You’ve got 30 seconds to feel better. What do you do?

You’re listening to The Academic Imperfectionist. I’m Dr Rebecca Roache. I’m a coach and a philosopher at the University of London, and in this podcast I draw on philosophical analysis and coaching insights to help you dump perfectionism and flourish on your own terms.

Hello, once again, Team Imperfectionist! You’ve caught me here, coming up for air, taking a quiet few moments to talk to you, in the midst of the preparations for the new teaching term here in the UK. The chaos of the new academic year is about to descend. Don’t worry, I’m not expecting any sympathy - I know that teaching is well underway for my colleagues elsewhere in the world, and that the grieving process for the end of the summer has long given way to the term-time grind. Wherever you’re listening, and whatever is going on in your life at the moment, I’m happy to join you for a little while.

So, what’s the dish of the day here at the Academic Imperfectionist podcast this time? Well, it’s more of a tasting menu than a big square meal in today’s episode. We’re doing tapas. Finger food. Picky bits. Add your own culinary analogy that brings to mind lots of little things rather than one big thing. I came across a BBC article this week called ‘30-second habits to improve your mood’. The title is pretty self-explanatory - it suggested a few quick things - ‘micropractices’ - that you can do to feel better. The micropractices suggested were doing fake laughter, which I will now solemnly demonstrate for the next 30 seconds … just kidding, can you imagine listening to that? And can you imagine being overheard listening to that? Let’s steer well clear. Anyway, apparently doing fake laughing is even more effective at making you feel better than real laughter. The next suggestion was having a stretch, which happens to be one of my favourite things to do when I have a spare 30 seconds, so I’m fully on board with that. Next is taking some slow, deep breaths, which apparently - like every other bloody thing we’re told we ought to be doing these days - calms the nervous system. Next, self-compassionate touch, which I haven’t tried myself, but I’m all for a bit more self-compassion, as you’ll know if you’re a regular here. And finally there was taking a ‘mindful break’, which was a bit more vague, but I’m sure we can all imagine the sort of thing, which probably involves putting down the phone and going outside for a bit. Despite being put on edge by the bollocksy ‘calms the nervous system’ guff, I really liked the idea behind this article. Because so many of us are going around feeling stressed, overwhelmed, and navigating a narrow and treacherous path between high- (or at least middling-) functioning and collapsing into a burnt-out mess. And while there’s a huge amount of information out there about what we can do to make ourselves feel better - perhaps more such information than there has ever been - sometimes, if we’re really overburdened, finding and absorbing and implementing that information is yet another task to add to the already long list. It might help us feel better in the long run, but in the short term it’s something else to feel guilty about not doing. I did an episode about this a while back: episode #51: Is looking after yourself just another thing to fail at?

So. That BBC article on the micropractices got me thinking about what sort of similar things I could come up with, based on the stuff I talk about on this podcast. If you don’t have the time or the energy to listen to a 25-minute episode all about some particular issue you’re struggling with, but you could scrape together 30 seconds to do something, what sorts of things could give you the best bang for your buck? I’ve had a think, and I’ve come up with a list of five things. I’m going to talk you through it. And don’t worry about making notes, because I’ve got you covered there, with a brand new downloadable resource of these five 30-second sanity savers. There’s a link in the episode notes, and you can also find it on the Resources page of The Academic Imperfectionist website, so take a look when you have a moment. You can use it as a worksheet, if you like - print it out and make notes on the back. Or, you can print it out and stick it somewhere prominent, so that you can glance at it and use the different suggestions as prompts to help you think of ways to find a little bit of space in your day when you most need it. 

