How many times have you intended to rest and ended up working over the festive period? Or intended to work and then not quite got around to it? In this episode I give you a framework to figure out how to make a plan that works for you. Let me help you have a happy holiday!
Transcript
Hello and welcome to episode 11 of the PhD Life Coach. If you're listening to this brand new, it is the week before Christmas. We're in the midst of holiday season and we are going to be thinking about grabbing some rest over that period. Now, I remember when I was a first year PhD student and I was super keen, had had a really busy autumn term, but was feeling really excited about everything and I spoke to my supervisor. A wonderful wise professor and said to him, what should I read over Christmas? I felt like I'd been doing lots of ethics applications and helping my third years in the lab and things like that, practical stuff. And I felt a bit behind on the literature and I said to him, what should I read over Christmas so that I can be ready for next year?
And he said, I'll write you a list. And I was like, excellent, fantastic. And I waited and he came back to me the next day and handed me a little folded piece of paper and when I opened it up, it had three or four novels written on it. He was like, they're great novels. Read some of those. Relax, enjoy your Christmas, come back in the new year, ready to work.
And I always remember that because it would've been so easy for him to set me a reading list or you know, encourage me that I, I really needed to crack on. But instead he really recognized how important it was for us to rest. And you'd think after an interaction like that, that had such impact on me at the time and since I would be really good at resting over holidays and figuring out what I'm doing in terms of when I'm working and when I'm not.
But for years and years I really struggled with it and I call it the problem of neither. I wonder whether any of you have experienced this, that when I don’t make decisions about exactly what I'm doing over the holiday period, whether it's Christmas or summer or the sort of spring break, Easter holidays, or whatever you call it, whatever time of year it is, when there's traditionally holiday period time off, I would think that I needed to catch up on some bits of work, but also how important it would be for me to get a rest and recover.
And so I'd sort of half think about it, but not make any decisions, and then I'd end up with the problem of neither, which is that I would spend the entire holiday period thinking that I should be working, but not working, or then working and thinking that I should spend time with my family. And so I ended up with neither. I ended up not being productive and getting stuff done, and I ended up not having nice, relaxed holiday times either.
And for me, the thing that really helped with this and where I'm way better with the winter holidays now than with any other holidays is one year and I can't remember when exactly I decided to make a concrete rule. Now my birthday is just before Christmas. So Christmas and birthday have always kind of gone together for me, and I decided, you know what?
I don't work between my birthday and New year. I don't work. That's just the rule. There's no messing about on the 23rd thinking, oh, I could just check some emails, getting bored on the 27th from thinking, oh, I'll just get a bit of work done on that paper. I don't work between my birthday and New Year. Now, I'm not suggesting that that's the rule for everybody, although I think everyone should have my birthday as a holiday
I don't think that's the rule for everybody, but what I would really suggest you think about is what are your rules? Because the more you can decide that in advance, and the fewer decisions you have to make, the easier that holiday period can be. So what we're going to think about in this episode is what are the thoughts that make us work during this period anyway? How much work do you actually need or want to do, and how do you decide? And then I'm going to think through some questions that you could ask yourself to really work out what your boundaries are going to be, where they sit.
And I'll talk through some other boundaries that I have as we go through. But first of all, let's think about the thoughts. Why do you work? Why do you work during the traditional holiday season anyway? For some of you, it might be because of your own internal expectations, especially if you are an academic, so you have a teaching load as well as your research.
You may well feel that the holidays is the only time you get to focus on you and things that are good for your career. So there might be a pressure that this is the only time that you can get that done. It might be that you are telling yourself you haven't done enough this semester. And this can be true from PhD students through to full professors that you look back over your autumn semester and you can, and you think that you haven't done enough.
Now hopefully if you listen to last week's episode where we thought about reviewing the year from a strengths perspective with Professor Jenn Cumming. If you haven't listened to that episode, do go back and grab it because it's an amazing episode. And so hopefully if you've listened to that, you'll be feeling more positive about what you've got done this year already.
But for a lot of us that thought, I haven't done enough, I should have finished this. I should be further along with that can be a real driver for feeling like you need to work over the holidays.
