Foo Camp 2014 is an unconference hosted by O’Reilly Media where sessions such as “Impostor Syndrome” are suggested and scheduled by the attendees themselves.
- Impostor syndrome is dragging us down.
- It can also drag others down when our work impacts other people.
- An expert is someone that can optimize that she knows quite a bit, but not someone who knows everything.
- Be at least one step ahead (esp. if you have kids); you don’t have to know everything.
- Symptoms of imposter syndrome:
- You are the only one in the group that doesn’t know what’s going on.
- And you will be found out is one of your worst fears.
- Struggle with trying to find out what their strengths are.
- Give more weight to negative comments, people than more weight, control than positive ones
- If you are bad ass, you cannot experience imposter syndrome.
- See Dunning-Krueger effect. A.k.a., Kanye West syndrome.
- When we talk to others to find out the value of our work, we are dis-empowering ourselves.
- Questions of worth should be self-realized, understood internally:
- “What is good enough?”
- “What is my best work?”
- Questions of worth should be self-realized, understood internally:
- Impostor critic:
- Inner critic reinforces impostor syndrome.
- You have a inner critic, if you are hearing youeslf say a lot of “I should”.
- Give your inner critic a name, like “F@!& ‑o”.
- Change the voice of your inner critic or negative comments to that of a cartoon character.
- Perfectionism is stifling the release of code, projects.
- Perfectionists procrastinate.
- Often times there’s a feeling of not knowing what to do or how to do it
- Then there is stuff you don’t want to do–not realizing how it’s helpful.
- To cope with perfectionism:
- Break projects into smaller steps
- Outsource to freelancers, when possible
- Ways to change a mental view of perfectionism:
- Embrace mantras:
- “Done is beautiful.”
- “Done is enough.”
- “Real artists ship.”
- Deliberately make something bad.
- Make bad sentence; make series of bad sentences; make bad paragraphs.
- Embrace mantras:
- Satisifcing = Satisfying, suffice
- Realize there’s a difference between “excellence” and “perfectionist”.
- A satisfactory solution is better or chosen over an optimal choice.
- 80% completion of a project is better than 100%.
- Realize that going from 81–100% can take a lifetime.
- The last 3% is Olympic level of perfectionism
- In the digital age, adding corrections or updates to software is easier than creating fixing.
- Iterating is embraced on web projects often better to revise/update than redesign.
- It’s hard to embrace achieving or accomplishing for people with impostor syndrome.
- When something amazing happens to you because of your own effort, embrace it.
- Understand that you worked hard for this.
- Realize that “This is mine because it’s supposed to be mine” and say, “thank you.”
- Recommended reading:
- Getting Things Done by Paul Allen
- “Breaking the Perfectionism-Procrastination Infinite Loop” at Web Standards Sherpa
- “Banishing the Inner Critic” at A List Apart