Trade-offs, perfectionism, and self-promotion

Recently, someone posted to my facebook page that they had bought a copy of my dissertation book. I am thrilled whenever anyone buys it, it goes without saying. I worked hard on that book and getting some positive return on my efforts feels good—just hearing that someone likes the idea is nice, for that matter. But there’s also a certain tinge of fear—what if someone doesn’t like it? I worked hard on it, but it’s not perfect. And ironically, the more successful my book, the more likely it is that I will hear from people who are disappointed.

Getting negative feedback is a problem that every author faces, and it can feel very personal. The rejection of your work might not be personal (it probably isn’t, given that most of the people who reject your work don’t know you personally), but whatever their cause, such rejections are failed hopes and disappointments (even if you can find silver linings in rejection).  

Rejection of work can be particularly difficult for perfectionists. When you’re a perfectionist, and you struggle to make the compromises demanded by practical tradeoffs, it can be hard enough to stop working on something just because the work itself feels incomplete.  The feeling of incompleteness is frustrating and drives many to say “I’m going to keep working.” It’s uncomfortable to stop working on something if you can see problems with it and think you can fix those problems. The idea that you have to show the work to someone else—to someone who might reject it—adds a layer of emotional complexity: not only is it necessary to stop working on something with known imperfections, but you have to show that work to someone else, creating the opportunity for that other person to see and potentially complain about those imperfections.  That’s not easy. At least it’s not easy for a lot of people.

The perfectionist doesn’t want to turn in imperfect work. That’s fine—having high standards is great. But the problem of tradeoffs—the practical limits created by conflicting issues—means that works are always imperfect. So the perfectionist is going to submit imperfect work (or no work at all). But, it is good to remember, that all work is imperfect, so imperfect works can still be of high quality relative to other similar works.

Beyond just “submitting” a work, is the question of getting attention for that work.  Professors are supposed to read the work of their students—and they often do so in a timely fashion. But when submitting a work to a professor, you can improve the response by how it is presented: you don’t have to focus on the problems that you see. You can focus on the strengths of your work—and that can help how your work is treated. Some self-promotion is valuable even when dealing with people who have a responsibility to read your work. But, if you’ve written something, there’s a good chance that you want it to reach beyond a small group of professors. You may want to get published somewhere, and that means reaching out to people who have no responsibility to you whatsoever.  

Practically speaking, to get your work under the eyes of people—from editors and publishers to readers, you need to promote your work, even if you’re a perfectionist who sees flaws. The facts don’t speak for themselves, quite frankly. No matter the quality of your work, it’s unlikely to be recognized if you don’t promote it. That may be submitting to journals or to publishers or some other avenues. Getting into any of those venues, requires self-promotion. In some cases, it’s obviously and explicitly about promotion, not about the quality of the work itself.  Academic journals don’t worry about whether an article will sell, only whether it satisfies review criteria, but journals are the exception.  Book publishers and non-academic publications all have a clear eye towards selling a work.  If you propose a book to an academic publisher, part of the proposal will be dedicated to describing the potential market and competing titles. And part of the proposal may ask what you do to promote your work.

There are some people who are utterly confident in themselves, and such people don’t necessarily struggle to promote themselves. But for perfectionists, it can be a real problem to self-promote, because the critical, perfectionist eye does not create glowing promotions. For creating promotions, a forgiving eye is more useful and effective.

Some perfectionists can promote their work because of their vast enthusiasm for the work itself: if you’re doing excellent work on a subject that you find exciting, it’s pretty easy to promote that, even if you do see weaknesses.  But perfectionism can drain away such enthusiasm, especially if you’re focusing on problems and not on the strengths of your work.

There’s a part of me that really loves my dissertation book. I would love to say that it’s the absolute best book in its class. On a certain level, I absolutely believe it is excellent and presents ideas that don’t appear in other competing books.  But my perfectionist tendencies get hung up on the compromises and choices I made: should it have been shorter? Should it have been longer? Is it too dense? Is it too lightweight?  Should it have been for a more focused audience?  None of these questions can really be answered by any objective standard, and so my answers—my choices—are uncertain.  This makes me doubt my work, even though I would like to believe that it’s the best in its class.  

Such tradeoffs and the choices made to negotiate those tradeoffs make works seem imperfect—but if the tradeoff is ultimately unavoidable, can you let such a tradeoff stop you from finishing your work and extolling it for its virtues, even if it is imperfect? Keep an eye to the strengths of your work so that you can promote it appropriately.

