< Today we’re thinking about the relationships we have with our supervisors/advisors. These are one of the most complex and important elements of your PhD experience yet we rarely consider the nature of the relationships. In this episode, we think about how power is distributed in these relationships and how this affects how we each behave. This episode is relevant for PhD students AND supervisors, even if you think you have a great relationship! Links I refer to in this episode You might also find these episodes on managing your supervisory relationships useful. How to have a great relationship with your supervisor What to do if you have a toxic relationship with your supervisor Transcript Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. I'm Dr. Vikki Wright, ex professor and certified life coach. And if you were listening last week, you will have heard me, slightly before I intended to announce some important stuff about my membership. But I thought this week what I would do before we get into the main topic, which I'll tell you about in a sec, there's a whole load of new people now listening. I wanted to remind you all about what I'm talking about when I mean the membership. So I provide a whole bunch of stuff completely for free for all of you for the podcast and one workshop a month that you can all attend with no expectations, no strings. It's there for the PhD in academic community completely free, so that if you can never afford to buy anything from me, you will always get that input and support. But if you want more intensive support and you're in a position to spend a little bit of money on that, then I have my membership program. This is for PhD students, now masters. I do have some master's students that come along in, you have very similar issues, postdocs. That's fine. I draw the line, if you are an academic who's supervising other PhD students and things like that, then it's not for you. But if you are essentially an early career researcher, it is absolutely for you. And we run on a quarterly basis. Now, I'm not gonna give you the full rundown. You can look it up on my website, the PhD life coach.com, but we run on a quarterly basis. It's a three month membership, you get access to group coaching, you get access to like mini teachings. You get access to a whole bunch of self-paced materials. You get community, the community organized co-working sessions. I organize a few. It's a wonderful, wonderful place. You are gonna hear more about it over the next few weeks because my next quarter starts at the beginning of August, which means it is going to go on sale at the end of July. So this is going out at the beginning of July. We are gonna open at the end of July. The waiting list is already open. The waiting list has no obligation, but if you're on the waiting list, it makes sure you get sent all the information and it makes sure that you get any of the freebies that I'm gonna give away over the next few weeks. So make sure you sign up on that. The bit that I announced earlier last week than I was intending to announce, but there we are. I was excited, was the theme of the quarter. So every quarter we cover stuff to do with the PhD experience. We have open coaching sessions where you can bring anything you're struggling with at the moment, but each quarter also has a distinct flavor to it. So quarter one, we looked at building your time and task management systems. Quarter two, we've worked on procrastination focus and motivation. And quarter three, we are gonna be working on academic relationships. How to improve things with your supervisor, how to build the communities that you need, how to network, and kind of get to know people in your discipline. Okay, so we are really getting into the interpersonal this time. Now, if you are listening and going, oh my goodness, the other stuff sounds really good though. I kind of need that too. Even better because when you join in quarter three, you get access to all the materials from quarter one and two, and we can obviously still coach on that stuff too. So make sure you check it out. I'm not gonna be one of those coaches that hides the prices. It costs 149 pounds per quarter, so it's about 50 a month. Okay, that's Great British pounds. Translate it out. It, it does it internationally. So take, translate it out to whatever works for you. If you have questions, make sure you're on my newsletter so that you can ask them. But I wanted to make sure that all of you were up to speed. You'll get loads more details over the next few weeks. The topic of today's call, though, is inspired by that theme and actually comes from some supervisor training that I did a while ago. So I designed a bespoke supervisor training, and one of the things that I was really keen to think about was the nature of power in supervisory relationships and the implications that has for the ways we behave. And so that's what we're gonna think about today. We're gonna think about where does the power sit in a supervisory relationship? In what ways does the supervisor have power? In what ways does the student have power? And from there, think about how that affects how we work with each other, what we will say, what we won't say, what we believe about the other person and we'll help you draw some lessons there to help you improve that relationship. So let's get into it. I think the PhD supervisor student relationship is one of the weirdest relationships that exists. Now, don't get me wrong, I actually had a really good relationship with my supervisor. I had really good super relationship with my students, although they differed from each other quite dramatically. But it's still a very weird relationship because it's sort of hierarchical, right? Your supervisor is more senior to you. Uh, they are supporting you, helping you to learn and develop and build your career and all that good stuff. But on the other hand, they're not your direct boss. They're not intended to tell you exactly what you must do because there's this whole thing of independence and coming up with your own research and all of that. So you've got this weird thing where the supervisor is senior, but you are expected to take autonomy and make