Be concrete and specific with your impostor syndrome
I sometimes have pretty bad impostor syndrome, in part because I’m often not as productive as I’d like to be.
In these situations, I often find it helpful to step back and think carefully about what, precisely, I think other people are doing successfully that I’m not.
Surprisingly often, the result is a relatively constrained list of concrete things I can work on – e.g. looking for a review article to fill a critical knowledge gap, or brainstorming for a few minutes on systems to prevent a certain failure mode. They’re certainly not perfect solutions – I doubt I’ll get from me to Jeff Bezos this way – but it’s generally a hell of a lot more useful than generalist moping.
Ideally we could tell people “don’t have impostor syndrome” and they’d stop, but I doubt that will be very effective. “Be as specific and concrete as possible about what makes you feel like an impostor” might be more tractable, while still getting you a pretty decent benefit.
Be concrete and specific with your impostor syndrome
I sometimes have pretty bad impostor syndrome, in part because I’m often not as productive as I’d like to be.
In these situations, I often find it helpful to step back and think carefully about what, precisely, I think other people are doing successfully that I’m not.
Surprisingly often, the result is a relatively constrained list of concrete things I can work on – e.g. looking for a review article to fill a critical knowledge gap, or brainstorming for a few minutes on systems to prevent a certain failure mode. They’re certainly not perfect solutions – I doubt I’ll get from me to Jeff Bezos this way – but it’s generally a hell of a lot more useful than generalist moping.
Ideally we could tell people “don’t have impostor syndrome” and they’d stop, but I doubt that will be very effective. “Be as specific and concrete as possible about what makes you feel like an impostor” might be more tractable, while still getting you a pretty decent benefit.