Links I refer to in this episode Dr Andrew Dewar (LinkedIn) Oxygen Conservation Andrew’s podcast episode – From Hire to High Performance Radical Candor by Cal Newport So good they can’t ignore you by Cal Newport Stephen Covey’s Circle of Influence Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. And we have another guest with us this week. And I'm always excited to have guests, as you know, but this one is particularly fun because we go way back. We came through the same PhD program, although not at the same time. I'm much older, but, it meant that we've been through the same department and things like that. And I even supervised my guest's wife, which is very exciting. So my guest is Dr. Andrew Dewar from Oxygen Conservation. So welcome, Andrew. Andrew: Thanks, Vikki. It's one of the first times I've been described as particularly fun, so this is going to be interesting. Vikki: Don't do yourself down. Amazing. Right. So, now, the reason I found you and the reason that we kind of got back in touch to do this was obviously I saw you on a podcast that you did for your organization where you were talking about creating positive environments for your employees. And it was one of these things I just randomly, I think it was on LinkedIn, I just kind of randomly came across, and decided to have a listen, because I knew you, and it sounded interesting. And so much of it, I thought was applicable to academia. And that was why, as you know, why I decided to get in touch and ask you to come and talk with us today. And for people listening, maybe you can tell them a little bit first about your background and how you got to doing what you're doing now. Andrew: Yeah, of course. Well, thank you for listening to the podcast. It's always good to hear that people enjoyed it. My kind of root or career history has been quite a jumble really. So you mentioned that we met at the University of Birmingham where I was doing my PhD and I back then thought like that was me, I was going to be an academic and I did a year as a research associate, a year as a teaching associate and then I went for a job and didn't get it and that made me think, do I love academia? Do I love it enough to move away from family or to live in a different city from my then girlfriend now wife? And I thought, do you know what I don't. I felt relieved when I published a paper, but it didn't really spark like joy and loads of pride. And so I started looking for other jobs and there was this one job that said something about qualitative and quantitative data analysis. I was like, Oh, I can do that. And we turned up at an interview and they saw something in me and I worked for a social integration charity and I was leading a team of basically sales people trying to offer this National Citizen Service program to young people. And it was really awesome. The people were great, but it was that first step out of academia was just great to see how, gosh, you can take these skills, transfer them into another situation and really do some awesome stuff. And that just led me to sort of move into different places. You know, I think I'm quite an ambitious person, so I'm always looking to learn and improve. And so that took me to the public sector to do a few different bits and bobs, including business improvement, which I was really fascinated in. That then took me into an engineering consultancy firm to work on megaprojects, to do business improvement, and then cultural work with big programs, which was fascinating. And then that took me into being the Head of People at Oxygen Conservation. Vikki: Amazing. I had no idea you worked for NCS. I volunteered with NCS one summer. Andrew: Oh, very cool. Vikki: We have listeners from all over the world, but so National Citizen Service probably sounds a little more military than it actually is. But National Citizen Service is a charity that takes young people and gives them experiences during their summers, doesn't it? That they wouldn't otherwise get. Amazing organization. Um, tell us a little bit about what Oxygen Conservation do just to put us in the picture. Because I think it's always interesting for people to know, you're a sports scientist like me, how far and broad you can go with quite a specific background. Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So if you think of the starting point was basically sports science and for me, you know, sports psychology. What I now do is support an organization who's looking to scale conservation. And by that, what we mean is, acquiring large sections of rural land and then doing environmental restoration. And that's so wide and fascinating as a concept, but it's things like woodland creation, peat restoration, river restoration, there's some regenerative agriculture in there, there's properties on these big rural estates so people live there long term. We offer some cottages to people or opportunities to come and stay in the more short term so people get to experience the rural environment, and anything else that you would imagine is associated with these rural places and sort of bringing them back to what they were in the past and what they maybe should be in the future, but doing it in a way that's really right for the environment. So it's all focused on having a positive environmental and a social impact. Vikki: Amazing. So the reason we got you here was to talk about this kind of positive environment. So what do you mean when you talk about creating a positive environment for the people that work in this organization? What does that look like for you? Andrew: Yeah, so at its best, it's that people wake up and they think about starting their work day and they're excited to do it. They believe they can do something really great. They think they're part of something that's bigger than themselves, but they also have that opportunity to improve and deliver really interesting work that they love. As well as working with colleagues that challenge them, that have a laugh with them, that they really enjoy being around. Um, and we're all moving in the same direction to achieve the same vision and ultimately help, you know, in our case, it's the fact that climate and biodiversity crisis. Vikki: And what, this might sound really obvious because all those things sound great, they sound exactly what you'd want from a job, but what benefits do you see when you do create that sort of environment? Andrew: I think, yeah, it sounds really obvious, but I think it's really tricky. But the, the benefits that we see are like that spark of creativity between people, you know, when you've got colleagues that you really love working with. I think there's lots of support between people. And I think that ultimately you can achieve really amazing things. And I think more than you could achieve if it wasn't such a positive culture. Um, but there is a big part of performance and maybe we'll get onto that because there's a big positive and like, this feels great. This is a genuinely amazing feeling thing to do, but there's also a performance element around delivery and impact. So you get that, that positive piece as well as enjoying the journey that you're on with people. Vikki: Yeah, yeah, for sure. So let's think about how it applies to academia. So obviously, you know, it's been a while since you were in academia, but you did postdoc roles and things after your PhD, as you said. So what do you think academia could learn from all of this stuff? Andrew: I think, so it's really interesting because people ask me like what can you apply from sports psychology into other settings and I think there's actually very little that I found over my probably last decade doing that that you can't take from sports psychology and apply into business and I think it's a similar concept with business and into academia. I think I would start with the relationship between a supervisor and a student, be that a PhD student or maybe it's a postdoctoral researcher. I think that in business that relationship with managers is so important. Like have you seen all of the research and all of these concepts basically that you join a