5 Writing Strategies That Helped Me Break Academic Perfectionism

What J.K Rowling can teach you about psychological bottlenecks

Simple writing systems make many of your tasks much easier.

In 2008, J.K. Rowling stood before Harvard’s graduating class and admitted something that stopped me cold when I first heard it years later, sitting in my university office surrounded by half-finished manuscripts.

She’d been unemployed, a single mother “as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain without being homeless,” writing in cafés with her baby sleeping beside her. Her manuscript had been rejected by twelve publishers. At university, she’d been described as someone who prioritized her social life over studies, lacking ambition and enthusiasm.

Yet she kept writing. Kept submitting. Kept moving forward without waiting for perfection.

Meanwhile, there I was, a PhD with every academic credential, every research tool, every theoretical framework at my disposal, completely paralyzed by the prospect of submitting anything less than the best work I could possibly conceive of.

Here’s what I’ve learned after coaching dozens of early-career researchers: Most of us know exactly what to do in theory. We understand methodology. We’ve read the literature. We know the publication process inside out.