(Door creak) Ah, you must be my next appointment. Please, have a seat. (Sitting down) Now, before we get started, I want you to understand that, yes, participating in any form of therapy can be difficult. Perhaps it's a feeling of stigma or embarrassment. Perhaps it's simply admitting to yourself that you do need to seek assistance. Whatever the reason, you've come this far and that's to be commended. So, let's just jump right in and how about you tell me what's on your mind.

(Mumbles)

I see. Go on.

(Mumbles)

Ah. So you feel as though you've been wasting time. Is that a fair thing to say?

(Mumbled affirmation)

That's understandable. We are, after all, coming up on the end of the year and the end of the decade. There is a certain expectation, whether justified or not, that you should be able or, frankly, even willing to look back at the past month, year, decade, what-have-you, and list all the great, wondrous, BIG accomplishments or milestones.

(Mumble quick)

Yes, but what if I told you that it's a construct? That we're talking about a calendar that is... after all... arbitrary?


(Intro)

I'm sure that, by now, if you spend any amount of time on social media (Twitter, especially) you've seen the one of many popular "What did you accomplish in the last decade?" posts floating around. My advice? Resist. Resist the urge to quantify your accomplishments like that. Resist the urge to box them in. Does it _really_ matter if something happened in December or January if you're making progress on it, regardless? Unless there's a deadline you need to meet, just put that right out of your head. Focus on the process, not the goalline.

"Easier said than done," you might be saying. And, I'll admit, that's true. Seems we're conditioned to wear our successes like badges, to brag about what we've done on social media, to expect accolades about every tiny thing. So it seems only natural that we'd want to collect all those things we're proud of and list them out.

And, to be fair, you can totally do that for yourself if you like. It's a good idea to map out where you've been and where you want to go. I'm not suggesting otherwise. What I _am_ suggesting is that you don't do it to compare yourself with others. Don't fall into the trap of Keeping Up with the Joneses. The only person you should be keeping score against is the former version of you. Don't worry about beating someone else's high score... just focus on beating your own.

I was actually going to do this episode on Impostor Phenomenon (not imposter syndrome!) but the more I thought about the timing, the more I thought that just talking about the pressure of accomplishments (or the guilt of a perceived lack of them) is probably more worthwhile. I'll save the Impostor Phenomenon episode for closer to graduation time, as that seems a bit more appropriate. 

Instead of talking about what you've accomplished over the past however-long, let's focus on planning for the future. In an attempt to actually produce an actionable roadmap for the next five years, I've put together a table with the major areas that I have to work on: the classes I'm teaching each semester, the outside-class but still academic work I do with students, publications, talks, grants, committees, service, and outreach. I'll share a link to the career timeline document I used as inspiration for my own.

See that timeline document helps you map things out but it doesn't leave room for looking at what was planned vs what actually happened. I've just tweaked mine to have a "Planned vs Actual" format. Keeping a kind of journal or at least a running collection of decisions, updates, changes, what-have-you, will help you go back and figure out what took you from the planned to the actual. Identifying those things, the causes for the differences between those two things, that's where you get the most value. Speaking of which...

A while back I saw something on the internet somewhere (who knows these days) that made a point that I think about almost constantly: you know how in science fiction stories that involve time travel, one character always says, "Make sure you don't get involved. One small change back then can have huge, devastating conesequences now." And this random internet person pointed out, 'Why do we think that time travelers' small actions can have huge impacts on the future but we don't think that about our own actions now having huge impacts on our own futures?' And, wow, talk about reframing how you see yourself. It's not just the big, major milestones or life-upending choices that can make planetary-sized changes; sometimes it's something as small as deciding to actually talk to that person you fancy or hitting submit on that job application or deciding to read that book you've been meaning to get to or just saying 'yes' instead of 'no' when someone invites you to something. My life over the past decade has fundamentally changed because of one job application and two off-hand emails. It's real.

Because here's the thing: we live in a straight line. That is, we can only reflect on what has happened, not what might have. And it's just so easy to look back and think, "What if I'd chosen B instead of A?" But unless you're using that kind of reflection to help guide your future actions, it's simply a waste of your time to brood or regret. I mean, yeah, sure, each choice might branch off into an alternate existence or whatever but this is the one you're in sooooo.

Of course, I'm not laboring under the misapprehension that everyone is divvied up the same amount of opportunity and privilege, and, of course, for many even the chance to accomplish something is heavily dependent on the time and capacity to do so that is very often totally outside their power. Just another reason that you shouldn't be comparing yourself to someone else: it's a lot easier to reach homebase if you're already on 3rd.

So, what did you do in this decade? Well, you listened to this, for one, and that's something to be proud of, I think! 


(Outro)

Once again, thank you for listening to this little podcast-thing of mine. This is the final episode of the calendar year as the pod takes a little vacation until school starts back up mid-January, at which point the regular schedule will resume for spring semester. If you found it entertaining or informative or useful, please do subscribe and rate it on the podcatcher of your choice, whether that's iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or however you listen. And, as usual, I'd love to hear from you. You can find me on Twitter at newprofcast. Show notes, transcripts, and more can be found on the website at thenewprofessor.com. Until next time.