There's also the perspective that we are looking ahead to next year, next semester, the next calendar year, and thinking that we really need to get ahead. Perhaps we've got teaching in that semester that we haven't delivered before. Perhaps we've got big projects coming into culmination, whatever it might be. If you are feeling overwhelmed about that new year, it's really easy to tell yourself that you need to be working during the holidays to get ahead of that.
For some people, it's about other people's expectations. A feeling that your supervisor or your boss expects you to be working during the holidays or a more general belief that academics don't take time off.
So sometimes you go on Twitter and we hear about people who are, oh, I can't remember the last time I took a full day off, and whilst usually they’re moaning about it, it can really reinforce this idea that this isn't something that academics do. Academics don't take holidays, and therefore, if I identify as an academic, I want to be an academic, I am an academic, then maybe I need to be like that too. Maybe that's just normal.
Or maybe you want be working during the holidays, maybe actually you enjoy that. Some parts of your job are actually your hobby and the thing you love, and so actually knowing that other people work too is the justification that you need in order for you to work during the holiday too.
Sometimes there can be stuff about the expectation of families here as well, expectations about whether you should be working or not. And to be honest, those can go in both directions. You might have family that think that you have a bit of a slack life as a PhD student or an academic, and actually you want to be showing them “No, no, seriously, it's hard. But others might expect you to be able to drop everything for the entirety of the school holidays and don't understand why you have things to do. So family expectations can be a big part of it as well.
And a big part, and this is what led to my problem of neither that I was talking about at the start, is avoidance of. I'll just see how it goes. and that avoidance of actually making a decision about it.
And that can sound like freedom, that “I'll just do what I feel like on the day” can feel like freedom. And some of you might clinging to that really hard, but I would really urge you to think carefully about that. The problem with a “I'll see how I feel on the day” is you are making decisions, you are making self-regulatory choices, throughout the entire holiday period. And we know from research that that's really fatiguing.
So I would really, really urge you to stick with this podcast and think about the framework that I'm going to offer you for deciding and really consider making at least some decisions about what your boundaries for Christmas are going to be.
Others of you, and particularly those of you who have families, who are responsible for the present-buying, the decorating, and all of these things, you might feel like all you're going to be doing is swapping one lot of work for a different lot of work, so you might as well just get on with it.
That is real. Those of you with big families where perhaps labour in your home isn't evenly distributed, or maybe you're raising children on your own and it can feel like, “well there;s no point making any decisions about this, it's just gonna be head down for Christmas. I need to get all this stuff organised to make Christmas happen and be wonderful for my family. I need to get on and get my work done and there's not any time for me”. Even with those thoughts, I'd really encourage you to come with me on this framework and figure out where you can put boundaries around your rest of Christmas too. Because we know that there's a ton of research that shows that when you are more rested, you are more creative, you get more work done more quickly, your mood is generally better.
We know that rest helps with all of these things yet so often we just sort of stick our heads in the sand and plough on and just keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going. “I just need to get this done. I just need to get that done” when actually stopping to rejuvenate, stopping to replenish ourselves, means that we enter the new year refreshed and excited about our work instead of this relentless feeling that it never stops.
So, here are the questions that I think you should ask yourself before Christmas.
The first you need to explore those thoughts. So I went through a whole list of things that you might be thinking about other people's expectations, your own expectations of what you are, what academics are, the thought that you haven't done enough, the thought that you need to get ahead of the future, the thought you don't deserve rest even, or that you don’t know what you’d do with rest.
So maybe some of you won't be going home for the holiday period. Maybe you're an international student, international member of staff, you don't have people locally. Maybe you are estranged from your family or just don't go back. Maybe you feel like actually you've got a long period of time where you could be working. Even with you guys again, I'd like you to go with me on some of these decisions and really think through what works for you.
So think about those thoughts and I want you to think to what extent are they true? So the thought that you haven't done enough this semester, and so you need to get it finished. To what extent is that actually true? In what ways isn't that true? In what ways have you done loads of things that you perhaps aren't giving yourself credit for?
So to give you an example, I ended up yesterday round at my mum's house discussing with her and my stepdad about my business and the progress that I've made so far since leaving academia at the end of August and one of the things we did was really try to go through all the decisions that I've made, because sometimes, like you guys, I beat myself up that I should be further along and I haven't done as much as I wanted to.
