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means you have no real job description, no management feedback, and no outside performance standards to guide you. So instead you come up with your own, which makes for tough going when you work for a demanding and unforgiving boss like yourself.
    Working alone also puts you more at risk for professional isolation. Not having anyone to bounce ideas or decisions off of makes it easier to second-guess yourself. With no one to point out your blind spots or pat you on the back, you can get discouraged more readily and become mired in self-doubt.
    Because it’s so easy to lose perspective when you work alone, one of the best things you can do is connect with another solo worker for regular check-ins. It’s less important that the other person be in your business or field than it is to have someone to help hold you accountable for follow-through and deadlines, to troubleshoot problems, brainstorm ideas, and offer that much-needed feedback that you really do know what you’re doing.
5. You Work in a Creative Field
    After his novel
Everything Is Illuminated
made the
New York Times
bestseller list, Jonathan Safran Foer told a reporter, “I can be very hard on myself. I convince myself that I’m fooling people.” 5 Award-winning author Maya Angelou also worries that her success is a big ruse, once saying, “I have written eleven books, but each time I think, ‘Uh-oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.”
    It’s not just writers. The Internet is full of impostor confessions frompeople in the entertainment industry who despite receiving much acclaim still worry about being unmasked. She may be a bona fide star, but as the stakes got higher, Kate Winslet says, there were times when “I would wake up in the morning before going off to a shoot, and think, I can’t do this. I’m a fraud.” 6 And Don Cheadle says that when he looks at his work, “All I can see is everything I’m doing wrong that is a sham and a fraud.” It doesn’t matter which side of the camera you’re on. 7 When he’s on the set, Michael Uslan, the producer of the Batman movies, says, “I still have this background feeling that one of the security guards might come and throw me out.” 8
    And why wouldn’t they—or you—have these feelings? The very nature of creative work makes those who do it vulnerable to feeling inadequate, especially if you are not formally trained. For one, your work is highly public. Plus you are defined not only by your work but by artistic and literary standards that are completely subjective. How many other occupations do you know where a person’s work is judged by people whose job title is “professional critic”? It’s a challenge to maintain confidence when you know you are only as good as your last painting, your last movie, your last book, when even the brightest stars fade quickly, and where success requires that you prove yourself over and over again in ways few others must.
    But what if you really have achieved a certain degree of notoriety? You might expect to feel more confident. Instead it can cause you to question yourself even more because the reactions of those around you can be so skewed. “When you’re a celebrity,” says writer A. J. Jacobs, “anything that emerges from your mouth that vaguely resembles a joke is cause for gut-busting laughter from everyone within earshot.” 9 With all that adoration it’s only natural to question whether you really deserve the attention.
    Given the nearly universal nature of impostor feelings among your fellow creative types, what if you were to stop fighting it and instead get with the program? The reason I’ve included so many impostor confessionsfrom well-known actors throughout this book is that evidence of their talent is commonly recognized. Even Meryl Streep, the most Academy Award–nominated actor in history, gets cold feet at the beginning of every new project, telling a reporter, “You