company because of the vision and the brand and the work that you're going to do, but you ultimately leave a bad boss and your line manager has such an impact on the experience that you have day to day because they can be the most amazing, support and source of motivation and inspiration and, you know, they've got a plan for the future and you want to do that with them. Or they can be uncommunicative, they can put their own interests in front of your own and all sorts of other negative behaviours. So I think the heart of that for me starts with the relationship and I think it also starts with... there's a great concept from Radical Candor, the book by Kim Scott, which is about this. There's a high care for the person and there's a high care for performance. And I think once you've got that relationship at the centre of that, you can then start to, you know, show that you care for that person and also that you want to drive performance. And I think that in academia it is a performance environment. I think it's a really demanding and tough environment. And I think by putting those two things together, then hopefully would help how you will feel the day to day experience. It would alleviate stress, it would, you know, more positive emotions, more excitement, and ultimately probably leading to better work performance in the future. Vikki: And for listeners, we've mentioned a couple of things. We've mentioned the podcast that Andrew was in before, we've mentioned Radical Candor, the book, I'll link these in the show notes, so you'll be able to find all those things afterwards. Andrew: And just on Radical Candor, I say this to every line manager, If you've got folks working in universities and you've got students or you've got people reporting to you, you might shy away from like in a more popular literature, you might be more comfortable with journals. But if you read one book of such, make a Radical Candor. It is basically like line management, you know, the root essence of it, the real stuff that you ought to get right in one book. And it is my go to recommendation for people who start that, or if you've been doing it 10 years and you realize actually nobody's ever trained me to do this, to be a line manager. Read Radical Candor. It's got stuff about individuals, it's got stuff about the wider organization, and some of it's corporate America, which may or may not apply to individual situations where people work in academia. But the vast majority of it's so helpful. Vikki: That's so good to hear because often, you know, there's, there's quite a lot of these books that people talk about and stuff. And coming from the sort of background that we come from and that the listeners come from, you always query how evidence based is this? Is it grounded in something? Is it just waffle that some dude made up. So, yeah, that's a reminder for me, because Radical Candor has lived in my Audible library for quite a long time and hasn't got listened to yet. So I'm going to bump that to the top of my list now. That's amazing. So some of my listeners are academics, so we're going to start there. What are a couple of things that they could do to be that sort of boss that you're talking about? Andrew: I think co creating a vision with the people that you're working with, I think that's such an important part of leadership. Over the years I've been sort of exploring this and thinking about it and the way that I like to break it down is like, an organization defines why you're doing something. Essentially by wanting to be part of that, you join up to that. But the leaders in the organization essentially decide what you're going to do. You know, what are the objectives and what does the future look like? And then other people who are working with you deliver the how, and you give them that autonomy over the how. So in that, what's the why of the organization? Why does it exist and what are we ultimately trying to do? And what's your piece in that why? Do you have a compelling vision for the future? I mean, there's like so many things like In academia, the forefront of knowledge, delivering something incredible, like that's an awesome vision, but I wonder how often, again, this maybe you can guide me here is how often are people coming back to that and reminding themselves of, actually, this is the kind of big questions that we're answering and this is the work that we're doing and moving the world forward. Vikki: Yeah, I don't think they do enough. So I have this, I have a course called how to be your own best boss, and it's all about self management and I talk one section of it is talking about 10 different qualities that you need to be a good boss and keeping that big vision, that sort of why is one of the things that we talk about and then I think you're right. I think in terms of how academics support their students, but also how students manage themselves, it's something we don't do enough. I think we get bogged down in the day to day, I need to read this and analyze that and da da da. And we almost start to take for granted, I think, the thing we're doing, of course, that's what I'm studying, it feels mundane to you in many ways. I see lots of students query whether their research is ever actually going to be useful anyway, you know, because you feel like it's such a small piece of the jigsaw and all of those things, that I think reminding yourself that you are still part of a jigsaw, even if it feels like your bit is small and your bit isn't progressing as fast as you'd like it to , I think is super helpful. Andrew: Yeah, it's really funny because I do a lot of recruitment, screening a lot of CVs and somebody came across, they had a PhD and I don't know why, but I was like, well, I'll look at like the impact factor of their journals to see, you know, was this a kind of a big deal? And they had a number and I was like, well, I've got nothing to bench that against, that's their number. So I looked at my number, it was significantly lower. I was like, okay, so this person's, their research is well read. That's fantastic. That's really good to know. But like that's the only time I've ever thought about what my research did. However, almost every coaching engagement I have with somebody, I can take the central concept of my research, which is about, which was about defining success as improvement and mastering your craft, as opposed to how you perform relative to other people. And that, that the former definition of success has a positive impact on your emotions and how you think you're performing. I can use that with everyone because you can always get better by improving and I always see people comparing themselves to others. And so. In an academic world, like, I didn't think it was particularly groundbreaking myself, but over the last decade, like so many times I've been like, oh yeah, and like I was a part of that. So that's the other thing to think about is like that perspective over the longer term. Vikki: Yeah, 100%. Just a shout out on impact factors, though. Remember, impact factors are massively disciplinarily influenced. So, sports psychology impact factors are always low, even for incredibly eminent academics, because sports psychology is a relatively small field, whereas I was publishing in biology journals or something like that, they automatically have much higher, so don't use it as a marker, maybe as the size of the kind of reach, but not as the quality of the work, just a little shout out for everybody listening. Um, so one thing I think is different about academia compared to other organizations, and I'd love to hear what you think about this, is you're talking about kind of organizations having an overarching mission, as it were. And universities do, for sure. But I always think that academia is almost like a whole bunch of self employed people who have been forced to work in an organisation. Because they've all usually got their own little visions for success, their own areas that they want to work in, and some people's research will fall very clearly within the university's priorities, and it'll get lots of attention