Before you start

This is a short book. You can read it in three or four evenings.

It's for people whose doubt about themselves gets in the way of things they're able to do. You have the point and don't make it. You see the job and don't apply. You finish the work and then spend twice as long again checking it, or you ask three people whether it's all right before you let it go. Afterwards you're often cross with yourself, because part of you knew.

You've been told to believe in yourself. It hasn't worked, and I don't think it can, because belief isn't something you can produce on request. If someone tells you to be confident while everything in you says you aren't up to it, all you can do is pretend, and you already feel you do too much of that.

So this book doesn't ask you to feel confident. It looks at what you do when the doubt arrives, and at the beliefs that make doing it seem sensible. "If I doubt it, there must be a reason." "Doubt keeps me sharp." "If I don't try, I can't fail." "At least I'm not arrogant." Each of these is partly true, and I'll try to give each one its due before I argue with it.

Some of the arguments rest on research. The notes at the back say which studies, and how far I think they can be trusted. The rest is my own reasoning, and I'll say so where it matters.

The practical chapter is number 12. It comes late on purpose. The method is simple enough to fit on a postcard, and you could guess most of it now. What stops people using it is the set of beliefs in chapters 3 to 10, so those come first.

You don't have to wait for chapter 12, though. If a chance comes up tomorrow to say the thing, send the thing or put your name down, take it. Nothing later in the book depends on you holding back in the meantime.

A few chapters ask you to check a claim against your own memory. Please do those. Your own history is better evidence than my say-so, and much of this book is an argument that you've been reading that history unfairly.