The Academic Imperfectionist

Do you often have thoughts like, 'I just need to finish X, then I can relax'? Except that when you finish X, you still can't relax, because along comes another obligation - and before you know it, you're face-to-face with burnout. If that's you, you're not alone, and you're not incompetent. You're simply approaching your work in a way that has served you well ever since you were a kid: finish your homework now, play later. That approach is not serving you any more, but it's hard to move on because it's part of your identity. Who even are you, if not the kid who gets their homework done?! There's a way through this muddle, my friend. Join The Academic Imperfectionist for a mindset reset.

We all have that one person, don't we, whose success makes us painfully aware of our own shortcomings? A person who serves as a reminder of all the great things we could have been, but aren't. Hearing news of their latest achievement is liable to ruin our entire day, as we rush headlong into reflecting on how flawed and disappointing we are. But what if it's not that simple? What if the reason that person is doing so well is not because they're better than you, but because the two of you have different values, and therefore different priorities? In this episode, I'm going to reframe your depressing comparisons and show you how you can use them to tune in to what you care most about. Turn that frown upside down, my friend, and settle in for some uplifting truth bombs.
You can find my Core Values exercise here, and the Wheel of Life here.

Yeah, okay, clickbaity title, but I really do want to share with you a helpful way of reframing perfectionism that I've been thinking about recently. Perfectionism happens when our lack of confidence in our ability to succeed meets our lack of knowledge about what success requires. Overcoming it requires filling in the gaps in our knowledge and finding constructive ways to respond to our lack of confidence. How do we do this? Well, by thinking about what we do when we're hungry, and also by thinking about getting wedged in an unground tunnel. Hear me out.

Do you ever worry that you're not serious enough for academia? That you're constantly playing whack-a-mole with hiding your many frivolous and unimpressive traits as you try to convince everyone that you deserve your place at the table? That you're a big old fake because you need to curate yourself so much in order to seem like you belong? If so, you're not alone - and it's not because you're flawed. It's because you're yet to uncover academia's dirty little secret: that it's just a job. If you can get your head around that, life will be much less stressful.
References
Goffman, Erving. 1956: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (University of Edinburgh Social Sciences Research Centre).
Guignon, Charles. 2004: On Being Authentic (London: Routledge). (Bernard Williams quotation on page viii.)
Hawley, Katherine. 2019: 'What is impostor syndrome?', Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 93/1: 203–226.
Kelsky, Karen. 2021: 'Academia is a cult', TEDx Talks.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1770: The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Lester Crocker (ed.) (New York: Pocket Books, 1957).
Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1943: Being and Nothingness (New York: Washington Square Press, 1992).

You know how, when teaching finishes for the summer, you feel all-powerful and end up vastly over-estimating how much you'll be able to get done before the new academic year? And, have you ever noticed that the opposite happens once term starts up again: you're overwhelmed, you panic because you don't think you're going to manage to do everything, but then you surprise yourself and it's all fine in the end? Yeah, well, there's a reason for that. Join your imperfectionist pal for a speculative little dive into the psychology of perception, and some ideas about how you can smooth out the bumps and make nice, sensible plans all year round.
References
Balcetis E, Dunning D. Cognitive dissonance and the perception of natural environments. Psychol Sci. 2007 Oct;18(10):917-21. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.02000.x. PMID: 17894610.
Balcetis E, Dunning D. Wishful seeing: more desired objects are seen as closer. Psychol Sci. 2010 Jan;21(1):147-52. doi: 10.1177/0956797609356283. Epub 2009 Dec 17. PMID: 20424036.
Proffitt DR, Bhalla M, Gossweiler R, Midgett J. Perceiving geographical slant. Psychon Bull Rev. 1995 Dec;2(4):409-28. doi: 10.3758/BF03210980. PMID: 24203782.
Proffitt DR, Stefanucci J, Banton T, Epstein W. The role of effort in perceiving distance. Psychol Sci. 2003 Mar;14(2):106-12. doi: 10.1111/1467-9280.t01-1-01427. PMID: 12661670.
Schnall S, Zadra JR, Proffitt DR. Direct evidence for the economy of action: glucose and the perception of geographical slant. Perception. 2010;39(4):464-82. doi: 10.1068/p6445. PMID: 20514996; PMCID: PMC3298360.