As I suspected, I don’t really have Imposter Syndrome. I may, however, occasionally pull the “self-styled imposter” act to fake humility and lower people’s expectations of me.

In short, the researchers concluded, many self-styled impostors are phony phonies: they adopt self-deprecation as a social strategy, consciously or not, and are secretly more confident than they let on.

…Dr. [Rory O'Brien] McElwee said that as a social strategy, projecting oneself as an impostor can lower expectations for a performance and take pressure off a person — as long as the self-deprecation doesn’t go too far. “It’s the difference between saying you got drunk before the SAT and actually doing it,” she said. “One provides a ready excuse, and the other is self-destructive.”

~New York Times

Come to think of it, I think all my classmates at Stanford were “phony phonies” some or most of the time.

And that’s today’s tip for success! ;)