On the Impostor Syndrome and publishing an ebook.

From time to time, I have got into this mental state of sabotage in which our mind tricks you so badly that you start to believe that you don’t deserve your own achievements, that you are not that good, and that one day, there will be someone knocking at your door to tell you that it is all over.

I’ve learned that this mental state is known as Impostor Syndrome. According to Wikipedia, “ Impostor Syndrome is a psychological pattern in which individual doubts their skills, talents, or accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a “fraud.” ”

As it turns out, lots of people face or have faced this dilemma, so I’m not the only one. In a great talk from Neil Gaiman, back in 2012, titled “Make Good Art,” he states:

“The problems of failures are hard. The problems of success can be harder because nobody warns you about them; the first problem of any kind of limited success is the unshakeable conviction that you are getting away with something and that at any moment now, they will discover you. It’s impostor syndrome, something my wife Amanda christened the fraud police….”

Neil Gaiman on Make Good Art

Incidentally, I have watched several times (probably 5 times or more) a great TED Talk from Mike Cannon-Brookes on how you can use impostor syndrome to your benefit.

Mike is the co-founder of the great company Atlassian and even someone like him with such a level of success in his life, and he acknowledged that he had faced impostor syndrome at some point in his career.

Check out his TED talk:

Mike Cannon-Brookes on How you can use impostor syndrome to your benefit

My most recent episode of impostor syndrome

I’m a big fan of reading and writing. I’ve been mentored in my career by people that always encouraged me to write blog post on the work I was doing in such a way that I could:

1. Use my own blog post as my encyclopedia later to get back to a problem I faced or solved.
2. To help others that might face the same problem in the future.
3. To challenge the status quo as writing is a great way to reaffirm your knowledge and push yourself to the next level.

I recently started writing a short ebook about container image scanning and its current state-of-the-art. I don’t claim myself an expert on containers or image scanning mechanisms. Nevertheless, I wanted to share my viewpoint about how to operationalize image scanning in an organiation.

Surprisingly, someone bought a copy of the ebook at Leanpub ( yes, I asked my friends if someone did it).

Leanpub notification on someone buying a copy of the ebook

Truth be told, I was not expecting someone to buy the ebook because, in principle, you can get it for free (unless the person didn’t know about it :)). But because the original idea was not to sell it but prove myself, I could start a larger project beyond writing a couple of paragraphs.

Impostor Syndrome showed up after receiving the previous receipt, and my mind started to formulate the following hypothesis:

1. Maybe the person that bought the book mistakenly processed the order.
2. This ebook is not good enough, so the person that bought this copy will get back to me to ask for a reimbursement of his/her payment.
3. Readers had different expectations of the thoughts I have expressed in the ebook.
4. The ebook is not worth $4.99
5. The reader will contact me and tell me that the ebook sucks and suck at writing.
6. I’m probably wrong and what I wrote in the ebook is the result of a lack of visibility and understanding of the containerized ecosystem.

As you can see, our minds can trick you into thinking that we are fundamentally wrong, overriding the initial idea: I did not write the ebook to prove I’m right or wrong and share my viewpoint about the challenges organizations face operationalize container images.

And even when I’m missing the elephant in the room, I will be happy to start a discussion in which arguments can prove that I’m wrong, in which case I will be happy to know that.

How am I dealing with this impostor syndrome?

Impostor Syndrome is a nasty feeling. I’m approaching it by reinforcing the ultimate goal of the ebook: Share my experiences and my viewpoint about the current state of the container images scanning process.

I wanted to express my opinions and the challenges on implementing security mechanisms (tooling and process) to level up the security of the container images, I don’t mean to prove I’m right.

I appreciate feedback either good or bad feedback helps us to grow and improve and I consider myself humble enough to acknowledge when something deserves effort or that it can be improved with minimum effort.

Lastly, It’s great that Leanpub allows you to sell your work but this ebook was not designed to be sold in the first place, so If someone wants a reimbursement that's fine.

Impostor Syndrome is a shitty mental state and when you face it I encourage you to think about what has motivated you to do the things you do. You’ll see that ultimately you were right.