Regardless of what I am doing with my life at any one given time, I have long struggled with feelings of having to do more, to be more, to achieve more. I am the one who needs to be winning the awards, the grants, the titles, the mentions, the praise. All the time. And it needs to be grand, and Earth-shattering. You may be fooled to think that this is because I feel like I deserve those things, or because I suffer from some sort of superiority complex, but it is quite the opposite. I have long intertwined my identity (and my self-worth) with my academic achievements, from school, all the way to my present career in academia. It is not that I feel entitled to or worthy of achievements or praise – it is that, without it, I lose a sense of self, and of worth.

When it gets too much (and, inevitably, it does), I find myself asking: why? Why the need to do all these things? What are you trying to prove? Who are you trying to impress? Why do you need the validation? For a long time, I felt this was a problem within me that I needed to sort out (and likely it also is). However, I was recently surprised to find that others go through this sort of mental process, too. Could the pressure to do and achieve always more be a result of external pressures, as well?

While this is certainly not exclusive to the academy, as researchers we are bombarded with messages urging us to achieve and evidence impact, innovation, cutting-edge research, to be the creators of the new generation of this, that or the other. We spend a good chunk of our professional lives striving (or being pressured towards) changing the world. We are told, whatever you are doing, it is only worth doing if it is sending ripples through the space-time continuum of current knowledge. And, let’s be honest, only a very small proportion of all research falls in that category. That does not mean all other research is unimportant, irrelevant or not worth doing.

Advances in knowledge are incremental, and any one given breakthrough builds on years of smaller steps, without which the big break would not be possible.

And while my logical brain is capable of seeing and understanding that fact, it is also true that incremental advances do not create the ‘impact’ I am constantly being asked to deliver and evidence; they do not count towards REF, they do not make shiny CVs or outstanding careers. They do not make me ‘stand out from a sea of candidates’, as I keep being told should be my aim in my professional life. The competitiveness of academia (and of the world) makes it impossible not to compare ourselves with others and to find the areas in which our performance is ‘deficient’ in comparison with highly ‘successful’ individuals.

But what does ‘success’ mean in academia? Become a professor before you’re 30? Winning the best teacher/mentor award every year? Publishing papers exclusively in Nature and Science? Leading an outstanding outreach programme with local schools? Wining ten new grants every academic year? Creating a start-up company? Achieving work-life balance? I don’t know which of these most sounds like success to you – and I still don’t know which one of these sounds like success to me. Either because you get excited about the many potential facets of your work, or because you are looking to tick an undefined number of elusive boxes to get that promotion, it is easy to lose direction trying to find success, not in the least because it is different for everyone. Personally, I struggle with too broad a scope: I take it upon myself to be everything from the dedicated researcher (often biting into those harmful ideas of being a ‘passionate’ over-worker), to being the teacher, the communicator, the inspirational speaker, the society commentator, the friendly scientist on social media answering questions, the aspirational writer, the aspirational scientific advisor of whoever will listen, the blogger (you get my point). And, of course, in trying to do all these things I do none of them quite right; if you set yourself impossible goals, then however much you manage to achieve is not going to be quite as much as you initially wanted. If the goal you set yourself in the morning is to change the world, you are setting yourself up for failure.

Anyone that knows me will tell you I hate bitesize cute acronyms that are supposed to break down complex problems (I find them cringy). However, as someone who has had a personal trainer and who is now undergoing cognitive behavioural therapy (yes, incredibly these two seem to use similar concepts sometimes), I have been actively trying to set myself SMART goals:

• Specific: define a tangible and significant task (e.g. do the dishes or finish a paper).
• Measurable: how will you know when it is done? When you reach 3000 words? When you send a draft to someone, or when you hit ‘submit’? When the dishes are all clean and back in the cupboard? Be specific with yourself.
• Achievable: make sure you can reasonably achieve this (e.g. couch to marathon in 2 days is not achievable).
• Relevant: it needs to mean something to you, to make sense with your plan.
• Time-bound: we all hate them but give yourself a deadline to work to.

Like so many other things in life, this sounds almost like common sense, but taking the time to think through what our goals are, write them down and give them structure can be surprisingly calming. Perhaps take some time to actively sit with yourself and define what it is you want out of your career, or out of life. What is success to you? Once you’ve defined that, draw your road map from where you are to where you want to be, and define the SMART goals that will keep you on that road. At least in my experience (and that is all I can really offer you), I find that this approach helps with the overwhelming and anxiety-inducing thoughts of wanting to and having to do everything at all times in order to be successful. The work continues for me also in learning to disentangle my identity and my worth from my achievements.

The world is so vast, the human condition so fragile, society so complex. Set yourself concrete, realistic goals that mean something to you. You are enough, and your most important contribution to this world is to be kind to those around you. Perhaps it is time, then, to let go of the pressure to change the world?