the final decisions about the content. But sometimes your PhD might be attached to an existing project, particularly in the sciences and engineering and things, if it's attached to a grant. When a lot of the content will have been fixed, and other times you've got complete control over it. So you imagine the other extreme might be like a self-funded arts PhD, for example, where you've picked the topic and just found someone who can support you. So that's a very strange balance. You've then got the balance that because PhD students come from all walks of life and all stages of life sometimes. The two are the same age as each other. Sometimes there's an age difference, a dramatic age difference in both directions, right? You could have a relatively new academic, supervising somebody who's come back to do the PhD in their retirement years. You could have a professor who's right towards the end of their career supervising someone that came straight out of their masters. Or you can have people supervising each other who are the same age as each other. There's then also very blurry lines as to how collegiate collaborative slash friendly you would be with your supervisor. Some people maintain a very kind of, I don't wanna say distant, but like formal relationships. Some people don't see each other that much. Some people only see each other in those supervisory official meetings. Others have a much more collaborative experience all the way through to almost acting like friends or maybe even acting like friends, you know, going to the pub together, going, you know, traveling to conferences together, all those sorts of things. And so that can make it a bit weird and blurry too. Across the podcast for the next few months, and within the membership specifically, we are gonna dive into all of that a lot more and how these different characteristics can really make a difference in that supervisory relationship and how to manage it. But the bit I want to think about today is power. So we are thinking here in terms of where does one person hold influence over the other? So let's think first about the supervisor. In what ways do supervisors have power over their students? And I know people listening, you will either be PhD students or supervisors. Sometimes you might even be both supervising undergraduates while also doing your PhD. But put yourself in that position and think what power does the supervisor have over the students? And the answer is generally quite a lot. The supervisor might have power over the physical resources that the student has access to, whether that's laboratory space or archives or money for travel, or any of those sorts of things. You may have access to all of those and be able to control the extent to which the student is able to get to them. You are likely to have access to what I'm calling community resources here, so access to other experts, access to opportunities, whether that's publishing or reviewing or grant applications or any of those sorts of things. You also have some softer power, so students often perceive that their supervisor's opinion on their work is like king, is the most important thing. If their supervisor thinks they've made enough progress, then they've made enough progress. And if their supervisor doesn't think they've made enough progress, then they haven't. And so supervisors have probably more power than they sometimes realize over the extent to which the student thinks they're making good progress, whether they are a good student or not. Similarly, students often get their sense of whether their work is of high quality or not from what their supervisor says about it. Now in the membership, we work a lot on learning to evaluate your own work and getting your own kind of sense of reassurance from yourself so you're not so dependent on that external validation, but in reality, a lot of students are dependent on the supervisor reassuring them that what they have done is good enough. The extent to which the supervisor has power over what is done varies massively, depending on the discipline, the stage of career of the supervisor, and kind of their own personal perspectives. People who have a more kind of functional approach to supervision where the job is to get the student through a project may actually take quite a lot of power over saying, no, no, you should do this study, and then this study, and then this study. And yeah, the nuances are up to the student and the way it's written up, it's up to the student, but the actual direction of the project may well be quite dictated by the supervisor all the way through to others of you who'll be sitting this now. I have no influence over that at all. It's entirely up to them. So that's one that can vary a bit, but it's a place where supervisors can have lots of power in certain situations. Supervisors also potentially have power over their student's future. And I say potentially because I think sometimes students think their supervisors have more power than they actually do. But there is certainly the perception that supervisors have a lot of power over what they're gonna write in your reference in the future, who they'll introduce you to, what they'll kind of push you forwards into. That if your supervisor likes you and if your supervisor thinks you are worthy of opportunities, they potentially have power to put you in places, introduce you to people, give you recommendations that will give you more opportunities in the future. And then finally, the supervisor also has power over all the kind of implicit knowledge that academics tend to know or figure out or assume that often PhD students, particularly PhD students who come from backgrounds where their families and their friends haven't done PhDs before, where they don't necessarily know kind of what's acceptable, what's the norm, what's the way of doing things around here, all that stuff. And supervisors have a lot of power. Again, often not recognized by the supervisor, but the supervisors have a lot of power as to how much of that stuff they actually stop and think about explaining to the student or checking at least that they understand. Can you think of anything that I've forgotten? Do let me