Where did we all get this idea that if we want to succeed, we need to go faster? And that if we haven't succeeded yet, that must mean that we're probably not good enough? Sometimes, the reason we haven't succeeded isn't that we're not good enough, but that we haven't waited long enough. And that means that doing better doesn't necessarily require being better - it means holding on for longer. Swallow your impatience, friends, and gather round to hear about a key to success that is hiding in plain sight. Here's the tweet by Billy Oppenheimer discussed in the episode.

No, not like that. I'm not talking about how to achieve the ultimate happiness, eudaimonia, or enlightenment. I'm simply talking about how to enjoy your down-time without feeling like you're doing it wrong. If you've ever looked forward to a well-deserved day off and then settled down for some serious relaxation only to find yourself consumed by anxiety about whether you're enjoying yourself enough, this episode is for you. References: Diener, E., Sandvik, E., and Pavot, W. 2009: 'Happiness is the frequency, not the intensity, of positive versus negative affect', in Diener, E. (ed.) Assessing Well-Being: The Collected Works of Ed Diener, Social Indicators Research Series 39: 213-231. Mauss, I. B., Tamir, M., Anderson, C. L., and Savino, N. S. 2011: 'Can seeking happiness make people unhappy? Paradoxical effects of valuing happiness', Emotion 11/4: 767.

How well do you know yourself? Are there feelings that you have, or things that you care about, that you're in complete denial about? Trust me, there probably are - you just haven't noticed. And it's a problem, because until you can acknowledge the things that make you happy (or unhappy) and the things you care about, you can't even begin to build the life you want. Get the kettle on and join your Imperfectionist chum for some self-policing troubleshooting.

Are you hesitant to make certain changes in your life, like changing careers or ending a relationship, because you don't want the time and energy you've invested in your life so far to be wasted? If so, you're not alone - but you're wrong. Recognising that aspects of your life aren't working for you doesn't mean your efforts have been wasted. Your life isn't an essay draft, where bad choices and wrong turns get cut from the final draft. You're holding yourself back, and your imperfect friend is here to put a stop to it.

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.

I keep getting asked what my working day looks like. You know, as if I've cracked this whole productivity thing. I definitely haven't, but I have managed to make positive changes over the past few years as a result of making the sorts of changes I talk about on this podcast. Let me tell you about how it's all gone - not so that you can do things the way I do them (please don't!), but so you can see that change really is possible. Oh, and I'm also going to tell you about Simba, our community cat, who has been CATapulted to fame over the past week or so. Donate to help look after Simba!

Your problem with self-compassion: the one that leads you to be kind and supportive to other people, but nasty and vindictive to yourself. One reason you struggle with the 'self' part of 'self-compassion' is that you view yourself as separate from other people. But what if you aren't? What if the gap between you and others is simply too small and inconsequential to support your difficult-to-shake belief that it's wrong to be nasty to people, unless the person you're being nasty to is yourself? Your imperfectionist friend is lobbing a giant metaphysics truth bomb that is going to blow apart your conviction that compassion is for everyone except you. Find Kristin Neff's website about self-compassion here. Reference: Parfit, D. 1984: Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Here we are, a third of the way through January. Have you slipped up on your new year resolutions yet? Will you be kind to yourself if you do? Or will you tell yourself that you're a failure, you can't do anything right, you should just do everyone a favour and give up now? The thing is, friend, there's a dark side to positive change. Too many of us are motivated to change for the better because we don't think we're acceptable as we are. We don't feel entitled to ease back and enjoy life. We wouldn't know how. The idea of an ordinary, unremarkable life terrifies us. We like to think of our drive and ambition as positive things - but what if they're fuelled by our lack of self-acceptance? Get yourself comfortable, and let's look again at mediocrity. Find the 5 whys exercise here. Go here for 'The benefit of breaking your New Year's resolutions', my article for the IAI. 'Overcoming the need to be exceptional' by The School of Life can be read here (paywalled) and listened to (not paywalled) here.

Are you a sucker for self-improvement advice that offers to overhaul your life for the better overnight, even though you know that (unfortunately) it's not that simple? Yeah, same. There's a reason you're attracted to advice like that, and there's a way to get the life you want. It's not instant or magic or even wall-to-wall rewarding, but it is possible, and it is worth doing. Pull up a virtual chair, and let The Academic Imperfectionist explain all.

Yeah, I know you're diligently working towards that big goal, and that you STILL haven't got there yet. But are you stopping to reflect on your progress along the way, and to celebrate small wins? If the answer is no, then you're sabotaging yourself, chipping away at your motivation, and generally making yourself miserable. Progress tunnel vision can keep you stuck in a loop - but here's the Academic Imperfectionist with a lifeline! For the Progress Temperature Check exercise, go here. Go here for the Goal Contract exercise, and here for the Wheel of Life. Here's Rick Hanson's Psychology Today article, 'Recognize What Is Improving in Your Life'.

