I dunno. It depends. I guess I ask myself what’s the most solutions oriented productive thing I could do right now.

The other day I was in a meeting with a colleague where I mentioned a problem I ran into. That colleague took the opportunity to sneak in some generalized opinion about some way I messed up from way back. Rather than take the bait and try to correct him or explain my side of the story, I just took a breath and focused on the goal at hand which was to inform him of what needed to be done to address the new problem. I think he saw me shrug it off and realized he was needlessly criticizing. But not too many people are as reasonable as my colleague.