and promotions and all of those things. Other people will find that they're studying something that's, you know, maybe not fashionable or not big at the moment. And then you've got that dynamic between the supervisor and the student as well, where the supervisor kind of wants to set the direction of the PhD, but they also want the student to take real ownership and make decisions and it to be their independent piece of work. So how does all this stuff work, do you think, or have you got any tips for where it's a much less kind of single vision hierarchical setup, as you might see in a company, where we're almost all individuals who are in this big messy place. Andrew: Yeah, really interesting. question and really interesting thing to think about. Let's start with the supervisor and the student and let's come back to the wider piece. But with that, I think that's, for me, that's my language about what and how. And so from the supervisor perspective, I think it's their role to sell the vision, to, you know, to explain the impact, to explain the future, what it would like to get the person excited about that. Particularly if they have a strong vision. I think the other thing that's really good for supervisors is around expectations and clarifying while you're building a really strong relationship, what do you expect and how's that going to work? And part of that is going to be, well, what's the expectation on the student to set the direction, or where are they getting their choice in decision making? And that was something that my supervisor did a great job of, was giving me choice about certain things. Like she recognized the importance of autonomy and, you know, she would hold the line and like really clear about, no, we really ought to do it this way. And these are the reasons, but there was a lot of choice involved. So where is the supervisor? Are you saying, I think this is the direction for us to go. And when are you giving that person the choice about the route that you take, you know, if it's an analogy of an actual journey and if you're not giving any choice, like how are you sparking their motivation? Do you understand motivation? You know, you really ought to because you're going to be working with this person for at least three years and they need to be motivated in that time. And yes, they have an individual role to play, but I think choice about what they do, is really, really useful for how they do it. That would be the other place. So you might decide that, you know, our project is going to be on this topic. You might give them choice about the methods that they go about or some of the individual decision making pieces because that then creates that sense of ownership. The other more complex thing is what happens when you're part of a research group and when that project is part of a larger piece, then how do you then communicate what everybody's doing, because if you're making that relationship as a payer, if actually that supervisor is supervising five people, how do those pieces fit together and how do you ensure collaboration? I think that's where you've got to get more of a team emphasis. So does everybody understand everybody else's role? Does everybody understand what they're trying to achieve and how those pieces link together while balancing the competition between people and trying as much as you can to avoid that and make it an environment where people are celebrating other people's success and lifting them up without feeling a sense of jealousy because people have the ability to deliver good work themselves. So I think that, the kind of individual or kind of smaller group level, I think those things would help. When it gets to the wider university level that becomes a lot more complicated, I think. Vikki: Yeah, for sure. And I think even within PhDs, because you and I have a similar, you know, background in terms that we're in slightly different disciplines, but similar background in terms of what we're used to. When I work with my clients across different disciplines, it varies so hugely. So I have everything from clients whose supervisors have got a grant. These are the projects. This is what you need to do. And there is, you know, a little bit of wiggle room in terms of exactly how you analyze it or exactly how you write up the data or whatever. But mostly, here you go, funded position, off you go, all the way through. So I have a lot of clients who usually in the arts and humanities, social sciences, that sort of end of the world, who they're self funding, they've come up with a project, they've proposed it to an academic, and the academic has gone, yeah, I can probably supervise that. Yeah. All right. You tell me what you want to do. I'll put in some effort from time to time and everything in between, right? And I think thinking through what that kind of vision for the future looks like and how you create that environment where you both feel like you're moving in the same direction and you're supporting each other and you've got the kind of, I don't know if it's the right amount of autonomy, but like a good amount of autonomy. I think across that continuum is such an interesting challenge. Andrew: I think so. And I think the advice that I would give would be probably completely different either end of that spectrum. Vikki: Yeah. Andrew: So on the end of the spectrum when it's set, you're right, you've got a lot less autonomy, but that's not the only driver of intrinsic motivation, which is really what I'm talking about. The kind of competence or mastery is another key piece. And then I guess relatedness would be my third key concept. So relatedness, we think we've covered with the relationship we talked about. Can we give them choices? Can you encourage them to be on the path of mastery? So if you've got a very set idea of what it looks like, then I would be reinforcing this idea that the person is gaining skills, learning, improving, moving forward, because you want to be building that as a source of confidence. And if you're meeting them once a week or once a fortnight, which if you're not doing at the very least, Do it. Pull your socks up, because it gives you that opportunity to build confidence, you know, know what they're doing and even just say, Oh, that's good. Well done. You know, thank you for doing that. There's tiny little nudges that help somebody build up that through positive feedback. I think that's so useful. And then on the other side, when you've got no structure, very little structure, I think that is on the student to be engaging and selling the vision to the academic and saying, okay, we need to be bought into this because this is what you're doing. And it starts as a relationship of the supervisor helping the student. You need to get them drawn in and it become at least a partnership. If not, then realizing that you're helping them as well so that they can invest the right amount of time and support that you need to be flourishing. And I think also like having the open conversation when you feel comfortable to do it. But I would think probably within the first three months of What level of support do you think you need at what stages? What do you do when you have disagreements? You know, those kind of conversations to really understand how you're going to work together and how do you know when it's going to go well and what happens when something doesn't go well, because you're going to work together for quite a long time. You're not always going to agree, but to be able to talk it out is just so helpful. Vikki: Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, thephdlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful. I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately. To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one to one coaching, or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with. So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up. Vikki: Now I know an awful lot of my listeners are PhD students who are on the kind of receiving end, as it were, of a lot of the things we've talked about, and you've started