Sometimes I get a case of the imposter syndrome. I’m younger than a lot of the people I work with and I’m in a position where I often talk to people who are experts at what they do. A lot of the time these things are great because I’m always learning and surrounded by people who are smarter than me. However, inevitably, sometimes self doubt creeps in. ‘Am I a fraud?’, ‘Have I been trying to “fake it ‘till you make it” but instead of making it, I’m just a fake?’

This mode of thinking only comes up when I make mistakes. Large or small, whatever it is, my immediate reaction is ‘fuck. I should have known that’ or worse, ‘Shit. Someone else would have done that better.’ It also turns up on occasions when I’m trying something, when I’m putting an idea or a suggestion out there and one of the aforementioned experts gives me a doubtful look. It takes a real amount of effort not to immediately back-track and undermine everything I just said.

Something I do on occasion and something I’ve seen other people do in these ‘imposter’ situations is overcompensate. Where you blindly double down on your way, or your ideas, and speak with the utmost confidence! While I’m sure this could work, it’s very risky. Experts, even the best of the best who know they’re the best, should be open to feedback and criticism. It’s the only way to improve. No expert that I’ve ever met goes around proclaiming or asserting their expertise. They don’t need to, they’re good.

When it comes to dealing with imposter syndrome, I have two pieces of advice. One of them I think might be good advice, the other probably isn’t, but it works for me.

Good(?) advice

The root cause of imposter syndrome is not believing in yourself. This means that you’re not sure of yourself, you’re not sure that what you’re doing is right, or will be approved of, and so you doubt yourself. It’s tricky. The best way I have found to increase my faith in myself is to ask questions and to study.

At work, if I feel comfortable enough, I ask a colleague or someone with moew years of experience if I’m doing the right thing in a good way. And both at work and in my personal life I’ll hit the books (by which I of course me the internet) to learn the right answer. I specifically don’t ‘validate’ whether I’m right or not because it’s very easy to find things online that will support any old nonsense. Instead, I go back and ask the original question, or search for solutions to the original problem, leaving my own thoughts out of it.

Both of these methods are win-wins, if you find you were right, great, you can be more confident next time. And if you find you were wrong or could have done something in a better way, also great, you learnt something and will be more self-assured next time.

Bad advice

Sometimes when the imposter syndrome takes hold I do possibly the worst conceivable thing, I compare myself to other more successful people. If you want to feel more like an imposter than you already do, do this. But the key word here is ‘successful’.

A few months ago someone shared with me an article from 2007 about ‘complicators’. People who have the ability to find meta-problems or take meandering, long-winded, lengthy, repetitive, substance-lacking approaches to solutions. Once I learnt about this idea, I started looking for them. And let me tell you, they are very good for my imposter syndrome.

When I’m working on something I’m producing things. I’m asking questions, I’m iterating on ideas, and I’m working problems one step at a time. Even if I feel like an imposter I’ve got something to show for the work that I do, I might not feel like it’s good, or even right, but like in the ‘good advice’ section, I can improve on it, it’s something.

Complicators take a long time to get nowhere, quickly. It’s not good but when I feel like an imposter and there’s a complicator around I’m reassured, I may be an imposter, but at least I’m not that. At least I’m not making things worse. (He says now starting to worry about ‘complicator syndrome’ - ah shit.