know. Those are the kind of areas that I can see where supervisors have considerable power over their students, and so what implications does that have? Quick interjection. If you are finding this episode helpful, but you are driving, walking the dog or doing dishes, just remember this. When you're done, head to the PhD life coach.com and sign up for my newsletter. We've all listened to a podcast and thought this is great. I should do something with it, and that didn't. That's where I created the newsletter to help you actually apply the stuff that you hear. Each week you'll get a short summary, some reflective questions on one simple action that you can take right away. You'll also get access to a searchable archive of all the past episodes so you can find the exact one that you need to help with your current challenges. Plus all newsletter subscribers get a free webinar every single month on a topic that affects all PhD students and academics, and you'll always be the first to hear for when my membership opens to new members. So once you're done listening, or even right now, go sign up for my newsletter and make sure you don't miss out. Well, I see the implications that it has with my members all the time, so students who are scared to contact their supervisors at an early stage because they're worried that the supervisor will think that the work's not good enough, and that they'll therefore tell them that they're not good enough and so they won't contact them with early drafts, for example. They won't risk making mistakes because if they make a mistake and the supervisor sees that it may risk the supervisor's perception of them, which may then shut down future opportunities. May then affect the personal sense of quality of the work. That if the supervisor doesn't think I'm good enough, then I definitely can't think I'm good enough. So it really impacts communication and the ways that people interact with you. That perceived power can also really influence what a student says they're willing to do. So often a supervisor will assume that if a student. Agrees to a particular project or agrees to working particular hours or agrees to any of these decisions, then they're agreeing because they agree, right? Otherwise, why would they agree? Where actually often students are agreeing simply to manage that relationship. So a supervisor asks them to help out on another project in the lab. The student says, yes, the supervisor assumes that's 'cause they're happy with it. Whereas in reality, the student didn't feel they had the power to say no to that. They were worried about managing their supervisor's emotions and so they didn't feel that it was actually a free question that they had to say. Yes. And for those of you who are out there going, you know, oh no, but I'm a really nice supervisor. I always tell people that it's okay. They don't have to do it if they don't want to. They don't believe you often. I know I'm making sweepy statements here. There's nuance, but please remember that even if you are the Lovingest Squishiest gorgeous supervisor in the world, you still have power over your students. Your students still perceive the power that you have over them. And for all the time that you say it's okay, you can always be honest with me. They might believe you and they might try that. And if you then respond in the ways you intend and you have good interactions, then that might carry on. But the students still perceives that power. And I want you to be particularly careful with this, where your supervisees, where students are professionals, you know, they're part-time PhD students. They're professionals in another field where they're the same age as you or older as the supervisor, it's really easy to forget that there is even a power differential there. 'Cause as far as it feels, often you're talking to a peer. Those students often perceive the power differential even more markedly than junior students. And the reason for that is that whilst these part-time students are experts in their professional field, a lot of the time, that often makes them feel particularly novice as academics. Whereas our full-time students, they may feel novice as a student, but that's kind of their norm. That's their reality. The comparison of how confident and how knowledgeable and professional they feel in one context for part-time students really emphasizes how novice and how junior they are in the academic field. If you are a part-time student listening to this, I know I have lots of you, so, hi. Um, I want you to know what you think of that. Is that something you recognize in yourself? I want you to really reflect on it. It's something I have seen a lot in the people that I coach. These things also get even more blurred if you have quite a collaborative relationship, you have quite a friendly relationship, perhaps even a social relationship. Again, it can lead to this situation where the supervisor thinks there's not too much hierarchy there. The supervisor thinks it's quite an equitable partnership when in reality, often the PhD students don't perceive it that way. So thinking about how it affects how you interact with each other, how it affects what the student is willing to tell you, and how it encourages the student to sometimes say things that they don't mean, that they consider to be the right answer. If you are the student, think about how it affects you. How do you behave differently because of the power that you know your supervisor has over you. Now, this episode is mostly about awareness. We are not gonna leap into tons and tons of solutions to this. That's something that we'll talk about in the membership in a lot more detail, but even the awareness on both sides can help even with no other tactics in place. Because once we're aware of this power differential and we're aware of how it's potentially affecting how each of us are behaving, then we can decide whether we are intentionally choosing that. We can ask ourselves question like, is it true they have power over this? Is it true that me saying these things may involve a withdrawal of influence or withdrawal of resources or withdrawal of approval, or whatever it might be. So we get to query whether