to touch on it there, but if people are listening and they're thinking, I don't think the environment is exactly how you say it is, what can they do? What can they do from their side, assuming they can't change their supervisors, what can they do to change their experience of it? Andrew: So I'm going to give you one concept which I'm going to just going to put my cards on the table. I've never looked into the research behind it so you can like contact me via LinkedIn and fact check me and tell me I'm wrong, I would love that, that would just be the best. But I take people towards this concept of circle of influence, have you come across that before? Vikki: Yeah, Stephen Covey, yes. Andrew: There we go, yeah, which, you know, um, Cal Newport is doing a pretty good job of unpicking all of Stephen Covey's work, but that's, but the concept is good, which is that at the centre, if you imagine a diagram at the centre, you've got the things that you can control, your thoughts, your actions, your effort, for example. There's another slightly bigger circle outside that where it's things that you can influence. You know, other people's perceptions of you, some things that have, you know, um, things that can happen in your life. And then you've got things you can't control, such as the weather or, you know, big geopolitical events. Vikki: For the people listening, this is coming out probably January time, something like that. We're recording this on the day of the U. S. presidential election results, so Geopolitical events are out of our control, especially as people who aren't American and can't vote. Andrew: Exactly. Very much right outside of that. Um, bring it back and focus on what you can control. This is an old sports psychology trick because you are going to feel... like it's anxiety in sports settings, isn't it? If you're a part of a team, you don't know if you're going to win the league, and actually your level of ability to control that is pretty limited unless you're a star player who can somehow win the game, all the games by yourself, but I was never that person, I was very much a small cog. But what you can do is focus on your piece, so am I putting in the effort, am I focused, am I doing the right things? So I think that's the first thing for people. The second thing I would say is just some really simple interventions. Like, okay, are you starting your day with a clear picture of like, one thing that you want to get done today? Or at the very least, even if it's a couple of things, it's not like 20 things that you're never going to get done. If you were honest with yourself and looked at, And then are you ending your day by looking back at the things that you have done? Like, how simple is that to do? I think if everybody paused at the moment and said, Are you actually doing it? Like, the vast majority would be like, No, no, what I like to do is set a massive to do list that I think I can get done, but I know deep down I never will. And then at the end of the day I take all of the things I haven't done and I put them into tomorrow on top of another massive list of things to do. And I don't look at any of the good things that I've done, because why would I do that? Vikki: While beating myself up about the fact that I didn't finish this unreasonable list. Andrew: Exactly. It's not, to make you feel better, if you're doing that, you're not alone. People do it in business. I'm coaching a lot of people with the same thing. So I'm really trying to flip that dynamic of saying, actually, What's the most important thing to do and do that once you've done that big tick well done Recognizing you did that and then you get to a few more things great and then at the end of the day actually looking back and thinking I did some good stuff today. Like it's not gonna be perfect It's not gonna have changed the world in a day But every day that you look back and think Yeah, I did some good things. That's building the confidence when, you know, great things happen and not so great things happen. So that's another thing. And then the other one is, I just mentioned Cal Newport in passing, and he's jumped back into my head. He's doing some really interesting things. Started with a book, Deep Work. Now, Cal Newport is an academic. He's a computer scientist. So he probably is pretty well researched, but he writes books on productivity. He's also got a podcast. Something around his work would be really helpful. He talks about lots of ways of planning time, so multi scale planning, how to be productive, and he is a professor in an American university, so he knows the demands during term time, he knows the demands out of term time when it comes to writing. So if people, like, this is something that I don't think people tell you is, you can be more productive, you can stop berating yourself for not achieving things, and you can learn ways of doing more. And actually, when you learn those tools and techniques, your life becomes a lot better. Vikki: Yeah, for sure. There's another book that he wrote, and I'm looking over there because it's my books, but I don't think Andrew: There's Slow Productivity, that's his recent one. Vikki: There was one earlier than that that was, So Good They Can't Ignore You, I think it was called? Yeah. Was that called? Andrew: He also wrote books on like, how to be a grade A student. That's how he got started. Yes. He came up doing his degree. Vikki: That one I haven't read. The So Good They Can't Ignore You, I love. It's all about, I'm 90, I will double check and make sure it's in the show notes. I'm 90 percent sure it was Cal Newport. If it wasn't, it's a good book anyway. It was all about, rather than necessarily following, like, your passion, you know, when people don't know what they want to do. It's like, oh, follow your passion. I was like, what's that? Um, his argument is get really, really good at something. And I think, I mean, you're a really good example of that, right? You went and you did your sports psychology PhD. You got really good at understanding what motivates people to do things and what motivates them in a healthy, sustainable way. And now you're off, you know, you might have thought that your passion was applying that to sport originally, I assume, as you came to the sports science department, but now you're off applying that in so many different settings across your career. Um, that's a really good one. I love those really tangible tips for what people can do. And I want to, I mentioned the course that I run, Be Your Own Best Boss, which is like an online self paced thing that people can work their way through. And one other thing, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. One of the things I love to, recommend to my clients and that that whole course is about is the notion of if you think about what you would want from your very perfect boss, how they would treat you, how they would organize your time, how they would keep you motivated, how they would help you feel engaged, all of those things. You kind of invent that boss. And usually when you ask somebody to do that, they don't come up with a boss who's yelling at them and berating them and reminding them of all their failures and those things, but they equally don't come up with a boss who's like, Oh, it doesn't matter. You can do it tomorrow. It's fine. It's no big deal. They can usually come up with, it varies a bit with different people, but something in the middle where that person kind of believes in you is ambitious for you, but is also compassionate and understanding that everything's not perfect, like you say. And what I try and encourage people to do is channel that boss for themselves. Because often we have some control over who our bosses are. You know, we can move, we can change supervisors and things. But especially if you've started a PhD, you're often wedged into a relationship for a few years. You can't necessarily control, maybe influence, you can't necessarily control what they do, but what you can control, what is very firmly in that circle of control, is how you treat yourself. And I think that giving