I know. Your life needs an overhaul, but where are you supposed to find the energy to fix it? You're struggling to keep your head above water as it is. The thing is, friend, not all demands on you are equal. The demands that are imposed on you by others exhaust you and send your anxiety skyrocketing - but those that you choose autonomously can energise you. Autonomy is important: just ask Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, Isaiah Berlin, and Harry Frankfurt. How do you choose autonomously? I'm glad you asked. You can find the Identify Your Core Values exercise here, and the 5 Whys exercise here. Read a sample of For F*ck's Sake: Why Swearing is Shocking, Rude, and Fun here, and buy it in all the usual places! Reference Martina Svensson, Philip Rosvall, Antonio Boza-Serrano, Emelie Andersson, Jan Lexell, Tomas Deierborg, 2016: 'Forced treadmill exercise can induce stress and increase neuronal damage in a mouse model of global cerebral ischemia', Neurobiology of Stress, Volume 5, Pages 8-18.

Look at you there, always striving, always becoming, always hustling. When do you ever get to pause and just ... be? Do you even know how? Plenty of us don't. We had no problem just chilling and enjoying the moment when we were kids, but somewhere along the way, we lost that ability. We don't know how to enjoy life any more. In which case, what's the point of any of this? Put your existential angst on ice, friend, because The Academic Imperfectionist has you covered. Go here (and thank you!) if you'd like to donate to my fundraising for the brain injury charity, Headway. Read Laura Vanderkam's short article about savouring here. Reference: Bryant, F. B. and Veroff, J. 2007: Savoring: A New Model of Positive Experience (Routledge).

Just as trees aren't meant to remain stiff and unyielding in the face of a storm, you aren't meant to remain efficient and relaxed in the face of mounting demands. Bending isn't a weakness; it's what you need to do to survive. But it's only your branches that need to bend - your roots need to stay put. Do you know what your roots are? Snuggle up with a cuppa for some arboreal advice from The Academic Imperfectionist. For the 'Identify Your Core Values' exercise mentioned in this episode, click here. To read Julia Butterfly Hill's essay, 'Surviving the Storm: Lessons from Nature', click here.

Do you tell yourself that if only you had a day of uninterrupted time ahead of you (and, of course, the right stationery), you'd finally be able to get some writing done - only to procrastinate your precious writing time away when you do finally get what you need? Thought so. Your problem is that you wouldn't know a good writing opportunity even if it walked up to you and poked you in the eye. Put down that stationery catalogue and let your Imperfectionist friend sort you out.

Writing is why we all do what we do - or at least, a big part of it. But it's also a source of intense anxiety, whether we're new to it or whether we've been at it for years. So, here's another start-of-the-new-academic-year imperfectionist special for you. Your imperfect pal here set out to create a little survival guide for new students who want to get their essay-writing off to a good start - but along the way, it turns out that there are plenty of lessons about writing that are useful to revisit even for those of us who have clocked up thousands of hours of writing (and procrastinating). New pencils at the ready: let's get started! Here are the books on writing mentioned in the episode: Jensen, J. 2017: Write No Matter What (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Sword, H. 2017: Air & Light &Time & Space (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).

Do you ever try to read philosophy (or some other stodgy not-designed-for-entertainment text) and find yourself struggling to understand ... well, any of it? Do you finish reading a paragraph and find that you have absolutely no idea what it was about? Does it take you an entire day just to read one chapter? Of course not - you'd never admit to any of it, anyway. Even five-year-olds can read, so there's no way anyone's blowing the lid off your shameful reading troubles. But don't worry. Here's your Imperfectionist friend to lay it all bare and help make reading less of a time-consuming headache. (Spoiler: perfectionism is to blame, again.)

If you won't accept anything less than perfection from yourself, I have some disappointing news from Ancient Greece. Back in the 4th (ish) century BC, Plato was telling anyone who would listen that perfection doesn't even exist in the material world - so, save your energy and lower your standards. Get the kettle on and then gather round to learn what this means for you, from Plato, Socrates, and ... erm, the Barbie movie. Here's the monologue by American Ferrera (as Gloria) in Barbie: 'It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong. 'You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin. You have to have money, but you can’t ask for money because that’s crass. You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean. You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas. You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman, but also always be looking out for other people. You have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining. 'You’re supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you’re supposed to be a part of the sisterhood. But always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged. So find a way to acknowledge that but also always be grateful. You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line. It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you! And it turns out in fact that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault. 'I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don’t even know.'

I get it: you want to be less of a perfectionist, more confident and assertive, less of a procrastinator, and all the rest of it. These, after all, are things that hold us back - or so we often think. As it happens, though, things are more complicated than that. Those same traits that stand in your way are the same ones that have enabled you to achieve awesome things. Is there a way to get the 'awesome things' bit without the 'stand in your way' bit? Well, put up a chair, chum - the Academic Imperfectionist has some thoughts.

We all love a bit of productivity porn. What could be wrong with learning about how to get better at getting things done? Well, quite a few things, as it happens. Seeking out the latest productivity tools and techniques can be a way to mask the anxieties you have around your work. To avoid the pitfalls, you need to look inward and think about how you go about getting stuff done. Gather round, friends, and let's dive in.

We all hate failure. We're terrified of it. And so, when I chalked up a big fat failure a few days ago, I knew immediately that I needed to dissect it for you lot. The key lesson here? Our unwillingness to look failure square in the face is holding us back. Read Costica Bradatan's Psyche essay about Emil Cioran here.