Amazon guru Jeff Bezos knows efficiency — and what dangerous things can get in its way. Recently he gave some advice about how people should best handle criticism, one of the great distractions and crushers of progress. Addressing an eager crowd at Vox Media’s Code Conference, Bezos was talking mainly about people in the public eye, but his sage advice applies to everybody — especially since we all have some degree of a public profile these days, thanks to social media.
“The best defense,” Bezos said, “to speech that you don’t like about yourself as a public figure is to develop a thick skin. Because you can’t stop criticism. You are going to get it. If you’re doing anything interesting in the world, you are going to have critics. You can’t stop it. Move forward. It’s not worth losing any sleep over.”