yourself clear guidance of what's an appropriate amount of work for today, recognizing when you've done it, all of those things, for me comes into that being a really good boss to yourself so that you can succeed and you speak to yourself in a way that you would want a boss to speak to you. Andrew: Yeah, I think that's a really useful concept. I think that, you know, would you speak to your friend the way you speak to yourself? Sometimes it's a good prompt. And I think, I think you're right. I think that what would be those expectations because you're ultimately trying to do something and achieve something really big and being held to that is really important sometimes, but also being like knowing it's okay to make mistakes or it's okay to get things wrong is absolutely critical as well. That's the other thing about, I guess, cultures that's important is you can have a really high expectation of performance, but you can't drive a perfectionistic culture, because you think you should, like, and we see things. If you watch Simone Biles at the Olympics or some, like, other elite performer, you think they're perfect. But if they're, if you are trying to constantly be perfect, it actually moves you further away from being any good. So like recognizing that you can make mistakes and giving yourself a break. And then the other thing is what you spoke there for me, Vikki, was it's sometimes difficult to know how much to work because that's quite an endless, you know, challenge and there's always things that you can do. Sometimes I find it better to think about, well, how much time do you need to recover? And almost this sports psychologist coming at me again, like if you just played a game of tennis or you just on a big weights workout? You've just done whatever your sport of choice is. How much time do you give yourself to recover until you do it again? And what are the things that you do when you're recovering? So do you sleep and eat? And maybe sit and watch Netflix? Or sit and do a puzzle, like whatever that thing is? Well, what's your recovery at the end of your work day? Yeah. You know, what do you, what do you do? What brings you, what fills your tank and gives you energy? And I, I went through a period of burnout at the end of 2023, was it? Yeah, 2023. And I really had to do a lot of thought about like, is this what I want to be doing with my life? Is this giving me that positive environment and sustaining me and giving me energy at work? And it was like, no, this is pre Oxygen Conservation, just to make that very clear. But then I had to get really good at, well, what am I doing? What, what gives me energy? And what are the things I do that I think I do for fun, but actually take an energy in a weird way, in that either mental, emotional, or physical sense. So that'd be another thing for people to think about is like, how are you recovering? And like, If you can't stand reading at the end of the day because you've spent your entire day reading and writing, don't do it. Just like put on Netflix or go for a walk or whatever it is. Vikki: Yeah, I love that. That is such a good way of framing it. And now I feel like this discussion is going on forever, but I wanna share with you one other thing. So I took part in like an online retreat thing for solo business owners that was run by Karin Nordin, who is a coach that we've talking about before we came on recording. Wonderful coach, people listening, follow her on Instagram. She's amazing. I love her. She has a PhD in behavior change as well and in this teamless retreat, one of the things she said is that the time that we allocate to tasks is the parameter that determines how we do them. And I loved that because so often people ask me, I don't know if I can get this done in the time. I don't know how long this is going to take. All of these sort of slightly vague questions that imply there's an amount of time, that is the right amount of time, to get this task done. And her argument was that you decide in advance how much time you have to give this task, and on the basis of that, you decide how you do it. So if you only have a short amount of time to give it, it's going to be limited scope, so it's going to be focused on something quite small, it's going to be quite short, it's going to be a bit rougher than perhaps you would intend, it's going to not have as beautiful slides or whatever it might be, you decide what bits you prioritise. But by deciding how long you have to do it, you then decide exactly what end product you're expecting to get during that time. And it works so much better than having a kind of endless, I'll see how long this thing takes, and then realizing that you can't get it done. I love that. I thought that was so useful. Andrew: Yeah, that's a brilliant concept. I think I've used something similar in my working life, which is when somebody asks something of you, I generally want to say yes, because I want to perform and you want to be, you know, seen as being doing good work. But the trick is be like, if you want that tomorrow, I can get you this, maybe an outline. If you give me to the end of the week, I can give you like a full PowerPoint presentation with beautiful photos and the whole thing's done. Which would you prefer? Oh, I'll take it at the end of next week. Thank you. And like, so that's much better. So it's that piece of it. Establish the time and then when you've got the time, then you can work as, you can work really hard in that time and get it to the level of quality you get it to. But there's also an element of realism in that, isn't there? Because, you know, you ain't writing a paper in a day, like a fully formed, completely high quality paper, unless you're amazing at it. I mean, I certainly wasn't. Vikki: Oh, well, um, yeah, absolutely. But that's when you then decide, if I've only got a day to give myself, then I'm not writing a paper. Andrew: Exactly. And that's where you might get an outline or you might get a paragraph. Vikki: Yeah. Thinking of it like that, the realism then forces you to actually make a decision because that's what I think all of us do. And I do think this connects with the kind of positive environment because it's a problem when supervisors don't make decisions either. I think what lots of us do is we sort of vaguely look at our tasks, vaguely think they don't all fit, tell ourselves they kind of have to all fit, And so just start work. And we avoid the uncomfortableness of having to decide that something definitely doesn't fit, and we're going to have to either tell someone it doesn't fit, or we're going to have to deal with our emotions about the fact that we'd love to do it but we're not going to be able to. And so yeah, it's absolutely not about just going, oh I've got four hours I can write a lit review, happy days, let's go. It's, if I literally only have four hours, I can't do a lit review. I could do a blog post about this and talk about one or two articles. I could, you know, happy days. Let's do that. You know, it can be a little bit research informed, a little bit informal, go up on the internet, happy days, but I can't do a lit review because I've only got four hours. And yeah, I think it sort of encourages you to make decisions that can feel uncomfortable, but it will need to be made at some point when you realize that you can't do it. Andrew: And it's, it's such an important life skill, the ability to make those decisions. Because ultimately what we're talking about is most often not the things at the really top of your to do list, the most important things, it's the things at the bottom. And what are the multiple things at the bottom that I can either stop doing or delay in order to allow me to do the really important things. Learning that skill early in a career is brilliant because it sets you up for success in the future. But a question for, for you and the students out there, if you've got a supervisor who's setting a task and the timeline doesn't be realistic, Do you think that they know, the supervisor, knows how long it will take you, the student, to do that work? Like, do you