the assumptions we are making are true. And if they are true, we also then get to decide what do we want to do with that information? How do we want to behave? And sometimes it may be that you decide, you know what? Recognizing the power differential, it's accurate. It is. There is a real threat there that I might lose access to some of these things. And you know what? The way I'm behaving is exactly right. Happy days. That's fine. Let's keep going in that direction. But for a lot of you, you will be avoiding academic honesty in the sense of saying what you mean, admitting when you don't know things and things like that as an attempt to kind of manage the power in that relationship, manage the extent to which the supervisor thinks you're good, and I want you to ask yourself whether that's really helping or not. I get why you're doing it. The power makes it really, really hard. I want you to consider, in what ways would being honest about your perceptions of the research, being honest about what you don't understand, being honest about your opinions about what you wanna do next might actually improve the relationship rather than take away from it. So be aware of how power manifests here. Now we have to remember that there is power going the other direction too. And I think this is something that students are often very not aware of and supervisors are very aware of. And it can impact how all of us engage with each other. So ways that students have power over supervisors are things like if the supervisor is invested in your data, for example. So again, I think this is more common in the sciences and engineering where there's more team approach often, um, and where you're more likely to be working on part of a bigger trial. Um, but often the supervisor needs the data that you are collecting because they will use it for a future grant application. Okay. Often the supervisor needs the data you're collecting because they need a certain number of publications for whatever assessment they've got coming up. And so they could really do with a PhD student coming through with publications to help them on those missions. It's not quite the same in arts and humanities where there's more of a tendency towards single author monographs, single author papers. But it's certainly the case across the more sort of science end of things. Whatever discipline you're in, the supervisor may well be invested in you completing successfully. Often things like promotions and so on are contingent on having PhD students finished. Students not finishing can sometimes be seen as going against the supervisor's record. Now that varies a bit, the extent to which that's true, but there can be a, certainly a perception of that. Sometimes supervisors get really invested in their students continuing in academia. I have known people who are really, really invested in the future careers of their students. And that sounds lovely and supportive until such as a point that you realize that if you don't take the path that they think you should take, that they withdraw support. And I've seen that happen in a variety of different settings. And so sometimes supervisors are really invested in you progressing in academia that might be so that you stay on in their laboratory so that you can continue to contribute to their work. I see that a lot supervisors who encourage their students to stay because you've just trained them up, right? And they're really useful and your lab runs better because they're there and then they encourage them to stay. Sometimes it can be because supervisors take really seriously the notion of sort of being grandparents and great-grandparents out into the academic world. So your student goes off to some prestigious laboratory and then they have PhD students. And then those PhD students go to a prestigious laboratory and do the same again. And like your influence and your network are out there in the field. There's a lot of supervisors that get a real kick outta that. And sounds great, but if you then don't fit their expectations, that can have a negative impact on both sides. So let's think a bit about how that affects how the two of you interact with each other. That the student's got this power, that the supervisor really needs you to do this work and really needs you to complete often. And at the same time, they can't do it for you. At the same time they feel like you have to earn your PhD, but there is some pressure on them as a supervisor to ensure that you do. How does that influence the relationship? One of the ways I've seen is that some supervisors can get a bit controlling. Some supervisors as they start to lose faith or as they start to feel stressed for their own reasons, they start to take more control. They start to get a bit more dictatorial about exactly what needs to happen and things. And sometimes that can be useful, but sometimes that can make the student feel like they're losing control. Right. Sometimes it comes across in a more nuanced way that the supervisor is just a bit stressed about it all that the supervisor's just getting a bit time urgent, is getting a bit pressuring, those sorts of things. So they're not like making the decisions or anything, but they're sort of really saying, you know, you've gotta get on with this client, you've gotta get on with this. And the trouble is that certainly in my experience, the problem with the vast majority of PhD students is not that they don't register that time's getting short and that they've got a lot to do, it's that they really, really register that time is short and that they've got a lot to do. And that is in many ways paralyzing them because of the emotions they're sort coming up in that. So one of the ways that the power that students have gets sort of visualized in a relationship is the supervisor getting really stressed about the things they're outta control of and that negatively affecting the supervisor and their experience, but it also then having this knock on effect and influencing the students too. And that's when it then becomes reciprocal, right? Because the supervisor starts getting stressed because of the things that they're outta control of, that have influence of over