banality?

If you listen to none of the feedback, you will learn nothing. If you listen to all of it, nothing will happen.

Like all life skills, there's not a glib answer.

But we can definitely ask the questions. And get better at the art of listening (and dismissing).

The place to start is with two categories. The category of, "I actively seek this sort of feedback out and listen to it and act on it." And the category of, "I'm not interested in hearing that." There is no room for a third category.