think they've gone through the cognitive processing of, Okay, this needs to be done, but, you know, my student will probably take, hmm, eight hours to do that. So what I'll ask them to do is do it in four. Like, I just don't, I don't think people know. Vikki: I don't think they do. And this is, this goes back to the whole thing about universities being a performance environment. One of the problems I see is that because universities are so pressured, um, time pressured, money pressured, all of those things at the moment, um, supervisors are often, and I say this with love and respect having been one, um, because it was definitely true for me, supervisors are not showing up as their best selves all the time because they're under pressure for 47 other things other than your projects. And so sometimes we simply don't have either the time or the cognitive capacity to go through and go actually, I don't think they can write a lit review because they've also got that teaching they've also got this da da da and that's where I'd say to students One way to push back on things like that is to say, can we just take a minute to go through what the steps involved in doing what you're asking me to do is just so that we can clarify, how long it's likely to actually take and whether it is that much of a priority. I remember doing this and I won't name anyone. I think they were around your time. I'll tell you when we stopped recording. I was second supervising with a member of staff who was quite enthusiastic, shall we say, on what he wanted done and had lots of ideas and things. And he'd be like, yeah, yeah, just run that analysis again doing this. And he was doing like lab work stuff. Um, and I remember sitting there as a second supervisor with relatively terrified looking students and I'd be like, that's probably four days full time work. Do you care about it four days worth? Oh, no, no, definitely not. Don't, ignore that. Forget I said it. And I think sometimes it was easy for me. I was the same level as this person. It was easy for me to say that. It's harder if you're the student in that situation. But being able to go let's break that down and work out what the steps involved are because partly supervisors, when it comes to the practical side of things, it's a long time since most of them have done it. Whether that's accessing archives, whether it's collecting data in the laboratory, running biochemical tests, whatever. It's a long time since they've done it themselves and often they forget how fiddly and how long these things take and when things go wrong and all that stuff. But also I think they forget that, you know, you and I could knock up an introduction to a paper, if it was on a topic we'd written about before, we could knock up an introduction to a paper relatively straightforwardly. It'd take a bit of thought, but it wouldn't be that big a deal. Because even if we weren't up to date with the literature, we'd know roughly what people we needed to be looking for, we'd know what keywords to search for, we'd be able to understand them quickly and put them in context when we read them. And I think the other part of it is the supervisors often forget that what they could do in that period of time is not necessarily how long it will take somebody who's got less context, less skills, less experience, less confidence often. You know, when you're experienced, it's easy to say, you know, Oh yeah, I think that covers pretty much. The key points. I think we're good to go. Let's go. And so I think remembering that when they're setting goals is really, really important. Andrew: Yeah, I totally agree. I think them not knowing the time associated. I think also if you could approach that with the genuine, as the student with a genuine curious mindset and you can go to somebody and say, they asked you to do something and you can say, right, well actually I've probably got about, let's say 12 hours this week because I've got these other things on my to do list. I think what I should do is prioritize X and Y and drop this. What do you think? That's such a good discussion because it shows, you know you're on top of your time, it shows you know what you're supposed to be doing. And it also then you offer some element of prioritization. And then the supervisor can then be like, Oh, why are you doing that? And you're like, I would hope it's in a very gentle way. Talk to me about this. Why is that important? And then you can realign on priorities because if you haven't done this, like you will be drifting. You won't know about it, but you might be drifting on what's important. So taking things and maybe presenting them in that kind of way, I think really allows for a positive discussion, you kind of lead the supervisor to what you're seeking. Vikki: That is brilliant advice because I think so often students think that the way to impress their supervisors is by being able to do everything and being able to be on top of it and not worrying and not being anxious and all of those things. And I think it's a huge sign, like you say, of confidence and maturity and all those things to be able to go, okay, I have this many hours this week. Does this fit? Is there anything I should be doing? And there are times, you know, I've had people in the past when I was supervising them that would have that sort of conversation and they'd say, you know, and I spend eight hours, I don't know, updating my reference manager or something and I'll be like, Oh, okay. Let's have a conversation about that because if that's what's filling up your time, we can, there's ways I can help you. There's ways we can make this more streamlined for it. And we definitely don't want to be spending that much time on that. Or you go, Oh yeah, if you're spending eight hours doing this really important thing, whatever it is, then I understand why it might take a month to get this piece of writing done because you've only got this much time to give to it. That, that makes sense. I hadn't thought about that. Andrew: Yeah. I will have a say. My supervisor gave me one of the best pieces of feedback that I think I've ever got, which was probably in second year. She sat me down and she was like, do you want to finish on time? And I was like, yeah, of course. Like I have no money, like there's no option. So she was like, you need to work more. And I went back and I said to Jo, my then girlfriend, now wife, I was like, how could she say that? I'm working nine to five. I'm doing all this kind of stuff. I had a bit of a rage. And I was like. Oh, she's, she's right. This takes more and it did towards the end. Now, if I was doing it again, the more sustainable version would be to work on productivity to really like really prioritize and to put in a lot of work and recover really well over the time. But there are times you just have to put in the work, like you have to do that a little bit more. But again, those skills that you've learned about recovering and prioritizing are going to help in that regard because that's what's going to get you through that. So, we're saying this, and yes it has to be realistic, but don't be concerned if your supervisor pushes back and says there's a time to push. Before a conference, for example, and you haven't written your presentation, that's a time to push. You might have to do a bit more. Vikki: But I think even within that, I agree completely. And it's something I coach a lot of write up students. And it's something we talk about that yet you're not necessarily aiming for a work pattern that is sustainable year in, year out, you're looking for a work pattern that's sustainable for the period of time you've got left. Um, and one of the things we talk about then is, okay, if you're going to work more hours, A, how are you making sure that those hours are useful? So the productivity piece that you're talking about, but B, how are you going to speak to and look after yourself during that? So if we go back to your sports analogies that you've talked about before, if it's a period of heavy competition, then those athletes, yeah, they're training really hard. They're