It's not imposter syndrome if you don't know what you're doing

If I showed up at a croquet tournament, I would strongly feel that I’m not qualified to be there. That’s because I’ve never played croquet. (UBC Library Digitization Centre)

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what it would take to write a book.

I am fascinated by the challenge of writing a book and how far away I feel from actually being able to do it. In particular, I can’t imagine ever being able to write a novel, which makes me want to challenge myself to figure out how to do it. 

This lack of belief in my own ability is not imposter syndrome. It’s not that I’m thinking, “Who am I to write a book,” or “No one would want to read a book that I wrote,” or “I don’t have what it takes to write a book.” No, it’s more like, “I don’t have the skills to write a book,” “I don’t know how to write a book,” and “I don’t really know what I’m getting into.”

In other words, It’s not that I am afraid that I’ll be found out as an unqualified fraud who doesn’t know what she’s doing. Today, I actually am unqualified. I actually don’t know what I’m doing. If I want to write a book, I don’t need to work on my mindset. I need to learn, from someone who has done it, exactly how to write a book. If I tried to begin today, I would fail, no matter how much I believe in myself.

There is often a skill or knowledge gap when it comes to doing something new. When someone else is out there making it look easy, we might not even realize this gap exists. We might not realize that someone else had direct, one-on-one instruction and years of practice in order to deliver such a smooth performance. We ascertain, correctly, that we can’t do what they are doing with our current level of development. That doesn’t mean that we’ll never be able to. We just need to address the missing skills and knowledge.

When we are armed with the requisite skills or experience and still feel inadequate, that’s what we call imposter syndrome. And it’s pretty normal, actually; there isn’t usually a governing body who will say that we’re qualified. Even if we can get credentialed, we still feel like who we were before. We’re the same person we’ve been in the habit of being, looking out from the same pair of eyes. By the time you get to be in charge of something, you don’t feel like you should be the one in charge. We’re like the eighth graders at The Little Middle School on the first day of school, wondering where all the eighth graders are. Welcome to leadership.

I feel for the people who are struggling with imposter syndrome. I feel, also, for those who have mislabeled their situation as imposter syndrome when, in reality, they’re simply a novice.

Being a novice is a much more straightforward problem to fix. If I don’t know how to do something, I can take a class or find a mentor and learn. Trying to fix the problem by addressing my mindset will not do it. If I got a job as an engineer at NASA today, I’d think to myself, “I don’t belong here,” and it wouldn’t be imposter syndrome. It would be the truth. No matter how profound my belief in my ability, there are some things that sheer pluck and determination cannot overcome.

Back to writing a book: The choice to make today is to recognize that I can be an author. I have to believe that I can write the book, given the necessary resources and support. However, affirmations aren’t going to do it by themselves. I would have to put in the work, and I would have to know what that work is. I can’t just go blindly forward without a plan. If I don’t succeed, I can’t blame it on imposter syndrome. It’s because I didn’t do what was needed.

You might believe that you’re experiencing imposter syndrome when starting a business or a degree program. But maybe you’re just facing the simpler, more concrete reality that you don’t know what the heck you’re doing. That’s an issue that can be directly addressed, and you’ll be building our sense of self-efficacy and competence all the while. Before you know it, you’ll be qualified, and then it will be time to encounter a fresh challenge you’ve never had before. Once again, you’ll have what it takes to deal with it—or to learn the necessary skills to deal with it. You got this.