The Academic Imperfectionist

Self-acceptance is overrated, right? I mean, sure, you might feel more at peace if you could manage to accept yourself - but there's so much wrong with you, and accepting yourself would involve giving up on trying to fix all that and accepting that you're never going to be any more assertive, successful, skilled, and confident than you are now. Self-acceptance is just a fancy term for quitting. Right??Oh dear. What if I were to tell you that if you don't already have self-acceptance, you're not going to get it through self-improvement? And that not only can self-acceptance and self-improvement happily coexist, but self-improvement is much easier when it comes from a place of self-acceptance? Get the kettle on and the earbuds in, and let your Imperfectionist friend talk some sense into you.

It would be great if we never felt insecure or anxious or scared when we had to do things like ask for money or refuse a request or even just get on with writing what we're supposed to be writing. But this sort of discomfort can be really hard to shift, no matter how much we work on our confidence and how many affirmations we scribble on post-it notes and stick to our monitor. It can be tempting, then, to think that we need to put off doing the hard things until we've got a few more years of therapy under our belts. But - and hear me out here - what if we just did them, even though they're horrible? What if you could ignore your discomfort and just get on with life? If you're game, friend, your Imperfectionist cheerleader has some words of advice to help you get started.Here's an (admittedly quite old) article summarising research on affective forecasting and the like: We don't know our own strengthReference:Wilson, T. D. and Gilbert, D. T. 2005: 'Affective forecasting: knowing what to want', Current Directions in Psychological Science 14/3: 131-134.

You're trying to hold down your job/studies while raising your child/pet/houseplants and maybe also doing a couple of part-time jobs but also volunteering for a handful of committees/projects/whatever. There aren't enough hours in the day to do all this well, or even adequately. How do you avoid feeling like a complete failure? Well, friends, obviously you need to drop the committee and stuff. And then you need to rethink what the problem is here (spoiler: it's not you) and what really matters (spoiler: it's not the stuff you're worrying about).Rachel Aviv's profile of Martha Nussbaum in The New Yorker is here.References:Brooks, D. 2016: The Road to Character (Penguin). Harmon, J. L. (ed.) 2007: Take My Advice (Simon & Schuster).Palmer, P. J. 2009: A Hidden Wholeness (Jossey-Bass).

It's bad enough that you're nowhere near as productive as you ought to be (according to you) - but, to make things worse, you can't ever get any help with this problem, because that would involve fessing up to the shameful truth that you are a terrible human being who doesn't work as hard as they ought to work and therefore deserves to be shunned from civilised society forever. Is there any way out of this hellish situation without revealing your villainous nature? Don't worry, friend. You're in safe, non-judgmental hands. The Academic Imperfectionist is here to help you understand and overcome that shame you're dealing with.

Your weakness of will is one of your inner critic's favourite topics. She can go on for days about how weak-willed you are. But, did you know that, over the centuries, philosophers have had a tough time making any coherent sense of the idea of weakness of will - and that, according to some philosophical heavy-hitters like Socrates and R. M. Hare, there is no such thing? You don't hit the snooze button or use your writing time to watch cat videos because you're weak, on this view. You do it because your values are glitching. And framing it this way opens the door to finding solutions that don't involve piling shame and guilt on yourself. 

That positive change you need to make, which you're not making. It's because of your perfectionist anxieties, right? It's because of the intimidating hugeness of the task, because of your lack of confidence in your abilities to deal with problems along the way, because of your daddy issues and your need to maintain a work-life balance and your conscientious reluctance to commit to something you might not see through. Sorry, pal, but that's all bollocks. Your amazing brain, which is the very reason you shine like the brilliant star you are, is tying you up in overthinking knots here. Stop wringing your hands and STFU for a second. Just make a start, and see (a lot of) your problems melt away.

Sometimes, there is such a massive gap between how things are now and how we'd like them to be that there's no point even trying to make changes because any change we make would be so insignificant in the grand scheme of things that it's too depressing even to think about. Better just to ignore the problem, because who has the energy for that shit, right? But also: how the hell are you going to get anywhere with this attitude?Glad you asked, because there is a way. You don't have to give up on your big goals, and your efforts to reach them aren't doomed to insignificance either. You just need to change the way you think about them. It's painless, I promise.

We all know to expect less of people who are dealing with something difficult like bereavement or job loss or a divorce. But what about when something great happens to us? What if we can't focus because we've just landed the job of our dreams and we're ecstatic about it? Truth bomb, friends: you might not feel entitled to take it easy when everything is going well, but happiness can make it just as hard to focus as misery.The 'Optimize your workspace' episode of the Huberman Lab podcast mentioned in this episode is here.

Are you supportive and compassionate and generally nice to yourself on those days when you've disappointed yourself? So many of us aren't. We have no idea whether it's even possible. We tell ourselves that either we're flawlessly successful or we're embarrassing failures, and since none of us is flawlessly successful, we all spend far too much time beating ourselves up for being embarrassing failures, which is an incredible waste because there's actually a lot of space between success and failure, and it's where we all hang out pretty much all the time. What if you could inhabit this space comfortably, and work towards your goals imperfectly and fearlessly? Wouldn't you get more out of yourself if you could do that instead of that 'I'm a failure' thing you usually do? Snuggle up and listen, and your imperfect friend here will tell you how.

You've had 50 episodes of this podcast so far (well, 51 including this one). That's 50 bits of advice for you to absorb, think about, and implement to make yourself feel better about stuff. We've looked at what to do about procrastination, how to feel less anxious about productivity, how to deal with impostor syndrome, FOMO, your inner critic, goalpost-moving, and more. Does all this advice leave you wondering, 'Where do I even start?!'? Do you beat yourself up about not managing to implement it all, and how to fit implementing it around all those other wholesome things you're supposed to be doing like exercising and getting enough sleep? Don't worry, friend - you're 100% off the hook. Here's the low-down on how to embrace imperfectionism about looking after yourself.Reference:Duhigg, C. 2012: The Power of Habit (Random House).