But then when we were talking about it, it was like but you've made decisions about software, you've made decisions about marketing, you've made decisions about business strategy, about your focus, about the order of things you're going to do things in and that's huge and that's cognitively demanding.
And yes, sometimes that looks like me wandering around the house not doing anything very useful, or it looks like me scrolling on social media or taking the dog out for too many walks or whatever it might be. But all of that cognitive load is huge. And I bet if you've got things like that too, things that you are not giving yourself credit for that actually took a lot of your time. Why it's totally understandable that why you are exactly where you are and that there's nothing to catch up.
For those of you thinking you need to get ahead of next year. Is that true? If next year's going to be hard, is the solution to get ahead of it, to get stuff organized, or is the solution to look after yourself and your mental and physical health and go into the new year feeling excited rather than exhausted.
If you believe that there isn't anything for you to do over the holidays, like I say, if you're on your own or you don't have lots happening over the holidays, is that true? Are there other things that you could be doing that would rejuvenate you and you'd enjoy?
So after you've asked yourself, is it true, some of you with some of it will say, yeah, it is true. And if you do what you then ask yourself, okay, if it's true. So what? What do we have to do with that? So if you are thinking, okay, maybe I haven't got enough done this semester. Maybe you haven't, but what if that's ok?
What if you got done what you got done, and that's just where you are and you still deserve a holiday? Because one of the really important things I want you to remember is that rest is not a reward for productivity. Rest is a necessary condition for all humans. No matter how much you want to get done, how little you want to get done, how lazy you are, how energetic you are, rest is a ne is a necessary thing.
You don't have to earn it. You don't have to have done enough this semester in order to rest. You can have had a really slow semester where actually you felt like you're chasing your tail your whole time and you're really behind and you can still rest. In fact, you're probably the person that needs the rest the most.
Because usually when we're like that, it's a sign that we're exhausted and you might not register how exhausted you are, but maybe you are someone who needs the rest more than anybody.
So we really challenge these thoughts, challenge the thoughts that all academics work during the holidays. This is just normal. Challenge the thoughts that my colleagues will judge me if I don't work over the holidays. Challenge the thoughts. I'll be letting my students down if I don't work over the holidays. Really question them, really decide are they true? Do they serve me? Do they help? And I would say for the majority of cases, Ttey're not true and they don't help.
So how do we actually decide? Because like I said, I'm not expecting all of you to take off my holiday to New Year. Not always feasible, especially because grant awarding bodies, I don’t know about around the world, but in the UK, still insist on having early January deadlines for grant applications, which I think should be outlawed, but that's a whole other story.
So some of you might have big grant deadlines in the new year. I accept that. You may not have had a chance to get to it. I get it. You may have things due. Editors seem to set January as a hand in date, maybe because of this kind of general expectation that holidays is when academics get stuff done. If you're an editor, you're in charge of this stuff. Let's get rid of that. Just saying happy to consult on that if anybody wants, but you have a big deadline in January, still ask yourself these following questions
My questions are
When, what, where, who, why, and how. Okay. Just the standard “w” questions that “how” sneaks on into, standard “w” questions. But I want you to ask yourself about them.
I want you to ask yourself them about this upcoming holiday.
So when is it okay for you to work? And there's no right answer to this. Depending on your circumstances, depending on what you need to do, that might vary. But try and make that decision in advance. So I decided, I'm actually extending mine slightly this year. So part of my leaving academia and setting up this business is about work-life balance. My partner, as I've mentioned before, is a teacher. I want to have school holidays off. So apart from the occasional consult, which I am allowing myself to do, I'm not working from the 16th of December is the last day of term for my partner and our daughters.
So I'm not working from the 17th until I'm looking at my diary until first. So Sunday is the first. I'll start work on 2nd of January, and that's my boundary. And I've mentioned an exception to that. I'll come back to how you decide on your exceptions, but what works for you? That may not be feasible for lots of people, but maybe you decide “I don't work between… If you are, if you celebrate Christmas, maybe you don't work Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, boxing Day, full stop. No emails, no writing, no relevant reading, nothing. I don't work Christmas Eve, Christmas day, boxing day. That's the rule. If you celebrate other holidays, maybe you decide on those dates. So really think about what dates work for you.