competing really hard. They're very physically, you know, Busy, for want of a better phrase. But their team are going to wrap around them, things that help quicker recovery, support, you know, psychological support, all of those sorts of things, so that if you are putting in tons of hours, let's at least sort of cushion that around with sleep and very easy to grab healthy food. So like not just having pizza, but equally not deciding that you're going to start some new regime where you're cooking from scratch and blah, blah, blah. Easy stuff that you can grab. Um, what things can you drop from your life for a little while? Take the pressure off you and say, you know what? There's just not space for those right now. I'll come back to it. Um, and how can you, you know, going back to your thing about how you start and finish each day, how after those long days, can you be congratulating yourself about how hard you're working and how I'm not sure how proud you are of how much you're doing and how you, you know, you're really pushing on rather than ending your days going, oh my god, I'm working so hard and I still don't think I'm going to get there. I still don't know this is possible. I'm not. It's probably not good enough. They're probably going to tell me I'm rubbish and all these other things. Because I think often we add a whole load of baggage on top of the hard work. that just make it really, really unpleasant. Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And so recognising the positives is really key in that. The other thing that I did as well, I played a lot of music growing up and music really changes my moods and I can use it to manipulate how I feel. So I had certain albums that I would put on at the start of a day to get me into writing. And I knew that , literally to get you in that right mindset. So that's another sports psychology trick. It's almost a pre performance routine. It might not be music for everybody, it could be me like brewing a cup of tea and just taking a mindful moment to enjoy that or having a lovely coffee or whatever. But something that gets you into that mindset and then just getting moving can be really useful too. Vikki: Love that. So, for me, one thing that's been really useful in this is, obviously there's all the advice that people can use to create their own positive environments and to create positive environments for other people. But I think there's a bigger piece here about using research to optimise environments and performance. in universities or, or any other organizations. And I think we're often quite bad at doing that. We sort of talk about research led in terms of the teaching that we do and perhaps our impact on the outside world. But I don't see lots of evidence of universities using research, like you're talking about sports psychology research, to guide how we actually work. And I just wonder what views you've got about that, whether we should be doing that more, and if you've got any ideas why people don't at the moment. Andrew: I think, I think there certainly should be. I think if you move outside of academia, There's some more barriers to getting that research, like, you know, paywalls and such, but not massively, so there's more and more that's freely available, and there's loads of other things online. But I think universities and other big organisations are difficult to change, you know, notoriously so, and if you think about big change projects in terms of reorganizing, like 20 percent of them are really ultimately successful. However, what we can be looking to do is like, what are the incremental improvements that we can make? And so that starts with understanding really what you're trying to achieve, I would think, and then trying to look at ways of doing that more effectively, most likely through making small incremental steps that people are going to be more likely to be comfortable with. And I think that's the other thing is that I guess humans are ultimately pretty self serving in an extent. Like we can be, there's amazing capacity to do things for other people, but if you want to get somebody to change the way that they're working, you have to make it better for them. So I think that's something I, I honestly don't know how you do it at the big, Institutional level because partly because it's a big organization to change, but partly because I don't understand like what is most important. What are you optimizing for as a university? Is it student experience? Is it academic record? Is it something else? Is it profit and loss? Like, what is the driver? And it's probably all of them. And how do you make and square that circle of it? How do you do the research and the student experience incredibly well, and then drive the positive outcomes that you want? Like, that's essentially what we're trying to do at Oxygen Conservation, which is why we're leading with quality environmental improvements done in the right way to deliver social impact. We think by doing those things really well, we will generate profit as a result down the line. Whereas if we flip that situation and say actually we want profit and we want to be an environmental company, you wouldn't do it right. You'd end up sacrificing your quality and your decisions, and then ultimately you wouldn't make any money anyway. So I guess that, from a very naive perspective from the universities is, what are you trying to optimise for and how can you do it in a way That gives you positive outcomes. Vikki: Yeah, I love that. And the reason, if people who are watching this on YouTube will have seen that I was smirking while you were saying that. That wasn't me smirking at your naivety. Because I think what you've put your finger on is the absolute essence of the problem. And it's not that you don't know that. It's that the vast majority of universities haven't decided that. The vast majority of universities still think that they can be sector leading in research, sector leading in teaching, sector leading in student experience, da da da. And those things do and should relate to each other. Um, but any change project is usually run by Pro Vice Chancellor for research, for research, Pro Vice Chancellor education, for the teaching ones or whatever. And so they're very siloed within one of the aims of the university. And often they don't take into account, not in any meaningful way anyway, the kind of trade offs between well actually if we're putting all this effort into performing well in the research measures, how are we gonna relieve pressure a little bit on what we're doing on the teaching side or the student side or vice versa, right? And some universities do it better than others but I think that is one of the massive things is that when you refuse to make a decision, going back to the things we talked about at an individual level, when organizations refuse to make decisions or don't see the need to make decisions about if we prioritize this, that means something else steps back, then you end up in that position that we've all found ourselves, where you're trying to do everything and everything has to be great. And that's just a recipe for burnout, as you say. Andrew: Well, absolutely. Because, you know, academics by nature, just have like, far too much to do. And across, are they still working with those three main elements of research, teaching and administration? Vikki: Uh, yes, but then people have then thrown in, obviously there's much more on impact and influence now. So that knowledge transfer, that side of things is a much bigger thing now. So certainly in the UK where we have the research excellence framework, something like 10 percent of the score is to do with, with your impact. So there's all that side of things. There's a much bigger, understandable, I agree with it on principle, emphasis on outreach and trying to inspire people to come to university who wouldn't otherwise necessarily consider themselves a university person and all that stuff, so schools outreach and all that good work, and then obviously all the kind of, there's the administration of the doing of the jobs but