My first suggestion is the easiest, because it’s just a reminder and you don’t actually have to do anything. Here it comes: you don’t have to be in a perpetual state of becoming. You’re not a work in progress. You’re complete just as you are. It’s okay just to be - you don’t always need to do. I have an episode about this: #73: How to practise being instead of doing. The episode is for when you have a bit of time to spare in which you can reflect on this. But if that’s not where you are right now, perhaps you can afford just a couple of seconds to say this to yourself: I can just be. This is my favourite little mantra, and I’m offering it to you here for free. I find it so helpful as a way to ground myself when I realise I’m swept up in a frenzy of striving and producing and improving. Sure, there’s stuff you need to get done, but ‘earn my right to take up space in the world’ should never be something on your task list. I know you don’t ever actually write that on your task list - but, admit it, it’s always there. So, here is your reminder that it shouldn’t be. Just sit there for a moment and say it to yourself. I can just be. 

Here’s the next thing. It’s about making lists. I’ve done at least two episodes about that. There was episode #21: Let’s talk about lists, plans, and goals. And, more recently, episode #122: Write it down, make it happen. Seriously, writing down what I want to get done is the closest thing I’ve got to waving a magic wand and making it happen, but right now we’re not talking about normal task lists - we’re talking crisis management. 30 seconds to stop your head exploding stuff. So, I want to give you a prompt that is buried in various episodes of this podcast. Imagine yourself getting into bed tonight, after yet another day in which you haven’t managed to get nearly as much done as you’d hoped you would. And imagine saying to yourself: ‘Well, at least I got X done today’. X is that one small, modest task that, if you were to do it, would prevent the day from being an absolute failure. It’s the bare minimum required for a positive outcome. My coaching clients tend to find this exercise really useful. People who insist that they think they should be able to spend 6 hours in laser-focused writing time per day, or who think their teaching is worthless unless every student they encounter goes away happy, enlightened, and entertained, or who think that they need to be as productive as the most productive person they have ever encountered is on their best days simply to be competent, or who set themselves any number of other completely bonkers and doomed-to-failure goals for success, are nevertheless capable of coming up with very modest, sensible, and achievable targets when I ask them what the X is in their ‘Well, at least I got X done today’. At least I wrote for 15 minutes. At least I got five students in my seminar to say something. At least I replied to that one email. Not only is doing X very achievable, but simply naming X tends to make overwhelmed people feel a lot better. Before they even lift a finger to tackle X. And my sense is that that’s because naming X helps them see that meaningful progress is a lot closer and easier to achieve than they thought. So, next time you feel like you’re facing an avalanche of demands and obligations, name your X. What’s the smallest possible thing you could get done today that would enable you to go to bed with a sense of satisfaction?

Next is my favourite course-correction for your self-compassion. I’ve talked about this lots of times. There you are, telling yourself what a waste of space you are, that you can’t believe you haven’t done this, that, and the other, that everyone is disappointed in you, that you’re letting people down, that maybe there’s not even any point trying to make a start because any effort you make would just be a drop in the ocean and you can’t believe you’ve let things get this far. You might think there’s nothing wrong with talking to yourself this way, and that you’re just stating facts - that’s certainly the way that lots of my coaching clients see things. But then I ask them if they’d speak like that to a friend or a colleague who was in the situation they find themselves in now, and a light comes on. Of course they wouldn’t speak to another person like that. They’re not psychopaths. Suddenly, they find their compassion and their understanding, and the demands become more reasonable. So, if you’re struggling to work out how to get everything done, and you’re having trouble even thinking sensibly about how to approach things because you’ve got your inner critic turned up to full volume and your attempts to strategise are drowned out by the insults she’s throwing your way, take a breath and ask yourself what advice you’d give to a friend who was in your position. If she asked you for your thoughts on what she should do next, what would you answer? And if she asked you if you thought she was worthless for letting things get so out of hand, what would you say? Whatever you come up with is relevant to you and your situation. Whatever you’d say to your friend is what you should say to yourself This is such a powerful shift in perspective because not only does it make it incredibly easy and persuasive to see how we can be more compassionate to ourselves, but it’s also empowering, because it reveals that we do actually know how to work through whatever the problem is, and we do actually know how to be encouraging rather than insulting. See how capable you are when you just stop being so mean to yourself?