Multidimensionality, trade-offs, and perfectionism

Willie Dixon, the great blues singer, laid out in specific form one of the general problems that people face in decision making when he sang “I’m built for comfort, I’m not built for speed.” (Howlin’ Wolf did versions to which I’m partial.) The general principle is that sometimes there are multiple desirable characteristics that compete against each other.  In automotive design, one common trade-off is the choice between comfort and speed: higher speeds want lower weight vehicles with stiffer suspensions, which means a bumpy ride, while greater comfort wants a softer suspension and greater weight, for a smoother ride.

One could say that a designer could seek both—indeed, it’s possible to seek both comfort and speed, but generally at some other cost (for example, more care in the design process, and more expensive components): a Porsche may not be any faster than a top-of-the-line Nissan, but it will cost more.

Real-world decisions involve many different considerations—different dimensions on which something can be evaluated. The Howling Wolf example explicitly invokes two dimensions, but most decisions involve far more than two dimensions.  One difficulty in evaluation processes is in balancing different evaluative dimensions. 

Consider, for example, the evaluation of an athlete in a team sport. Strength, size, speed, quickness/reaction time, agility, and balance all matter. So do intelligence, confidence, judgment, and ability to work with others. A professional team that considers adding a player to its roster must consider all of these, as well as considering the player’s future prospects, and the cost of signing that player. Do you get the greatest talent, at possible cost to team chemistry, or do you get less talent to support chemistry? In baseball, two of the greatest second basemen of all time exemplify this question: Rogers Hornsby and Eddie Collins were near contemporaries.  There is little debate that Hornsby was the better hitter, but his teams didn’t do particularly well, and often traded him away. Collins, on the other hand, played a key role on multiple championship teams.  Who was greater?  There isn’t a clear answer.

One trade-off that is central to writers is the trade-off between time and quality, about which I’ve written before. You can choose to spend more time on a project in order to improve its quality, but that additional time spent on the project is time that cannot be spent on other projects.  For researchers, this is essentially a never-ending conflict: research never answers every question—indeed, every answer will lead to new questions (Jorge Luis Borges lays out this problem in his essay “Avatars of the Tortoise”).

Perfectionism inevitably runs up against this reality.  There is no “right” answer to these questions.  There are only decisions that one must make.

I suppose my suggestion for a perfectionist is to look beyond any single project to look at something bigger—something that encompasses any single project—a career, for example.

If you focus on one project and want to make that project perfect, that’s great. But what if making that project better means that you don’t spend time on another project?

Where do you focus perfectionist intentions? On individual projects, at possible cost to your career or to your life? Or do you focus your perfectionist intentions on your career, which might lead to making compromises on an individual project?

Again, there isn’t a clear answer, which is why this is such a thorny issue.  You have to make a decision that serves you.   When there are multiple dimensions on which to make an evaluation, and when there are trade-offs, choices become difficult and there is no really objective standard by which to judge. The choice is yours--don't think you've failed because you chose to make a compromise.

The boy who cried wolf and ad hominem arguments

The story of the boy who cried “wolf” is the story of a person who lies, and as a result is not believed when he tells the truth—to his great detriment.

As an academic, one ought not give in to ad hominem arguments--arguments that a claim is false because the speaker is untrustworthy. A liar who tells you that the earth orbits the sun is telling the truth, even if he/she lies very often. Just because a speaker is untrustworthy, doesn’t mean that she/he isn’t telling the truth on a given occasion. This, indeed, is the resolution/denouement of the story of the boy who cried “wolf:” In the end, the boy falls victim to a real wolf because, having given people reason to doubt his veracity, no one is willing to help him when there is a real wolf.

As an academic, it is always appropriate to check the accuracy of statements that other people make, regardless of who makes the statement.

But in real life, having a record of telling the truth matters.  There’s a reason that The New York Times is more respected than The National Enquirer.  The Times is far less likely to publish utter falsehoods.

If you regularly tell lies, people will stop trusting you.  Someone should tell that to Donald Trump, who made a speech on Wednesday in which he proudly announced that he made up stuff when talking with Justin Trudeau of Canada. Trump may tell the truth sometimes. He may tell the truth often. But if he lies often, then people will stop trusting him. And that may be fine for some contexts, but it will surely make it harder for him to negotiate with foreign leaders who will become disinclined to listen to his promises.

What do you want, and what are you willing to do to get it?

Sometimes I go to a local creative writing group. (My main thing, of course, is writing about the process of writing, but sometimes, as recreation, I work on fiction. I don’t work hard on fiction because it’s relaxation--when I’m ready to focus and deal with frustrations, I turn my attention to writing about writing. Currently I have a book proposal out for my book on using academic literature/writing a literature review, and am working on a draft about choosing a topic/writing a proposal).  