also the kind of broader leadership and strategic leadership, and um, Yeah, there is a huge issue with universities and academics, feeling like they should be able to excel at all of those, all the time as well. Andrew: Whereas, if you take it into an organisation, let's say you take it into a random business doing whatever, what you'd be talking about is a senior person in a business, a manager, a head of, maybe a director, depending on if we're talking about lecturer, senior lecturer, professor, reader, whatever. And what we're saying is we want you to do all these things is really important for the business. You don't really have anyone to support you or to delegate to you. Like, yeah, you've got some people supporting you with research, but who's supporting on teaching and on outreach and all these other things. And let's be honest, like the admin probably isn't very fun. So you don't want to do it. I mean, have you ever been taught how to do outreach? So there's all sorts of challenges there, but I guess that's an opportunity for the students is to offer to support in those elements, because if that's your career path and you want to be doing that in the future, that's what we do in organization. We pair them up with somebody and say, right, well, you supervisor teach the person how to do it and then they'll take some work off your plate and then they can not do some stuff that they didn't think that they, like at the bottom of their to do list and everybody gets freed up a little as a result. Vikki: Yeah for sure and that opens up whole other conversations about how then the academics have to make time to support the students so that it becomes a learning experience and not just a dumping experience and all of those things. Andrew: We should do a part two where we have an actual academic and we can put these ideas in and they can tell us that it's terrible and it'll never work. Vikki: They'll tell us why it will not work. But I think my take home from that is not so much, it could be a really depressing take home that higher education is fundamentally broken, which I do think to some extent it is. But. What I think is really important for our listeners to take from that is that means if you can't do it all, if you are finding that you're having to do some things to the best of your ability, some things a bit shoddily and other things you just forget entirely, it's not about you. That is not a personal failing. That is an inevitable consequence of the way academia runs at the moment. And yes, we can try and change academia, but as you say, that's a really slow moving ship, but what you can change is how you manage yourself within that. Stopping expecting yourself to have to do all these things, even if the university is telling you that you have to do all these things, in reality, no one is doing everything brilliantly. And so what we can do is sort of, try to make some decisions for ourselves about at the moment, I'm putting my foot down on this thing and trying to push that forward. These things, I'm just going to take over and maintain. So a colleague, ex colleague of both of ours, Jennifer Cumming, who's a professor still in Sports Science at Birmingham. She had a brilliant rotation of how often she would update her courses, for example. So some people would never update their modules. Other people think they have to update every lecture every year. And she would have a brilliant, she had kind of brilliant structured rotation of which ones she would redevelop in which years. So that it all got refreshed at an appropriate rate, but she didn't try and do everything every time. And that freed her up just enough that she had a bit more capacity for her research work or for other commitments, which is just, you know, it's those sorts of things is thinking, okay, what's on maintenance mode? What's on really pushing forwards on this mode so that you accept that you can't be a hundred percent on everything all the time. Andrew: But you just, you just can't. And if you try and live at that absolute, you'll just become nihilistic and you'll get really sad because you won't be successful on all those fronts, but that's a great example of being practical about what can I do and what am I focusing on? And the other things can be done quicker or a little later in some way, make it manageable, because then you get to focus your essentials on what you're trying to do, not berating yourself for the things you don't do. Vikki: Perfect. Love it. That has been absolutely amazing, even better than I'd hoped for, so thank you so much. Whenever I have somebody on who has a PhD but who's working outside of academia, I ask them to tell us a little bit about their route. You've obviously told us a little bit about how you got to where you are now. Maybe just take a moment to tell us what you love about what you're doing at the moment and how it's different to academia. Just in case there are people that fancy that sort of thing. Andrew: Yeah, very cool. So I, I really love the teamwork. I think we've got this amazing group of people. I'm fortunate to lead on recruitment. So I get to meet everybody as they come in and offer a bit of a perspective. So I love that. I love that we're working together towards something. And I think I've got this great ability to build things in terms of processes and ways of working, get some good challenge and feedback on those, and then make them a reality and then run them. That to me just is, is really exciting because and you don't always get that in bigger businesses. Sometimes you're given things. And I think that's one of us being, I would call us a scale up. So we're 32 people now. So we're not quite scrappy startup. We've matured beyond that, but we're still at this position of how do you want to measure performance, Andrew? Oh gosh, I don't know. Okay. Go away, have a think, do some research, put something together, get some ideas. And then we do, and we do it. And When it gets positively received, it's a, it's a great feeling because you know that well, I got to take my knowledge and apply it to something and it is having this positive impact on people that I work with. So yeah, I just think that's awesome. Vikki: Amazing. And I just love how you're using your academic knowledge completely out of its academic context, but in such an effective way. And I think, I think that can really hopefully give hope to lots of people listening that the skills they're developing, even the specific knowledge they're developing in a very niche area could well be applicable across lots of different places in the future. Andrew: It so is. Every time I see a CV and I've seen over a thousand if not more now if I see somebody with a PhD I know it's not going to be in our like if somebody if they did have a PhD in environmental restoration fantastic but we've just hired somebody who had a PhD in like Butterfly behavior, and they work in Wales doing a really practical role. The PhD's great, they did loads of good work on it, but the transferable skills are the thing that's really important from an employer perspective. So yeah, loads of hope in that regard. Vikki: Fantastic. Now, if people want to find out more about Oxygen or even get in contact with you, what's the best places for them to look? Andrew: So. If you want information about the company, the website's fantastic. There's a LinkedIn page as well, and we've got newsletter, we've got the Shoot Room Sessions podcast. To start with the website, it'll direct you towards all of that awesome content, which our marketing team and others do a great job with. If you want to get to me, probably LinkedIn's the best place. I'm going to be honest, I'm not a massive fan of the feed of LinkedIn. So I don't see that all the time, but I do respond to messages and requests for connections. And if you just want to ask questions, then reach out to me there. Vikki: Amazing. Thank you so much. And thank you everyone for listening. I will see you next week. Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach.com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time.