Ok. Next. Another one that’s got a whole episode devoted to it: episode #54: Soothe the overwhelm with the 1% question. This is a great one to use when you find yourself frozen with binary thinking. Everything is awful - your house is a mess, you’re behind on a ton of work-related tasks, your domineering colleague has just walked all over you yet again after you promised yourself you wouldn’t stand for it any more, there’s a financial headache you still need to sort out, there aren’t enough hours in the day to sort out everything that needs sorting out - and you feel so overwhelmed by the idea of putting things right that you can’t bring yourself to do anything at all. You’re stuck in a binary mindset of either fix it all or do nothing. Before you decide to use up your remaining energy throwing yourself on the ground and kicking and screaming about how you can’t take any more of this - which is something that plenty of us feel like doing from time to time, because tantrums are for life, not just for toddlers - pause, take a breath, and ask: What is something I could do right now to make this situation just 1% better? You’re shifting your focus here away from fixing everything, and on to making a small, achievable improvement. And although the improvement itself might be small, the act of taking a small step in the right direction can be powerful. It means you’re someone who can make a positive change. You’re someone who can problem-solve. You’re someone who doesn’t have to start from zero next time you need to work on this problem. You’re someone who, faced with a complete and overwhelming mess, looks for a way through it, and finds one. 

I’ve got one more suggestion for you. One more sanity-saving microfix. This one basically embodies the principle: don’t be a perfectionist. Exactly what you’d expect from me, right? But simply telling yourself ‘don’t be a perfectionist’ isn’t the microfix. I don’t know where this ‘microfix’ term came from, by the way - it just popped into my head, but let’s go with it. If you’re overwhelmed, exhausted, and contemplating a tantrum, ‘don’t be a perfectionist’ - while great advice - might be a bit too demanding, because to implement that advice you first need to work out what it is that you’re currently doing that you need to stop doing, and perhaps there are lots of things that fit that description, so you need to identify them and then stop doing them, and all this is the sort of cognitively involved process that you probably just don’t have the bandwidth for in your really desperate moments. So, instead, ask yourself this: What is one expectation of myself that I could drop right now? And what this does is draw your attention to the fact that you are operating with certain expectations of yourself that you probably don’t even realise you have. Without realising, you might be telling yourself not only to fix this thing, but to do so in a way that means you never need to fix it (or anything like it) again. Or to fix not only this thing, but all these other things as well, while you’re at it, because you’re going to have to fix those other things at some point anyway so it may as well be now. Or to do not only an adequate job fixing this thing, but an exemplary one. Or to go above and beyond with fixing this thing in order to make up for the fact that you should have fixed it ages ago and you feel that you need to atone for this sin. Whatever it might be in your case, I am positive that if you look for an unnecessary expectation you’re burdening yourself with as you try to solve this problem, you’ll find one. Find it, and then drop it. 

So, there you go. Five quick, easy-to-implement suggestions. And don’t feel like you need to do all five. Pick one, any one, and see if it helps. It’s a buffet, not a sit-down five-course meal. Here we are, back with the food comparisons again. I should probably take the hint and go off and have a snack. Speak soon, my friends.

I’m Dr Rebecca Roache, and you’ve been listening to The Academic Imperfectionist. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe on whatever podcast app you use. I want to help as many people as I can with these episodes, and I’d really appreciate it if you’d share the podcast with any friends who you think might find it useful, and if you’d leave a review on your podcast app. If you’d like to support the podcast financially, you can do that at www.patreon.com/AcademicImperfectionist. For more information about me, the podcast, and my coaching, please visit the website - www.academicimperfectionist.com. You can find me on Medium too, as AcademicImperfectionist. If you have an idea or a request for a future episode of The Academic Imperfectionist, please drop me a line, either via the contact form on my website or via Medium. Thanks for listening, and see you next time!