#80: What are you so afraid of?
When you're procrastinating, reluctant to knuckle down and get on with your work, taking way too long to do what ought to be a straightforward task, do you respond with self-compassion and non-judgmental curiosity as you try to work out what the problem is? Thought not. Instead, you tell yourself that you're lazy and disorganised and shouldn't even have been allowed to graduate from primary school, don't you? There's a problem with that, though. You might think you're holding yourself to account and pushing yourself to aim high, but in fact you're standing in the way of your own progress. Here's what to do instead!
Check out the brand new What Am I Afraid Of? exercise.
Episode transcript:
Do you even know what it is that you’re afraid of?
You’re listening to The Academic Imperfectionist. I’m Dr Rebecca Roache. I’m a coach and a philosopher at the University of London, and week by week I’ll be drawing on philosophical analysis and coaching insights to help you dump perfectionism and flourish on your own terms.
Hello, my friends. Have you ever got yourself into a bit of a rut with your writing? Or found yourself putting off doing something you really need to do? Or felt frustrated with yourself because there’s a thing you need to do that ought to be pretty straightforward, and yet here you are dragging your feet over it and making a big song and dance about it? If you’ve answered no to any of these questions, then what the hell are you doing listening to this podcast? I’m just kidding - you’re very welcome here, even if I am a bit intimidated by your efficiency. For the rest of you, I’m guessing that your responses to the questions I just asked are more along the lines of, duh, yes, obviously, that’s basically my entire life, why are you even bothering to ask? This is something I’m really struggling with myself at the moment. I’ve been working on a new-ish book project, and I’m having big problems with one of the chapters. It ought to be a pretty straightforward one to write - basically, it’s a chapter where I lay some foundations and sketch out some topics and themes that I’ll be returning to later in the book - but after a promising start, I find myself stalling and reluctant to work on it. Apart from being really frustrating, it’s an interesting experience, because I’ve got this dual soundtrack playing in my head. On the one hand, I’m listening to the sorts of things I’d have been saying to myself a few years ago if I’d found myself in this situation. And on the other hand, there’s the things I say to myself now. It’s an interesting contrast, and it brings into focus some things that I often end up discussing with coaching clients. Because, often, the people I speak to are having trouble with doing the stuff they want to be doing, and they have no idea what the problem is or how to fix it. It’s all made worse by the fact that they think they do know what the problem is. They think their lack of progress is down to their own flaws: they’re too lazy, they’re too easily distracted, they’re too ill-disciplined, and all the rest of it. Their attempts to fix it boil down to a strategy of self-criticism, promising themselves that they’ll do better tomorrow, and trying to exert superhuman levels of willpower in an attempt to force their way through whatever the problem is. But, believe it or not, these not-getting-things-done type problems are not the result of flaws like laziness and lack of discipline. Thinking otherwise is really unhelpful, and stops you from moving forward, because fixating on what you see as your character flaws stops you seeing what is actually causing the problem, and addressing it.
So, what can you do? If you’re stalling, procrastinating, avoiding - how do you fix whatever’s wrong and move forward? Let me answer this by telling you about my own current writing-related problem, and about that dual soundtrack I’ve got playing. One of those soundtracks is what the old Rebecca would say. I’d be frustrated with my lack of progress, unable to comprehend why I seem incapable of just sitting there and getting on with it. I’d try to shame myself: look at all those colleagues of yours, Rebecca, and all those other academics who are just getting on with it and writing non stop from the moment they sit down at their desks until the end of the working day. What’s wrong with me? Why am I so lazy? And so on. And then at the end of the day, the only way I’d be able to live with myself would be to promise myself that tomorrow would be different, that then I’ll make up for wasting all of today, blah blah blah, and then exactly the same thing would happen the next day. In the days when I used to behave like that, I wasn’t learning anything from my experience. It didn’t occur to me for years that the problem wasn’t laziness, and nor was it any other horrible moral failing. But once the focus shifted away from blaming and shaming myself, I was able to see things a bit more clearly. I was able to identify the problem and work on it. My reluctance to do the thing I needed to do was no longer frustratingly mysterious - it became something that made sense. In the case of my current writing problem, as I said, I need to get on with writing a chapter that sets the scene for the rest of the book. Through a process of journaling, curiosity, and reflection - compassionate reflection, not ‘why am I such a terrible person’ type reflection - I think I’ve worked it out. I’m reluctant to move forward with this project at the moment because I’m not sure how to make it interesting and engaging. I want to avoid simply writing a boring list of topics and themes that I’m going to return to. And I also want to avoid adding too much detail too early. It needs to be interesting and pleasant to read. I’m not sure I’ve worked out how to do that yet. So, I’m holding back. I’m not being lazy. I just don’t yet know how to proceed yet.