them. So the power the student has, but then because the supervisor gets stressed and the supervisor is the one that's higher in the hierarchy, that has the more power, has the influence over all the things that we've discussed. That stress then gets passed back down to the student, and it can lead to a really high pressure environment where communication is really challenging and it is all coming from these perceptions of power, these perceptions of who holds which power, and then these sort of misguided again, I guess, attempts to manage that power. As I say, not loads and loads of solutions for you today, but I want you to think about this in relation to your specific supervisory relationships, whichever side of it you are on, and in the newsletter that you can all sign up to get there'll be a couple of reflective questions as usual that will help you work through. Where you think power is sitting at the moment in your relationship and what impact that has? Awareness with all the things we talk about is the absolute first step towards understanding, interpretation and strategic change. So have a think. Let me know. You can always reply to my newsletters and tell me what you've been thinking. Ask any questions As you'll have heard last week, I do answer listener questions on the podcast from time to time. So get those sent on in. Have a ponder. Where's the power in all your relationships and what impact is it having at the moment? Thank you all so much for listening, and I'll see you next week. Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like 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 the PhD life coach com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics time.

< Today I’m answering listener questions! We hear from people who are feeling pulled in different directions for a variety of reasons, a student who feels she lacks academic role models, and another feeling pressured by a publish or perish culture. I give some words of advice and thoughts to consider to help navigate these challenges. Remember – if you have questions you want answered, join my newsletter and send them over and I’ll answer them in a future episode! Links I refer to in this episode You can hear me answer other listener questions here and here . Transcript As you know, I've covered about a hundred million topics on the PhD Life Cage podcast. Possibly an exaggeration, but I've covered a lot. And often when you are experiencing particular challenges, you are gonna be able to look back at the podcast and find exactly the episode you need. In fact, if you sign up for my newsletter, I'll send you a searchable archive where you can find out exactly what I have covered and find the perfect one for you. But sometimes I will concede, there are times where you have questions that I haven't answered yet, and people on my newsletter also have the opportunity then to tell me that, to email me, say, Vikki, I haven't seen you answer this yet. What advice would you give me in this situation? And then I will answer the questions on the podcast. And that is what today's episode is. I've had three listeners send me questions that I think are applicable to so many people, and which I have so much to say about, and we're gonna answer those questions today. So settle in, get ready for three completely different topics, and make sure you're on the newsletter so that you can ask me your questions too. Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. I'm Dr. Vikki Wright, ex- professor and certified life coach, and I wanna try and help you make your PhD and academic experience a whole lot calmer and more fun than it feels at the moment. And there is no better way to do that than to answer three. Specific questions from some of you lovely listeners. So we are gonna be thinking about task switching, moving between the different bits of your PhD that you need to do. We are gonna be thinking about role models and what happens if you don't have ones around you that you actually wanna emulate and we're gonna be thinking about the publish or parish culture that exists in so many of our academic communities, how we can survive and even thrive within that sort of pressure. So let's get going. The first question came from Marie and she says, I'm realizing I'm at the point of my PhD where I'm struggling with context switching. I know that doing a PhD means keeping multiple things going all at the same time. As there's more to hold, argument and material, the switch between tasks or large pieces of work feels more difficult. For context, I'm wrapping up my third chapter, thinking through Ideas, questions, data gathering for my fourth, and also writing grant applications to secure additional funds to get me through until submission. I'm trying to factor in rest days or transition periods where I can create intentional pauses, but it doesn't seem to be very effective. I think this is a great question and one that a lot of people will struggle with, particularly towards the end of a PhD, where you are working often on multiple projects at once and thinking about what happens afterwards. So where do we start? I would always start from recognizing that the thing you are finding difficult is quite a complex ask of yourself. Often at these stages, what we do is we go, I'm finding this difficult, but I have to do it, so I just need to get on with it. And that's the kind of feedback that we give ourselves, right? Sort of acknowledging that it's hard to switch, but not seeing any way around that. And so being almost dismissive of those problems going, oh, well, I've just got to do it. I've just gotta suck it up. Other people seem to be able to. And the problem is as usual, that's not that compassionate. And also it takes away all of our problem solving. It takes away that creativity that will enable us to go, okay, what could we do about this? So the first thing to say here is that you are right when you are doing hard cognitive work in the form of writing a discussion for one chapter to then switch over and write a grant application for something else, or to switch over and do your teaching or whatever constraints you've got, that's a difficult thing to do. Transitions