An impostor wouldn’t take this long

One of the things I’ve worried about for a long time is how it takes me a long time to do things. When reading tutorials, seeing suggested times for homework exercises, hearing people talk about how quickly they did something, etc. (don’t get me started on recipe prep time…), I find I usually take a lot longer. Like, sometimes double or triple the time.

My thoughts usually drift toward me being not good enough or an impostor. But this is bullshit. An impostor wouldn’t dedicate this much time to these tasks. They wouldn’t have the grit and perseverance to see things through. They wouldn’t be as thorough.

There’s a cultural aspect to these feelings too. I’ve lied to myself and others about how long I’ve taken on projects. I usually shorten the time to make myself look faster, more efficient, more clever. And I do it because I feel vulnerable to judgment because I went over the expected time (or I think I did).

Things have changed since the future, Scotty.

These kinds of lies not only propagate the negative feelings I’ve described, they almost certainly lead to us being poor estimators of our time and productivity.

So let’s be honest about how long it takes us to do things. Let’s be vulnerable with each other (check out Brené Brown’s work on vulnerability in particular) and admit that things took us longer than we hoped. When I’ve done this, I found that other people tend to take a long time too and feel bad about it, but sharing made it feel better and let us have a more honest conversation.

We can get faster, especially by practicing, but especially while we’re learning, let’s let ourselves take the time we need.

If you have a story of taking a long time on something, share it below! 🤗

Hat tip 🎩 to Michele Titolo and her blog post “How I create talks” for inspiring me to write on this topic that’s been bouncing around in my head for the last few weeks.

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