At the creative writing group, we were talking about what we were trying to accomplish. There were four of us. Of the other three: one is trying to complete a book to publish on smashwords; one, a poet, is working on something to give to his family at the holidays; and one is a non-fiction essayist who writes for the therapeutic value while dealing with health issues.  

These differing purposes all call for different approaches and choices about what is important.  Each involves its own sort of compromise: for those seeking publication (me, for my non-fiction; the novelist for his fiction), we have to consider how to finish, how to find an audience and distribute the work.  The poet said “I’m not trying to publish because I want to do what I want to do, not what someone else wants.” Quite rightly, publication in a commercial setting requires having some eye to markets and to pleasing others.  For the novelist, there is less concern on these lines, given the choice to publish on a website that allows all authors to produce their work (providing it meets certain guidelines—it cannot incite people to violence, for example). For me, when I send a proposal out to a publisher or an agent, I have a very focused need to please the publisher or the agent, which means being aware of their desire to sell books (or to represent books that will sell). The attempt to please a publisher/agent/audience certainly does shape a work, but it doesn’t imply necessarily abandoning one’s central precepts. After all, there is still a need to do something original, and that means that something has to come from how I see the world differently from others.

In any event, it is necessary to understand what it is that you want and what must be done for it.  The better that you can identify your desires, the better you can focus on achieving those desires. And this is especially important if you have desires that may conflict.  For the poet in the creative writing group, part of his expressed desire was shaped by previous experiences attempting to publish works of fiction. Those experiences shaped his approach—they made him say : “I don’t want to try to please others with fiction that they will like; I’d rather write poetry that I will like.” Being aware of the different demands, the poet is able to act without confusion, but it does require making some compromises: in order to write what he wants, he sacrifices his opportunity to publish. He may still want to publish, but as a matter of choice, that’s not where he puts his efforts.

If you’re a graduate student writing a thesis or dissertation, there is often some tension between doing what you want and doing what your professors want. For many, this causes serious emotional distress. While facing such battles is not necessarily pleasant, it’s important to keep in mind what you want to accomplish.  Do you want a degree? If so, it’s necessary to figure out a way to please your professors. Do you want to pursue a question in your own way, at your own time? That’s a different path, and a different choice.

(In the case of graduate students, it is often the case that what the professors want is closer to what the student wants than the student realizes. We all have a lot to learn, but if you’re a graduate student, there’s a good chance that your professors will want you to do something that might actually help you, even if you don’t want to do it. After all, there is or ought to be a place in the process for learning, and for learning from your professors, in particular.)

Often people want multiple things that conflict: you might want to lose weight at the same time that you want to eat lots of food. You might want to attend two events that occur simultaneously. You might want to keep money in your wallet and also buy something nice.

If you are clear on what you want, you are in a better position to make good decisions on what you are willing to do to get what you want.

If you want a graduate degree, you have to be willing to satisfy your professors.  If you want to ignore your professors’ requests, you have to be willing to sacrifice getting the degree.  Understanding what you want, and prioritizing what you want helps make good decisions.

But recognize also, that satisfying what someone else wants (in contradiction to your own desires) can often lead to learning and to developing something better. I didn’t always want to do what my professors wanted, but often, having been forced to it, I learned that what they had wanted was to my own benefit.

Accomplishing goals often involves making a sacrifice.  Understanding your goals—all of them—can help you make the right choices in which sacrifices you are willing to make.

(I want to publish a blog post every Monday, but this week I was under the weather, and I wasn't willing to push through my discomfort to write. It was a choice.)

Too many ideas and writer's block

On his 1932-1933 work schedule, Henry Miller wrote a list of “commandments,” the first of which was: “Work on one thing at a time until finished.” In many ways, it’s not a commandment that is entirely practical, but in others, it’s crucial to having a successful experience as a writer.

In the long run, it’s good to have lots of ideas and to start lots of projects. That way, when a forced lull comes in the work on one project, there is another project to work on. This is especially true at the later stages of work. If, for example, you’ve just submitted a final draft of something and are waiting for page proofs to come back for proofreading, then there’s no work that you can do on that project.  It’s a time to start a new project, even though the current one isn’t finished.  And, from the other perspective, it’s good to have an active curiosity, which will suggest many projects of potential value. Exploring those projects can be good to some extent—so long as they don’t confound focused effort.