Now, identifying the worries that underpinned my reluctance wasn’t a straightforward matter. It took time and effort to unearth those worries and articulate them. I wouldn’t have made any helpful insights at all if I were still in the habit of attacking myself. Those insights come from, instead, adopting a curious approach, asking ‘What could be the problem here?’ and puzzling over it. It reminds me a bit of those old - like, many decades old - shows where animals would try to help out humans without being able to speak. You know, shows like Lassie, The Littlest Hobo, Skippy, Flipper. My sister and I were into all those when we were little, although they were already super old even back then, and we used to think it was hilarious that the boys from Flipper called their dad ‘Sir’. There would be scenes where, say, Lassie would run up to the humans and bark meaningfully at them, and they’d say, ‘What’s wrong girl?’ and ‘I think she wants us to follow her!’ and so they’d follow Lassie and then they’d find, I don’t know, a dad stuck down a well. My point is that, in order for these shows to work, the human characters had to start from the premise that the animal wasn’t completely wasting their time or just being annoying. (Am I the first person ever to analyse the fundamental premise of Lassie? No, I bet someone working in continental philosophy has already done that, but they wouldn’t have used the word ‘premise’.) Anyway, Lassie would bark, or Flipper would make her … dolphin noise (which Wikipedia tells me was actually made by a kookaburra - who knew?) and the humans would respond in a spirit of ‘This animal is trying to communicate something that they are unable to articulate adequately - let me try to work out what the matter is’. It was through being curious, and through trusting that the animal had something worthwhile to say, that the humans would get to the bottom of whatever the problem was. And you need to do the same with yourself. When you find that you’re reluctant to do something, or you’re feeling like you’re not making the progress you think you should be making and it’s driving you mad, imagine Lassie is barking meaningfully at you, or Flipper is making - to quote Wikipedia - ‘different chatter-like tones, head nods and shakes, and other attention-seeking antics’. Your response needs to be: there’s something important being communicated here and I need to work out what it means. Could it be that there is something you’re afraid of - something bad that might materialise if you get on with doing whatever the thing is, like criticism or letting people down? Are you confused about what getting on with the thing actually involves - as I am, with that book chapter I’m trying to write? Are you ambivalent about whether you should be doing the thing in the first place, as was the case with a recent client of mine, who was pushing themself to start a new project while also worrying that they already had too much on their plate? If you need a bit of help and guidance with navigating your thoughts in this area, then guess what? I’ve created a spanking new exercise, just for you. It’s called ‘What am I afraid of?’ and you can find it on the Resources page of The Academic Imperfectionist website. I’ll link to it in the episode notes too. As with all The Academic Imperfectionist resources, clicking on the link just takes you to the relevant Resources area on the website where there’s a link to download a nice friendly PDF file of the exercise. There’s no mailing list to sign up to, you don’t get directed elsewhere, and there are no other fancy shenanigans going on.
Zooming out a bit here, I think a lot of us treat ourselves as if we’re simply productivity machines, or goal-attainment machines. Or at least, we act as if we ought to be those things, and we resent ourselves when it turns out we’re not, and when our messy, complex, mysterious, imperfect, wonderful humanness gets in the way of what we think we ought to be doing. We act as if we’re faulty when we fail to act efficiently and single-mindedly towards achieving whatever goals we think we ought to be working towards. We respond to our procrastination and our reluctance and our fear as if these things are stupid, annoying problems - like getting a flat tyre when you’re about to hop in the car to make an important and time-sensitive trip. And when we respond like that, we miss out, because very often these things are not stupid, annoying problems - they’re intelligent, insightful signals that we’d benefit from taking the time to interpret. They’re less like a flat tyre, and more like a phonecall from an informed and considerate friend who is getting in touch to tell you that the road you’re about to take is blocked and that you need to change your route if you want to avoid sitting stationary in traffic for hours. Sure, the phonecall is going to delay you a little bit, and you might feel annoyed to receive it when you’re keen to get going. But, as it turns out, your annoyance is misplaced, because that phonecall is going to provide you with really important information. Something similar is true of our reluctance to make progress. Sometimes our reluctance expresses reservations we haven’t yet acknowledged, and which we’d benefit from working through. Sometimes our reluctance is wisdom masquerading as an annoying inefficiency. That’s not always the case, of course - sometimes it’s misplaced. Sometimes, you receive that call from your friend and you say, ‘It’s fine, I’m not planning to take that route anyway’. Likewise, sometimes you’re procrastinating because of fears that don’t actually apply. Either way, though, you benefit from cultivating a willingness to listen to yourself when you’re holding back. Progress is smoother when we understand what’s going on. And it’s much harder when we dismiss our reluctance as laziness and then attack ourselves for not getting things done - which is rather like not taking the call from your friend, getting stuck in traffic, and then sitting there screaming ‘Why aren’t we moving?’ while your knuckles turn white on the steering wheel.
Take care, friends. Until next time.
I’m Dr Rebecca Roache, and you’ve been listening to The Academic Imperfectionist. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe on whatever podcast app you like to use. I want to help as many people as I can with these episodes, and I’d really appreciate it if you’d share the podcast with any friends who you think might find it useful, and if you’d consider leaving a review on your podcast app. If you’d like to support the podcast financially, you can do that at patreon.com/academicimperfectionist. For more information about me, the podcast, and my coaching, please visit the website - academicimperfectionist.com. You’ll find links there to The Academic Imperfectionist on Twitter and Facebook too. If you have an idea or a request for a future episode of The Academic Imperfectionist, please drop me a line, either via my website or by tweeting your idea with the hashtag #AcademicImperfectionist. Thank you for listening, and see you next time!
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