Self-Improvement Side-Effects: Imposter Syndrome and Productivity Dysmorphia
Reading Time: 6 minutes
Yurui’s Summary
My experience of imposter syndrome arised when I set ambitions for myself; but then never felt like I was ‘enough’, my mind constantly pressuring me to do more work, even though I was close to burnout.
You have to realise that you can’t compare yourself with others; there will always be someone better than you at everything that you do, except for being yourself. Compete with your past self and become the best version of yourself.
It is unrealistic to dedicate your life 24/7 to self-improvement. If that’s what you want to do, then by all means. But don’t beat yourself up over missing the gym one day, or forgetting to read your book tonight. Everything will be okay.
Always be realistic and grounded with your accomplishments. The key to battling productivity dysmorphia is recognizing intellectually that you're meeting your goals and doing good work. It can be helpful to see those facts represented in a tangible way. Write them down!
We have to realise and accept that any time we don’t spend ‘grinding’ is actually still productive, depending on how you perceive it.
If you want to become a better person, know that you will probably have many moments alone, all by yourself.
There’s a beauty in seeking discomfort. It’s only when we do something that we don’t want to do that we grow as people. If we marinate in comfort, we become stagnant as human beings.
Take it easy :)
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I don’t know if I’m ready to write this article yet, but I’ll give it my best shot. It was actually one of the first articles I wanted to write, but I wasn’t ready to come to terms with it at the time. Nevertheless, imposter syndrome and productivity dysmorphia are things that I’ve thought about for a long time now.
Just a quick message: as with all articles on my website, this is not medical advice, nor is it anything grounded in fact and research. It is purely my own opinion from my perspective, and I’ve lived a pretty good life, so my perspective will be inherently biased.
If you’re in a bad place right now, there are places you can go for support. Talk to someone, please.
Imposter Syndrome
I think that studying at a competitive, academically demanding, and cutthroat high school really instilled this desire for excellence within me. Competition seemed like it was within our bloodstreams; students especially in selective high schools crave stability and control, and spend hours at tutoring, completing dozens of past papers for their exams. In 2021, for my accelerated HSC exam, I did around 35 past Trial/HSC papers to prepare.
There was very much a feeling of this obligation of living up to the standards that not only I had set for myself, but also those instilled by my environment. Every failure, every time I ‘slacked off’, every time I took time for my own wellbeing, it seemed that I self-sabotaged my mental health by my own brain’s urges for me to get back ‘on the grind’.
When I had set my sights upon studying overseas, the stakes were raised even higher. I wasn’t only competing to get a high ATAR (academic competence is pretty much a prerequisite for study at any university), but also to develop myself holistically, competing against some of the most talented people in the world for a letter of admission. Browsing previously admitted students who are insanely talented, and setting such an ambitious goal just further amplified my desire to grind and work myself to 110% of my capability.
Imposter syndrome caught me off guard; it was this feeling of constantly never being' ‘enough’, my mind subconsciously pressuring myself to do more work for fear of some imaginary person finding that I’m ‘slacking’. Wanting to do even more things without recognising what I’ve already achieved, despite knowing that I was already stretching myself super thin. The cognitive dissonance was hard to bear.
I think something that I wasn’t aware of was the brutality of burnout. I won’t go into too much detail, but it was really the culmination of stress, anxiety for the future, and overwork that caused some pretty bad days for me. Especially in Year 11, I had a series of ‘failures’ that really instilled the feeling of being unaccomplished, unworthy of the accolades I had achieved, and the ambitions I had set for myself.
I was having a conversations with one of my mentors, who talked about a guy at Princeton he went to high school with (who got a silver medal at the International Olympiad in Informatics). Being mates with him, my mentor thought that he would have to compete with him if he wanted a job in the tech industry - this error in perception cost him years of education to get him where he wanted, as he neglected the tech industry, entering Medicine instead. Now, he’s doing a master’s in computer science after realising his error in judgement. However, it could be argued that his medical degree taught him invaluable skills and gave him unique life experiences; I don’t think he would’ve regretted it. We are all on our own timelines.
I spent some time looking at Thiel Fellowship recipients a few weeks ago; this one girl got into MIT at 14 years old and dropped out to start her own venture fund. Others dropped out of Stanford to be the world’s youngest self-made billionaires. It’s crazy. There’s always going to be someone better than you at everything you do, with one exception. You are the best at being yourself. The world deserves you at your best; you deserve yourself at your best.
You have to realise that life is a single player game, that the only person you should compete with is your past self. Become a better person every day. Do what you love, not what someone else loves, because it’ll be damn hard to compete with them. Find your circle of genius; where your best skills meet your passion.
The Dark Truth About Self-Improvement
Imposter syndrome is the unwanted side-effect of ambition and self-improvement. That voice says that you have standards you have to live up to, and that if you don’t, that you’re a failure or you don’t deserve the position you’re in right now. Sometimes, if I take a day off, I think to myself that I shouldn’t be doing so, because there are so many other people that I’m ‘competing with’.
“Here’s the dark truth about self-improvement that nobody talks about. You’re becoming the best version of yourself, but as soon as you learn about what you should be doing: for example, I should be reading, I should be working out, I should be getting up early, it creates this mental checklist, that if we don’t do everything on that list, you use it as ammunition that you then use against yourself. And that’s because the truth is that self-improvement alone doesn’t satisfy us. Self-improvement is only one half of the journey. The other half that is crucial for growth is self-acceptance; accepting where you are right now. Accepting every small and every big win. Learning from our losses and enjoying the now.”
I found this quote on an Instagram reel, and it cut pretty deep. Sending it to some of my mates, they instantly resonated and we found a common ground with this advice. Self-improvement is not enough; we must accept what our lives are like and live in the moment, realising that our best is enough. We work to live, not live to work.