Maybe you have your kids some of the time, but not other times. You know, maybe you, you don't work while you've got your kids with you and you do work when they're back with another parent or another caregiver, for example. Depending on your family situation, when are you going to work? Write it down. Have it as an actual thing that you've decided.
It really removes the cognitive load to know, “no, it's okay. I'm not working today. It doesn't matter what I feel like I don't work on this day.”
The second question is, what, and this is where I told you I already have a little exception to mine. What work are you willing to do during this period? And that could be, what work are you going to do on the days that you are working
over the period and what work would break your rule almost. So one thing I've seen people do and I've tried to implement when I was a working academic as well, is only doing selfish work. Now, there shouldn't be a concept of selfish work because all of it is our job, and it's a very academic thing to believe that some of our work is selfish.
But what I mean by that, and I think most academics will understand what I mean is, where I did decide that I would do some work during the holidays was where I had a paper to write, a grant to write, something that I enjoyed and something that would directly benefit my career. So I'm a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Some of you working in the UK will understand what that means. It's the highest qualification that you can get around teaching in higher education. I wrote my P F H E A application during part of a holiday season. Again, I put some really strict boundaries around it, but that was something I was like, you know what?
I want this, I think I deserve this. This will help my career progression. And I decided that I would do that. I still had my boundaries around it. Not doing it between Christmas and New Year. But outside of that period, but in the university holidays, I decided that I would do that sort of work.
When I was a working academic, I also had periods of time when I was full blown, just. Off email, didn't look at it at all. And other times where I said that I would be on email, but I would only be responding to emergencies and by emergencies it, I didn't mean I need this for my grant. I meant mental health crises, those sorts of things.
So I would respond to my students during some of those periods, but not all of them. You get to decide. And what I would really urge you is don't make that up as you go along either. Decide now what things are you going to do, what things are okay things to do during the work bits of this holiday season, and what things aren't.
And I would really encourage you to put yourself at the front of that list. It is not selfish to prioritize the things that you need for your career. The things that often get wedged out when you're at everybody else's beck and call, that's not selfish. It's sensible. Ironically, it's what you're going to get rewarded for, so technically it's what our universities want us to be doing, but it often feels like there isn't time. So really decide what you are going to do.
Where. So think about where you are going to work, if you're going to work. Where are you going to be during the holiday season and where are you going to work if you're doing that?
So especially if you go away, are you going to just decide for that whole period I'm away, just not working full stop? Or are you going to decide “I am going to work but how I'll do it is while I'm at my mum's, I will go in the spare room for two hours in the morning to do my work, crack out what I need to get done and finish, and I'm doing it only when I'm sat in the spare room.
Or you decide there's nowhere that you can work in the house. So for two hours on these days, you're going to go to a local coffee shop and crack out the work you'd get done. If you don't decide where you are working, there's a massive tendency to be on email in your phone, and that just puts you in that messy middle where you are not working, but you are not present and having a holiday either. So you're not getting the big important stuff done, but your brain is in work. Your family will know that your brain is in work. You'll not have the rest from it. So decide where you are going to work.
One thing that you can do to really put some boundaries around that is to take email off your phone. If you have your work, email off your phone, disconnect it for the Christmas, disconnect it for the holiday period, so that you have to only be working in the times and places that you have designated as that as work time.
So this one really depends on what stage of academia you are at, but who are you willing to do work for over the holiday period? So I've talked a little bit about making a good chunk of it you, that it's you that you are working for, but maybe you will make some other additions to that. I had holiday periods, and I'm thinking not just about Christmas now, but other times of year where I would I would set aside some time of that holiday period where I'd review drafts for my PhD students. Because I love my PhD students and I don't want to be the one that holds them up. Or where I would respond to panicking emails from undergraduate students because we've got exams in January, for example. I would do that.
What I wouldn't do is respond to emails demanding basic administrative information, timetabling stuff, anything like that. Then it's like, no, you should ask me sooner. You can wait to January. That's fine. So I put boundaries around it based on who I thought needed me the most, who I thought I enjoyed the work, and was really quite strict about that.
Actually, that was something that I feel quite good about that I would ignore emails that weren’t from those people. So who are you willing to do work from? Just to really emphasize here I'm talking about the days that I decided that I would work during the Christmas break. So typically we would finish for Christmas around the 14th, 15th, something like that.
