The Academic Imperfectionist

According to the 19th century philosopher Henry Sidgwick, ‘The impulse towards pleasure can be self-defeating. We fail to attain pleasures if we deliberately seek them’. Happiness isn't the only good thing that will elude you if you set out to achieve it. Relaxation, avoiding stress, being more productive - all these things slide further away from you the harder you try to reach them. What's going on? The problem, friends, is that it matters how you formulate your goals. Some goals are self-defeating because they interfere with what the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has called 'flow'. They require you to both be in flow and not be in flow. Ugh, right? That doesn't mean that you can't be happy, or relaxed, or productive. But it does mean that you don't have to try so hard. Settle down with the Academic Imperfectionist to find out how.

Rejection stings - literally (kind of). But you can make it sting a bit less. Part of what makes it so hard is that we're so keen on kicking ourselves when we're down. We don't even realise we're doing it, let alone how to stop. Your imperfect friend is here to sort that shit out.You're going to learn:What makes rejection so hardHow we make it even harder for ourselvesWhy toddlers are your new rejection-resistant role modelsA simple mental hack to help stop your inner critic going into overdrive when rejection strikesReferences:Eisenberger NI, Lieberman MD, Williams KD. Does rejection hurt? An FMRI study of social exclusion. Science. 2003 Oct 10;302(5643):290-2. doi: 10.1126/science.1089134. PMID: 14551436.Guy Winch's TED talk on emotional first aid: https://youtu.be/F2hc2FLOdhI

Choosing a career is a serious business, right? It's something we do only after a lot of sombre reflection, when we're absolutely certain that we've found the thing we want to do forever. It's certainly not a place for fun, experimentation, curiosity, and frivolity.Except ... no. Deciding that you shouldn't pursue a career unless you're really serious about it and want to do it forever is like deciding that you shouldn't date someone unless you want to marry them. Doing things that way is no fun, and it's bad for you. Your imperfect friend wants you to lighten up.For the Core Values exercise mentioned in this episode, go here.  And for the MoSCoW analysis template, go here. 

Do you ever have thoughts like, 'It's ok to take breaks, but I don't believe it's ok to take breaks'? Or, 'Nobody will think less of me if my writing isn't great, but I don't believe nobody will think less of me if my writing isn't great'? If so, what on earth can you do about it? There's no point telling yourself that what you believe isn't true - you already know that. If your mental life is this sort of hot mess, then maybe there's no hope for you. You may as well give it up, go to bed, and wait for the next series of Tiger King to drop.Except, not so fast. Dig down a bit and you'll find that your limiting beliefs about yourself are not as crazy as they seem. They're probably not even beliefs at all. They're feelings, and there's plenty you can do about them. Let The Academic Imperfectionist point you in the right direction, with a little help from those renowned self-help gurus, G. E. Moore, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and David Hume.

Is the new year a good time to make some positive changes in your life? Or are new year resolutions a bit ... you know, cliched? And if you do decide to make some resolutions, how do you choose them? Your imperfect friend is here to hold your hand and guide you through it all. We're going to look at why, psychologically, new year is a pretty good time to make some changes, and why cynicism about new year resolutions is understandable, but overblown. We're also going to look at how you can dig down into any resolutions you've been toying with and get to the heart of what you really care about, so that you can focus your new year efforts in the right place. Find the '5 whys' exercise here. Reference:Hengchen Dai, Katherine L. Milkman, Jason Riis. 2014: 'The Fresh Start Effect: Temporal Landmarks Motivate Aspirational Behavior', Management Science 60/10:2563-2582.

Not an obvious comparison, I'll admit. But, trust me, you're way better at knowing how to draw boundaries around your sleep (even if you don't always put that into practice) than you are at knowing how to draw boundaries around your writing. Do you schedule meetings in the middle of the night, knowing that you'll need to interrupt your sleep to attend them? Thought not. But I bet you're guilty of scheduling meetings during time that you'd planned to spend writing. You probably even blame yourself when you find it impossible to get back to writing afterwards. It needs to stop. Now.Dr Rhonda Patrick's interview with Dr Matthew Walker on her Found My Fitness podcast is here.Here are the books and articles mentioned in the episode:Newport, C. 2016: Deep Work (London: Piatkus)Schulte, B. 2019: 'A woman's greatest enemy? A lack of time to herself', The Guardian, 21st July.Sword, H. 2017: Air & Light & Time & Space (Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press) Walker, M. 2018: Why We Sleep (London: Penguin) 

We talk about success and failure all the time. You're probably in the habit of telling yourself that you'll never succeed, or that other people are more successful than you are. But do you actually know what you mean when you say things like this? Unless you have a clear conception of who you are and what you care about, you have no idea. Join The Academic Imperfectionist to cut through the bullshit stories we tell ourselves about success and failure, and find out how to write your own rules. You can find the Wheel of Life and the Core Values exercises on the Resources page of The Academic Imperfectionist website.There's a free, online version of William James's Principles of Psychology here.Galen Strawson's Aeon article about life as a narrative (or not) is here.

You've read the inspirational quotes, you've got uplifting affirmations written on post-it notes and stuck to your fridge, you're fully on board with personal growth and empowerment - so why do you still have the inner critic buzzing away inside your head? It must mean you've failed, right? Well, no, honey. You're completely normal. You've got the inner critic all wrong, that's all. The bad news is that you're stuck with her. The good news is that she's not in charge of what you think and do - you are.

All that beating yourself up about how lazy you are, and about how you're not achieving the things you need to achieve as fast as you need to achieve them - it's just tough love, right? It's what keeps you going and striving to succeed. Well, actually ... lol no, imperfectionists. Your well-meaning self-criticism and self-shaming are serving no purpose whatsoever. Don't argue. It's science.Your imperfect friend is back to show you why beating yourself up not only feels bad - it's also holding you back. You can make yourself more productive and efficient by showing yourself some love. Get that kettle on and have a listen for some science-backed ways to feel good and get stuff done.For the Goal Contract mentioned in this episode, click here.

Do you struggle to cope with uncertainty - about the effects of the pandemic, about your career, about your income, your relationship, and God knows what else? The Academic Imperfectionist is here to break it all down for you. You're going to learn:That it's completely normal to feel stressed and anxious in the face of uncertainty;That the reason uncertainty is stressful is due not only to the possibility of some nasty outcome that you fear, but also to how anticipating it makes you feel;That coping effectively with uncertainty requires two separate strategies: one to try to avert the nasty outcome that you fear, and another to address the stress that anticipating that outcome causes you;How to start implementing both those strategies right now.Here are the publications mentioned in the episode:Anderson, E. C., Carleton, R. N., Diefenbach, M., and Han, P. K. J. 2019: ‘The relationship between uncertainty and affect’, Frontiers in Psychology 10.Loewenstein, G. 1987: ‘Anticipation and the valuation of delayed consumption’, The Economic Journal 97/387: 666–84.Lovallo, D. and Kahneman, D. 2000: ‘Living with uncertainty: attractiveness and resolution timing’, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 13/2: 179–90. And here's Harvard Law School's guide to BATNAs.Click here to support the show via Patreon!