I am often critical of my work. I think of things I did in the past and I think it was bad. I could have done it better. There are always people who are better than me, people who studies faster than me, people who did two bachelor degrees, people who had better grades, who published more papers, who published at better venues, who won best paper awards at a* conference and so on.

The truth is, there will always be someone better than me. I ask what are they doing that I am not doing? What is their secret?

Also, the unhappiness can be seperated into two categories. The first one is, that I am not happy with my work compared to the work of other, the second one is that I am not happy with my work on its own. The former might me more easy to come to terms with. Comparing myself to others can be constructive, because I can improve my work. I know in each individual case, why my work is not as good as theirs. Maybe there are people who really don’t cook with water and really can do magic, but in the most cases I can find improvements that I can apply to my work. The latter might be more difficult to accept. In the first case, you look at something great and have something to stive for, but in the second case, you look at something bad and not really know what to do with it. I might have ideas on how to improve it, but it might not result in an improvement. Hinsight is 20/20, but when I work on something new, I don’t have the hindsight.

What I have noticed about myself is that I take a long time to plan things, in my personal life and in my work. My plans are often not particularly complex, there are details in my plan that I only carry out when I need them. But planning might be too slow.

How can I be happy with my work, when I see all the things I could have done better? I think one way to be happy with my work is if I am happy with the process. With that I mean, if I (1.) was happy while doing the work and if I (2.) am happy with the approach. I am unhappy while doing the work, I think I should change it up until I am happy or cancel it if I can’t find a way to be happy with it. The second one is something I think is important in general. But what if I am unhappy with the approach?