can be tough for the best of times and transitions between two different cognitively demanding tasks is hard. And so if we start from the place of it's difficult, other people find it difficult too. How can we then think, right, how can I make this easier? Now, I do have a whole episode about why transitions can be difficult, so do go check that one out. The three things that I really wanna emphasize here are how can we reduce the need for transitions? How can we make transitions feel easier? And how can we beat ourselves up less for finding it difficult? And to be honest, you can apply those three things to most challenges that you have. How can I do it less often? How can I make it easier? How can I make it less painful, essentially? So how do you make it happen less often if we recognize that we struggle to transition between two different tasks that are sort of cognitively challenging, then when we are doing our weekly planning, especially if you use role-based time blocking, I want you to look at how you can minimize those transitions. Now, it's not always possible, but often we can decide that I'm going to do this cognitively challenging task on these days, and I'm gonna do this other cognitively challenging task on these other days. And so I'm reducing the amount of times that I'm switching backwards and forwards. Now, you may say that's not possible. 'cause I have meetings, I have commitments on particular days. That means that's not always possible and I accept it is not always possible. But you can, for example, transition. If you decide to focus on one major cognitive task on a Tuesday, say you can then transition into other tasks that need doing, but that aren't as cognitively demanding. And then on the Wednesday you work on the other big cognitive task and then transition into things that aren't as cognitively demanding. So we're reducing our need to actually come outta one thing that's difficult and move straight into something else that's difficult. So I want you to look for any opportunity where you can cluster things like that. Often the problem comes from us telling ourselves that we need to be working on all things simultaneously because all things are important, but often working on all things simultaneously is not the most efficient way of doing it. So really test your assumptions there. Really ask yourself, actually, am I gonna move all of these things this week? Or could I say that this week is discussion week? Plus administrative bits and bobs, and next week is grant application, week plus bits and bobs. Okay, so we're gonna reduce the number of changes we need to make. Now let's think about how we can make some of those transitions easier when we do have to make them. The first way is allowing yourself a bit of time for that transition, and we can try and mark that in an intentional way. So maybe you do have to switch from one cognitively demanding thing from another one. Let's not expect ourselves to close one document, open the next document and dive straight in. What can you do in between that kind of marks that transition process? Perhaps it's as simple as going, getting a glass of water, getting a cup of tea, whatever it is, coming back to your desk, sitting for a moment. Maybe you introduce something that's a little bit more of a ritual where you light a particular candle, if that's your vibe, or you play a particular music as almost like the advert break between two different things. When you are thinking about what that in-between task is I want you to try and think of something that doesn't use your brain. Now I'm talking to myself here as well. 'Cause this is one of my habits that I don't particularly love. I'm not consciously working on at the moment, but I know it's something I do need to work on. Which is these days, there's a real tendency when we are transitioning from one task to another to go on our phones one way or another, whether you are watching tv, whether you're scrolling, whatever it is, there's a real tendency to stop doing one thing, shove your brain full of a load of other things, and then expect yourself to go into something else. And that actually really cognitively demanding. It might feel as though you're kind of distracting yourself, turning your brain off, whatever. But actually we are just firing more information into our brains. So when you are thinking about what you are gonna do in that break, I want you to think about what is actually good for your clear mind, for your healthy body. How can you introduce something that is calming, fun, energizing. There's a real difference to spending that time having a potter around your garden or wandering off to your kitchen while letting your brain just do its little thing than turning your phones on and going off again. One way of realizing the opinions you have of your own practice is thinking, what would I think if kids were doing this? So as an example, I said, I have a tendency that in between tasks I will scroll on my phone and if the school that my step kids went to policy was that when you finish one lesson, they could scroll on their phones until the next lesson starts. I would not be a happy step mommy. That would not be a school that I would be sending my kids to, but it's what I do to myself. And so asking yourself actually what would I expect kids to do here? I'd expect 'em to get a drink, go to the toilet, go outside, chill out a bit, blow off some steam, whatever it might be, and come back feeling refreshed. How can we instigate that into our lives too? Maybe you try and work in different places on different projects. So that sort of being in the cafe signifies that you're working on the grant application. Being at home, in your office, being at home, on your kitchen table signifies something, a different project. Okay? So think about using your environment to demarcate them out like that a little bit more. The other way, and I can't remember whether I've done an episode about this before or not, but I've definitely talked about it, is parking on the downhill. So this is make it as easy for yourself to transition back into whatever task it is as possible. So this means finishing a task with a clear instructions as to