On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your willingness to say nice things about yourself? How about your willingness to point out your own failures and shortcomings? If the first number you came up with is higher than the second, then move along, my friend - this episode can do nothing for you. Gather round, the rest of you. You've been taught all your life that modesty and humility are virtues. But, would you know if your self-deprecation had gone too far? Could your toxic humility be holding you back? And if it is, so what? Better that than being arrogant, right?!

Oh dear, friend. What a mess. But don't worry. Your Imperfectionist friend is here to show how you can do some healthy cheerleading for yourself without turning into a boasty monster. Settle down for the final episode of 2025, and prepare to end it with a smile on your face!

Contact The Academic Imperfectionist here, or via Bluesky, Facebook, or Medium.

Read Emma Beddington's article about toxic humility here.

Do you get up every day and tear around trying to get stuff done, and yet still end up feeling overwhelmed and frustrated at your lack of progress? There's something very simple - so simple, in fact, that you're going to feel cheated and frankly furious as soon as I tell you what it is - that you can do to get more done and feel less frantic. Now, I know you don't have time to listen to this episode because YOU SHOULD BE WRITING, but trust me on this one. Get the kettle on, take a break, and have a listen. You'll be glad you did.

I know how committed you are to self-improvement. Self-improvement is a good thing, right? Well, it depends. If you're motivated to improve yourself because you don't like yourself as you are, then perhaps it's not as wholesome as you thought. But how do you tell whether you're doing the wholesome sort of self-improvement or the unwholesome sort? What even is the right sort of self-improvement? Step off your upward trajectory for a moment, friend, and let your Imperfectionist friend here decipher all this for you.

Find the 5 whys exercise here. 

If you thought you knew everything about procrastination, prepare to be humbled. Professor Wendelien van Eerde is a psychologist who has spent her entire career understanding procrastination, motivation, and time management, and helping people work more effectively. She swung by Imperfectionist Towers to share her knowledge and help troubleshoot your productivity woes. You're going to hear all about how your tendency to procrastinate depends on your personality traits, your age, how nice you are to yourself, the sort of task you're trying to do, whether anyone knows what you're doing, and more. You'll also pick up some tips about how to stop procrastination, and you'll learn that what works best for one person might not work so well for another. It's a good 'un, so get yourself a cuppa and settle in for a listen!

Wendelien van Eerde is an associate professor at the Amsterdam Business School of the University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on motivation, procrastination and other time-related behaviours at work. Her publications include several meta-analyses on these topics. You can read 'How to stop procrastinating', her article for Psyche, here.

What's coaching, what's the difference between coaching and therapy, is a coach going to tell me what to do, what happens in a coaching session, how many coaching sessions should I have, how often should I have them, how do I choose a coach ... I get asked these questions (and more) a lot by new coaching clients. So, here I am, putting all my answers in one place. Hit play, and find out everything you never realised you needed to know about what goes on behind closed (online) doors at Academic Imperfectionist Towers!

Book a coaching session here. If you're a new client, it's free! 

Ever wondered how your Imperfectionist friend here got from academic philosophy to coaching? Lots of coaching clients have asked this over the years, so here I am, with an episode to bring you up to speed. I'll tell you all about how it's thanks to COVID that I ended up coaching, how the podcast was born because I realised I was incapable of uttering sentences like 'Would you allow me to offer you a powerful and transformative coaching experience?', and how I came to see that philosophical ideas don't need to be true to be effective weapons against your inner critic. 

If you're curious about coaching and want to try it for free, go here to sign up for a session.

Do you massively over-estimate how much you can accomplish in any period of time? Do you struggle to work out how long it's going to take you to complete a particular project? Friend, same. Don't worry, though, because there are some well-recognised psychological reasons for that, and plenty of advice too. There's just one problem: when it comes to projects that are linked to your sense of self-worth, time management is even trickier, and the usual strategies might not cut it. Luckily for you, your imperfect buddy is here to throw you a lifeline.

Here's a helpful article with some tips about how to get better at planning your time.

References:

Buehler, R., Griffin, D., and Ross, M. 1994: 'Exploring the "Planning Fallacy": Why People Underestimate Their Task Completion Times', Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 67/3: 366-381.

Kahneman, D. and Tversky, A. 1977: 'Intuitive Prediction: Biases and Corrective
Procedures', Technical Report PTR-1042-7746, Defense Advanced Research ProjectsAgency - Advanced Decision Technology, Decision Research, Eugene, OR. 

If only you spent more time working and less time procrastinating, your life would be so much better. Right? Friend, I know how you feel, but it's not that simple. Some forms of procrastination actually help us get our work done, while some forms of work are just a waste of your time. In fact, I've come to realise that the very idea of procrastination is pretty unhelpful, and it can stand in the way of understanding why we struggle to make progress, and how to fix it. In this episode, I'm going to share with you a more empowering way to think about how to get things done.

Brand new download! Click here for the 'Comfort vs relevance: resist the work/procrastination binary!' worksheet, or find it on the Resources page of The Academic Imperfectionist website.

References

Grant, Adam. 2016: 'Why I taught myself to procrastinate', New York Times.

Jensen, Joli. 2017: Write No Matter What (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). 

Do you ever feel that, unless you achieve the things you think you should be achieving, you'll cease to exist? That you'll fade away, become invisible, fail to be a fully-realised human? If so, you're in good company. For many of us, living a fulfilling life is inextricably linked with achievement, striving, productivity, winning.

I'm not here to tell you not to care about achievement. But I am going to tell you that you're wrong if you think that the only life worth living is a life that prioritises achievement. And not only do I have Aristotle in my corner to back me up, but there's some fascinating recent research on what Gen Z care about that ought to be a wake-up call for anyone who thinks that if they're not achieving, they're failing. 

Do the Values Bridge survey here (registration required to view summary of results, payment required to view full results).

Find my Core Values exercise here (no sign-up or payment required - I'm not that fancy)

References:

Suzy Welch, 'CEO: One stunning data point explains the "Gen Z stare"—and why it's going to backfire on them', CBNC, 17 July 2025.

Melissa De Witte, 'What to know about Gen Z' (interview with Dr Roberta Katz), Stanford Report, 3 January 2022.

André Dua et al., 'What is Gen Z?', McKinsey & Company, 28 August 2024.

Do you struggle to make sense of the jumble of attitudes you have towards your career? Perhaps you feel overlooked despite the fact that you've just been given a job. Perhaps you're striving to do well and hoping to get noticed while at the same time feeling resentful of the whole process, and critical of yourself for engaging in it. And, if you do feel these things, do you also attack yourself by telling yourself that you've got nothing to complain about, or that you're imagining things, or that you're irrational? Friend, I've heard it all before, and despite what you might think, it all makes complete sense. Put your feet up and your headphones on, and prepare for the Academic Imperfectionist low-down on why you feel this way.