In the short run, however, having many projects demanding attention can be very counter-productive. Having a lot of ideas that demand attention can prevent giving any one idea sufficient focus.

Here’s what happens to me often:

I have a great idea!

I start to write about the great idea! and decide it’s flawed.

I have another great idea!

I start to write about that new great idea! And then I realize it’s flawed.

repeat ad nauseum

When an idea first comes to me, it’s not fully developed or fully thought out. Writing helps me develop it and work out the problems, but that’s the thing: in the process of working out an idea, I discover problems. Discovering problems can lead to frustration. Frustration can lead to avoidance.

If I have a lot of ideas, then frustration can lead me to briefly engage many different ideas and abandon them all in frustration.  But if I only have one idea—if I stay focused—then, when I hit a problem, I work to resolve the problem, or at least I work to find a resolution.

I can get stuck if I don’t stick to one idea because I can shift through a number of ideas, get frustrated with each, and then get frustrated with the whole process and stop working altogether. 

Working through an idea carefully can be time consuming and difficult. Working with an idea tends to reveal dimensions that I had not previously considered, and then it takes effort to deal with those dimensions. All of that requires focus on the one idea—thus the value of Miller’s “work on one thing.”

If you have a lot of different ideas, they can compete for attention, and each one will seem more exciting and viable from a distance, where the difficulties are less obvious. If you have writer’s block, cut down your focus. Pick one small thing to write about, and put aside all the other cool things that you could write about.

In Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, there is an anecdote of a writing student who was having trouble writing about her town. The teacher told her to write about one street, then about one building, and she continued having trouble. Eventually she tried writing about one brick in one building, and from that point of focus, she was able to produce a lot of writing.

That anecdote captures the sort of writer’s block that a lot of writers face, I think: there is a torrent of ideas waiting to come out, and their competition to come out blocks the process.

Write one thing at a time until finished.

Don’t get blocked because you have too many ideas. If you think that you have nothing to write about, reconsider. Try finding one really small idea that you could write about and work on that idea, and that idea alone, until you’ve made progress.

I partly chose this subject today because I was having trouble finding something to write about—I had skipped over a number of possible ideas and was feeling frustrated. And I recognized that frustration as related to my unwillingness to put in the effort to make any of my ideas work.

"Take the guns first. Go through due process second."

As has been widely reported on sites across the political spectrum, Donald Trump said that we should suspend due process to take people's guns.

Hey, how awesome: the president of the USA suggesting that we discard fundamental rights that have been guaranteed since the Constitution received its first ten amendments--the Bill of Rights. The president of the United States takes an oath to uphold the Constitution. Donald Trump just expressed a cavalier willingness to ignore the Constitution's second, fifth and fourteenth amendments.

The men who voted for the Second Amendment could not have possibly imagined that they were voting to allow people to carry weapons that could kill dozens of people in seconds or minutes. Guns were still muzzle-loaders. You could kill more quickly with a gun's bayonet than with its bullets. But no matter: the Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms.  I believe that there are reasonable limits to the right to bear arms--nobody in their right mind is arguing that people should be allowed to buy their own personal nuclear armaments, even though a nuclear bomb could be classified as "arms." Similarly, I don't believe it's undue restriction on the freedom of speech to outlaw incitement to violence ("Let's kill him," is not just speech when it inspires action). But the Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms. Any move to change that should be approached with deliberation and care.

What bothers me more is the willingness to discard due process. The Republicans like to talk about the rule of law--will they stand up for the rule of law when the president calls for suspending due process?  The Fifth Amendment states that no one shall " be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." The Fourteenth, adopted after the Civil War to curtail the right of the individual states to limit any person's rights, repeats these words, guaranteeing that no state may "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

Due process of law is one of the things that truly does make the United States of America better. That the US has done as good a job maintaining due process is one of the things that truly makes the US great. The US has not always given due process, and those failures are among the nation's greatest shames.

Due process can be difficult and tedious, but due process is what separates a civilized nation of laws from lawless mob rule.

The U.S. Constitution is not without its flaws, but it remains a great work. Its aspirations toward setting up a stable system of Democracy that guarantees individual liberties rather than the rule of despots are noble. Its guarantee of liberties may be nobler than their historical manifestation, but even so, the U.S. has been viewed as a land of freedom and opportunity by people from around the world because many national governments do not offer the same liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.

The Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence, are documents that are fundamentally concerned with guaranteeing individual liberties--they are fundamentally liberal documents. Let's hope that Donald Trump's hostility to liberals does not end up in ignoring the fundamental liberties that make this nation great.