“I wrote 86 episodes of ‘The West Wing,’ and every single time I finished one, I’d be happy for five minutes before it just meant that I haven’t started the next one yet, and I never thought I would be able to write the next one. Ever.”

I’m an imposter-perfectionist

“How to Write a Thesis,” then, isn’t just about fulfilling a degree requirement. It’s also about engaging difference and attempting a project that is seemingly impossible, humbly reckoning with “the knowledge that anyone can teach us something.” It models a kind of self-actualization, a belief in the integrity of one’s own voice.

What is more, these advances have notnarrowed the gap between what is known and what can be seen to lie beyond thescope of present understanding and technique; rather, each advance has madeit clear that these intellectual horizons are far more remote than was heretoforeimagined.

Harold Jarche looked at his most visited blog postings over the years, and concludes his blog conforms to Sturgeon’s Revelation that 90% of everything is crap. I recognise much of what Harold writes. I suspect this is also what feeds impostor syndrome. You see the very mixed bag of results from your own efforts, and how most of it is ‘crap’. The few ‘hits’ for which you get positive feedback are then either ‘luck’ or should be normal, not sparse. Others of course forget most if not all of your less stellar products and remember mostly the ones that stood out. Only you are in a position to compare what others respond to with your internal perspective.

These study guides, which neglect everything before a writingassignment is given, are a little bit like financial advisors who discusshow 65-year-olds can save for retirement. At this point you would bebetter off curbing your enthusiasm (which is exactly what one of themost often sold study guides in Germany recommends: first, loweryour expectations on quality and insight).

Good students, on the other hand, constantly raise the bar forthemselves as they focus on what they haven’t learned andmastered yet. This is why high achievers who have had a taste ofthe vast amount of knowledge out there are likely to suffer from whatpsychologists call imposter syndrome, the feeling that you are notreally up to the job, even though, of all people, they are (Clance andImes 1978; Brems et al. 1994).

Mike: That was going on high school. I think it was my freshman year, because like I said man, it's just all these things that happen to you, there's just only so much you could take to where you're like, "You know what? Eff it." You're just done with everybody and you're just like, "You know what? If life paid me back like this, then why should I care?" You know what I mean? And it makes me feel like inferior at times.Mike: So yeah, I feel like it was around my freshman year, everything started going downhill, because I used to be in events, classes, and all my teachers loved me. I would have conversations like this with my teachers and they'd be amazed sometimes like, "Wow, this kid has so much insight. So much to talk about." And they would always encourage me, but the thing about it is I wouldn't feel like that.

I have received a lot of positive feedback for noting my epistemic status and effort at the top of my posts. This is hilarious, because I originally started using these as a hack in order to publish half-baked ideas that I'd otherwise not feel comfortable sharing.

The solution to imposter syndrome is to see that you are one. When I first wrote about how useful it is to remember that everyone is totally just winging it, all the time, we hadn’t yet entered the current era of leaderly incompetence (Brexit, Trump, coronavirus). Now, it’s harder to ignore. But the lesson to be drawn isn’t that we’re doomed to chaos. It’s that you – unconfident, self-conscious, all-too-aware-of-your-flaws – potentially have as much to contribute to your field, or the world, as anyone else.

When we trivialize learning something new for other people, it sends a message. “This is easy. You should know how to do this. Why don’t you?” It’s demoralizing. If you see someone else struggling, let them know it will be okay and that you’ve been there too. It’s reassuring, as a beginner, to hear that the thing that feels so impossible will one day feel easy.

For me, the feeling went away after I realized, like the Director of Photography, that no one else knew what to do either. I also started to listen to conference talks on my way into work as a way of improving and read a few books in my spare time. I talked to my friends about how I felt and asked for advice.

“But what if I don’t know anything and really am an impostor?”

I think we find it uncomfortable to talk about feeling inadequate. It feels like it’s a problem that’s unique to us or to our situation. The general idea is well-documented and has been discussed before by countless others.