If you're an academic with ADHD, you're probably battle-hardened from years spent struggling to do things that come easily to your colleagues: focus, resist distractions, tame exciting but messy ideas into nice coherent research papers. But no matter how good you've got at finding ways to get the work done, you're still at a disadvantage. The rules for How To Get Things Done were written for people who don't have ADHD. Living by those rules is harder for you than for other people, and it leaves you with a demoralising sense of being second-rate. My friend, it doesn't need to be like this. You can rewrite the rules to allow you to play to your strengths instead of managing your weaknesses. Your card-carrying academic ADHD imperfectionist buddy is here to set you on the right tracks.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

Binary thinking is that horrible all-or-nothing approach that holds us back by convincing us that any positive change we consider will inevitably lead to disaster. You know the sort of thing: 'I should be more assertive, but if I try, I'll end up being an arrogant psychopath who everyone hates', or 'I should get out for a walk every day, but if I do, I will neglect all my duties and get fired', or 'If I show compassion towards myself I will give up and stop trying and never get anywhere in life'. If you catch yourself doing the binary thinking thing, then you need to stop immediately.

Even so, there's wisdom in the binary. If you can resist the temptation to let it sabotage all your plans, you can use it to help you realise those plans. By using your binary thinking as a prompt for reflection, you can turn your idea for positive change into a detailed, workable strategy. 

Try out the brand new Binary thinking worksheet! Oh, and I also mention the Core values exercise.

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We all know how hard you have to work to sit down and write. You'll do pretty much anything to avoid it. Have you ever noticed, though, that avoiding your writing is no less exhausting than just bloody doing it? Weird, right? Well, actually, not weird - at least, not when you understand how hard your poor, anxious brain is having to work to trick you into getting your words down. You care deeply about your writing - that's why you're so worried about getting it right. Yet, lots of the most well-known writing advice focuses on convincing you not to care so much about it. So, there you are, doing your best, trying to believe both that your writing is very important and that it's not important at all. Maybe that strategy is working for you, in which case, I am cheering for you. But if it's not, hit play and let your imperfect friend hand-hold you through what to try instead.

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Are you frustrated with yourself because you just can't get on with the work you care most about? Do you find it easier to make progress with emails and marking than to get your writing done? Is your procrastination out of control? Are you just unbelievably lazy?

Take a pause, my friend. There's a reason why you struggle to make progress on the important things, and it's not what you think. Tasks like writing are complicated, and require a ton of decision-making in order to make progress. That's exhausting, but it becomes impossible if you refuse to recognise that it's necessary. The result is that you end up prioritising those less important tasks but easy-to-complete tasks.

Don't worry, though: help is at hand. Join The Academic Imperfectionist for a sneak peek at what's throwing you off course, and how to fix it.

References

Danziger S, Levav J, Avnaim-Pesso L. Extraneous factors in judicial decisions. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 Apr 26;108(17):6889-92. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1018033108. Epub 2011 Apr 11. PMID: 21482790; PMCID: PMC3084045.

Pignatiello GA, Martin RJ, Hickman RL Jr. Decision fatigue: A conceptual analysis. J Health Psychol. 2020 Jan;25(1):123-135. doi: 10.1177/1359105318763510. Epub 2018 Mar 23. PMID: 29569950; PMCID: PMC6119549.

Schwartz B, Ward A, Monterosso J, Lyubomirsky S, White K, Lehman DR. Maximizing versus satisficing: happiness is a matter of choice. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2002 Nov;83(5):1178-97. doi: 10.1037//0022-3514.83.5.1178. PMID: 12416921.

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Is it bad to be called lazy? Prince Harry thinks so: in his memoir, he suggests that it's better to called racist than lazy. But even if you wouldn't go that far, I'm willing to bet that you care deeply about not being viewed as lazy. Perhaps you've worked when you should have taken a sick day, said yes to things that you knew were a bad idea, or pushed yourself to burnout - all to avoid the L word.

If you've ever thought you might be lazy, you're in great company. Plenty of high achievers think of themselves as lazy. People like Barack Obama and Stephen Fry. Is it possible to work hard and still be lazy? Were Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs lazy because they wore the same outfits every day? Are cats lazy? Is laziness the same thing as inactivity? And what is laziness, anyway?

Professor Katrien Devolder has been pondering all these questions, and more. She's convinced that, in many cases, what looks like laziness is in fact justified effort management: the completely reasonable direction of our time and energy to what's most important. In other cases, what looks like laziness is genuine difficulty getting things done resulting from neurodiversity, illness, or disability. And sometimes, ascriptions of laziness are plain old prejudice. Katrien swung by Imperfectionist Towers to show you why laziness is much more complicated than you thought. 

Katrien Devolder is Professor of Applied Ethics and Director of Public Philosophy at Uehiro Oxford Institute, University of Oxford. She's the mastermind behind Project Lazy, an interdisciplinary project that combines academic research and community engagement to clarify what laziness is and challenge harmful assumptions about productivity.

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