Kitchen Feedback

I was thoroughly schooled at work recently.

To be fair, that’s not exactly a rare occurrence. Most days, there’s a voice in the back of my head questioning whether I’m actually any good at what I do. Working alongside some of the brightest minds in Singapore has many benefits, but it also comes with a rather unforgiving side effect: expectations. Lots of them. The kind that make you scrutinise every sentence, every assumption, and every piece of advice before it leaves your desk.

Unsurprisingly, my latest draft advice to a client was comprehensively dismantled. Mercifully, the structure survived. Everything else was subjected to the sort of scrutiny that reminds you exactly why certain people are regarded as experts in their field.

Oddly enough, that’s also why I stay.

There is something invaluable about learning from people who genuinely sit at the top of their profession. If I’m going to be told I’m wrong, I’d rather be told by someone who knows exactly why.

That said, I’m still human.

No amount of professional ambition prevents the occasional bout of feeling deflated, defeated, humbled, or completely broken after receiving feedback. Some days, I can take criticism in stride. Other days, it feels like I’ve just been hit by a pickleball drive that I never saw coming.

I’m also remarkably good at gaslighting myself professionally.

During one discussion, I had convinced myself that a particular issue was so obvious that perhaps the client could simply work it out on their own. The Senior Partner looked at me and asked whether I genuinely thought that was possible.

Before I could answer, he answered the question himself.

“No.”

He then reminded me that clients engage us for a reason. They are paying for years of accumulated knowledge, experience, and familiarity with highly specialised documents and financial products. What seems obvious to us is often only obvious because we’ve spent years immersed in the subject matter.

It was a timely reminder not to undervalue expertise, especially my own.

I suspect that was his way of encouraging me while also acknowledging the solution I had proposed to resolve the issue quickly. Partners rarely hand out gold stars, so you learn to recognise encouragement when it appears in its natural habitat.

The draft may have been torn apart, but I walked away with something more useful than a perfectly marked-up document: perspective.

And hopefully, a slightly quieter inner critic.

On days like these, when work is difficult and life outside the office is not exactly cooperating either, I inevitably return to music I am familar with – the type of music that shields me like a blanket does from the cold.

Regular readers will know that music has always been more than background noise for me. It has been a companion through breakups, injuries, career setbacks, personal victories, long MRT rides, flights and countless pickleball sessions. There is a reason Kitchen Feedback exists at the intersection of paddles and playlists.

I’m not particularly comfortable sharing something this personal. In fact, a large part of me would rather keep it private. But then I asked myself: what’s the point of writing if I don’t occasionally share my most sincere and unfiltered thoughts?

So here it is.

A playlist of my All-Time top songs, my earworms, as published by Spotify, based on the number of times a track is spun. The songs that have stayed with me through different chapters of life. The songs I return to when I need perspective, comfort, motivation, or simply a reminder that someone else has probably felt the same way before.

Some of them are tied to specific memories. Some remind me of people I’d rather forget. Others remind me of people I’ll never forget. A few have been with me for so long that I can no longer remember how they first entered my life.

What they all have in common is that they helped me get through something.

Hopefully, they might do the same for you.

If you’d like to chat about my song choices, compare playlists, or recommend a song that deserves a spot on mine, drop a comment below or send me a DM on Instagram.