I need to allow myself to be human; if I miss a day of gym/meditating/reading, I can’t hate myself over it. We can’t hyperfixate on self-improvement. Sure, there are people that will say that I’m weak for advocating for this, but realistically, we are all unique people with different lives we want to live. I think the solution really comes down to self-discovery; do you want to be the person that’s read 1000 books in a month, got chiseled abs, and building your own $1000000 billion startup? The answer might be yes, but as with all things in life, there are trade-offs; for some (if not most) people, they’d rather maintain healthy personal relationships, prioritise their Friday Netflix nights, and have an ice-cream once in a while. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that; it’s how they want to live life.
You can do anything you want, but not everything.
This has become slightly tangential - my point is that it is unrealistic to dedicate your life 24/7 to self-improvement. If that’s what you want to do, then by all means. But don’t beat yourself up over missing the gym one day, or forgetting to read your book tonight. Everything will be okay.
Productivity Dysmorphia
Productivity dysmorphia is a close relative of imposter syndrome; the inability to see one’s own success, to acknowledge the volume of your own output. It sits at the intersection of burnout, imposter syndrome and anxiety.
Ambition’s alter ego: the pursuit of productivity spurs us to do more while robbing us of the ability to savour any success we might encounter along the way.
“I have started thinking of this unhealthy relationship I have with my professional achievements as 'productivity dysmorphia'. I have realised that it is an inability to see my own success. It’s like I’m looking in the mirror of my professional life and I don’t see the published author staring back at me. All I see is a failure.” — h/t Anna Codrea-Rado
Always be realistic and grounded with your accomplishments. The key to battling productivity dysmorphia is recognizing intellectually that you're meeting your goals and doing good work. It can be helpful to see those facts represented in a tangible way. Write them down!
Wasting Time
(article from July 14th, 2023)
Today I spent a good half hour or so cleaning my room. There’s this huge grind or die culture in my life right now because these next few months are going to be crucial, and determine the trajectory of my life to an extent. It feels like every moment of mine not working towards that ambition (through HSC Trials and College Applications) feels wasted. But efficiency of how you spend your time is key. Spending 30 minutes cleaning my room is something scalable and compound; it will be weeks until my room is dirty again and will warrant another clean. Taking this time to clean up will improve my efficiency by a ton, and is well worth the time and effort, though it will not contribute to my macro, overarching goal, it sure supports the time that I do spend working towards my goal.
The same is true for time at the gym and time with friends/family. The two hours I set aside for the gym and recovery is an insane boost in my efficiency around that time I spend at the gym; the time I spend socially, with family/friends is refreshing, makes me happy, and increases my motivation. Hence, it is a worthy investment; I just need to be mindful of my ROI, for spending my whole day at the gym probably isn’t worth the 30 minutes at the end of the day studying + diminishing returns.
Basically, we have to realise and accept that any time we don’t spend ‘grinding’ is actually still productive, depending on how you perceive it. Spending 5 minutes cleaning your room as a way to improve efficiency is actually more effective for your pursuits than 5 more minutes of studying. Diminishing returns.
Sometimes the most idle time is the most productive, in a creative sense. This is not an excuse to be lazy, but a reminder to enjoy life as it occurs. Not to fixate on getting work done, but instead to live in the moment. If you determine your self worth by how much you get done, you will be forever worthless. There’s always going to be goals.
And now, back to September!
Loneliness
Something else that I’ve realised is that the pathway to self-improvement and ‘success’ is a lonely one; I think that most people don’t want to do the hard work to improve themselves. Hence, the path to success will be lonely; late nights at the gym, reading in your room, journaling late at night, practicing gratitude. Most of this stuff is done alone.
If you’re setting out to become a better person, also consider tall poppy syndrome: a term that refers to successful people being criticised. This occurs when their peers believe they are too successful, or are bragging about their success. Intense scrutiny and criticism of such a person is termed as "Cutting down the tall poppy" (from Wikipedia). When you go against the grain, people will disagree with you, and that’s okay; if we all agreed with each other, there’d be no point in collaboration or unique identities, as we’d all be of one and the same mind. The people who matter don’t mind, and the people who mind don’t matter; have a rational filter.
One of my mates said that: “We are doomed to be ideologically lonely. If we are not, then we are nothing special. It’s not easy to find an intellectual equal when we’ve put in thousands upon thousands of hours in something.”
There’s a huge difference between being lonely and alone. You can find genuine happiness, peace, and fulfilment when you’re alone; being lonely is emotional, a completely different mindset. It’s okay to be alone, physically. It’s not good to be lonely, emotionally.
I think this is a heads-up; if you want to become a better person, know that you will probably have many moments alone, all by yourself. That’s not to say there aren’t like-minded people out there (there definitely are), but that it won’t be easy to find someone to improve with you. If you have someone, well, that’s something to be treasured.
Seeking Discomfort
There’s a beauty in seeking discomfort. It’s only when we do something that we don’t want to do that we grow as people. If we marinate in comfort, we become stagnant as human beings.
For more, check out this video: Productivity Tears You Apart.
And this article: Self-improvement vs Self-Acceptance
“Also it seems like people are way more focused on their ‘perception’ and ‘optics’ and ‘personal brand’ than they were 10 or 20 years ago, and that this makes the whole phenomenon of wanting to stay perfectly on-track even worse.” - Sam Altman
“The paradox of self-improvement is that by accepting ourselves as we are, we give ourselves the space, permission, and opportunity to create an authentic sense of success and fulfillment. When we insatiably focus on improving ourselves, thinking that it will ultimately lead us to a place of happiness, we’re almost always disappointed and we set up a stressful dynamic of constantly striving, but never quite getting there.” - Mike Robbins
Take it easy :)
Yurui