And so I would have that kind of first week where I was, it was university holidays. The students had gone, I wasn't teaching, I didn't have meetings, those sorts of things. But it was before my birthday and so I was still working. I would make some really careful decisions about who I would do work for during that time.
Similarly, there are years where I would decide that actually I would do a couple of days between Christmas and New Year, and I would make decisions about who I would do that for and what work I would do. So really think about that.
And then I want you to think about how, how are you going to work? And some of this we've touched on when you're thinking about where you're going to work, when you're going to work, things like that. But also, how are you going to make this feel nice? How are you going to only set yourself a manageable amount of work so that you actually end the holidays feeling accomplished?
One of the things I used to do with summer breaks is set myself the most. Absolutely unreasonably ridiculously long to-do list. Papers I was going to read, grants I was going to finish, teaching I was going to get ahead of, all of this. It doesn't happen and all it feels overwhelming and so it's harder to get on with, or you work really, really, really, really hard and still finish the holiday feeling rubbish.
So how can you make this nice, make it achievable? How can you make it feel pleasant while you are working? Can you have a blanket? Can you have a mug of nice drink? How can you make it feel like, actually, okay, I'm working during the holiday, but I feel cozy and spoiled. I'm using it as an opportunity to do my reading or things that I love about my work.
I'm going to say for the 10th time, this is not saying that you should work through your holidays. Have days where you have no work at all. These are for the days where you've decided I am going to do some work, or it's needed to do some work. How are you going to make it lovely for yourself?
And the final one is why, and this is perhaps the most important of all, is deciding why you are working and making sure that it's a reason you love, because if your reason why you are working is because you're behind, because you haven't done enough, because everybody else is better than you, everybody else is more on top of you. It's going to feel rubbish while you are working. And there's nothing worse than feeling like other people are out there celebrating with their friends and family, and you are the one working because you are rubbish and you are behind and you haven't done enough.
So figure out a why that you love. If you are going to work, that big “if” again. If you are going to work, figure out a why that you love. I'm going to do this work in this pockets of time, in this place, and I'm going to do it because I deserve my principal fellowship at the Higher Education Academy, and that will help with my career.
I'm going to work in these time slots in this place, and I'm going to make it lovely by having snacks with me because I love my discipline and I don't often get a chance to just read. Do you see what I mean? Make reasons you love.
For those of you who are juggling lots of things at Christmas, this is particularly important for you because there's an enormous guilt around any decision you make, particularly if you are somebody who has responsibility for children at any time, and particularly if you are the primary person that makes Christmas happen. So for you, I want you to really spend time on this why? And you can spend time on the why for all aspects of what you do over Christmas when you are resting. Why are you resting? You're not resting because I'm knackered and I'm sick of you all. That's not a helpful thought.
I'm resting because I deserve it and it's lovely. Why are you spending time with your family? Not because you are obliged to do the Elf on the bloody shelf that no one actually needs. Why do you do Elf on the Shelf? Don't do it. Don't create these things for yourself. But why are you doing it? You're doing it because you want to give your children the joy of the festive season.
Not because everyone will complain and think I'm rubbish if I don't. Why are you working? Because you deserve that intellectual time, because that then allows you to get promoted or whatever it is. Make sure it's reasons always that you love, whichever bits that you are picking King.
Think ahead if you're listening to this, it's the 19th of December. That's the day of release. We are nearly at Christmas. We're in the midst of the festive season. There are so many different religious and cultural activities and rest of alls happening over this period. So whatever you celebrate, whatever the special days are for you, I wish you absolutely wonderful winter holidays, wonderful festive time with the people that you care about. Take a few minutes now to plan out when, what, where, who, how, and most importantly, why you're going to do the things you do over this break period. And let's all start 2023, feeling a little bit more rested and a little bit more cared for.
Next week there is going to be a silly bonus episode which is all about why doing a PhD is like playing Stardew Valley. If you haven't found Stardew Valley, it's a computer game that I waste an inordinate amount of time on, thanks to my stepdaughters. But it's a funny little episode. Just to reassure you, I'm recording it in advance because I won't be working between my birthday and New Year, and I hope you won't be either.
Have a wonderful festive season.
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