where you're up to and what you need to do next. So almost thinking about future you when you finish one task so that when you pick it back up, you've got almost like shift handover notes. Okay, so if you imagine somebody else was taking over this task, what information would you need to give them? And what we are doing there is we are reducing the cognitive load of starting the new thing by making it super clear where we're gonna start. I said there were three things. Third one, as usual is don't beat yourself up if you're finding it difficult. If you find yourself in a position where you have to transition more than you'd like, where you've tried to make it easier and you're still finding it difficult, that's okay. It's fine. You're a human being. We can't just switch. Even my computer's not that good at switching straight outta one program into another program all the time. It's okay. We're at capacity. It's all good. Let's just start the next one a little bit slowly. It's all good. Let's have some compassion for ourselves. Marie, let me know whether that was helpful for everybody else. Let me know how, what you think too and let's move on to the second question. Quick interjection. If you are finding this episode helpful, but you are driving, walking the dog or doing dishes, just remember this. When you're done, head to the PhD life coach.com and sign up for my newsletter. We've all listened to a podcast and thought this is great. I should do something with it, and that didn't. That's where I created the newsletter to help you actually apply the stuff that you hear. Each week you'll get a short summary, some reflective questions on one simple action that you can take right away. You'll also get access to a searchable archive of all the past episodes so you can find the exact one that you need to help with your current challenges. Plus all newsletter subscribers get a free webinar every single month on a topic that affects all PhD students and academics, and you'll always be the first to hear for when my membership opens to new members. So once you're done listening, or even right now, go sign up for my newsletter and make sure you don't miss out. The second question is anonymous. I know their name, but they've asked me not to share it for reasons that I think will become clear when I'm reading out what they said they said. What do you think about the importance of role models for becoming your own version of an independent researcher, which aligns with how you want to be and how this relates? To motivation during your PhD? I recently realized I was missing a key role model of what a good researcher is to me. They then went into some details where they shared that they'd been to another university, experienced working with somebody who was much more aligned with their priorities and are now finding it difficult to go back to their supervisor. They share that they've lost a bit of confidence in their supervisor and they've definitely realized that they don't want to emulate their supervisor in the future. I think this is a great, great question and I think often we assume that we will end up with a supervisor that we aspire to be like, and I think supervisors often assume that students will aspire to be like them, and it's often not the case. There are many, many different ways of being an academic. There are many different ways of organizing your career and of prioritizing and looking after yourself during that time. And sometimes we will find that the supervisors that we end up working for actually end up not to be the role models that we thought they were gonna be and not to have lives that we want to have. So same as with Marie. First thing is don't beat yourself up about this. This is pretty common and certainly doesn't indicate any problem with you pursuing careers in academia or any sort of inherent weakness on either of your part. It is a mismatch in what your supervisor wants from academia and who they want to be in academia and who you want to be and what you want from academia. So what do we do about it? I think the first thing is not to write off your supervisor. We can learn an awful lot from people who are doing academia in a way that we never want to do it. It can help us better understand our priorities. It can help us better understand what we definitely don't want, but there may also be things that we can learn from the way they're doing it. Even if you don't want to be like your supervisor, you don't want their lives, they may still, they probably do have elements that you could use and apply in your own way. So really avoid that kind of black and white thinking of, oh, I've realized they're not a role model, therefore I've got nothing to learn from them. If we can look at it in a slightly more nuanced way and be like, okay. I don't want those bits and I don't appreciate those characteristics, but they are pretty good at getting grants or you know, raising their profile or whatever it might be. I wonder what I can learn. I wonder what I can adjust, twist shape to my own approach that would also be quite effective. Because when we completely write them off, we to lose that opportunity to learn and twist and adapt the skills that they have to apply in our own way. Now, one of the reasons that's difficult is often if your supervisor doesn't end up to be the role model that you want them to be, that can be super disappointing, right? Super frustrating. And so we've often got all these emotions around it, and often we either respond to that by saying, oh, well, I obviously don't like belong here, I can't do this. Or by like turning it all the way around and casting your supervisor into like super baddie role where we are like, we hate them and we won't have anything to do with them and we'll do the bare minimum and blah, blah, blah. But there is a place in between where we look after our own emotions. It's okay to be disappointed, it's okay to be frustrated. We get to look after those emotions. And at the same time, deciding how and to what extent we want to engage with and learn from our supervisors. What we then get to do is recognize that our supervisors are only one opportunity to get good role models in academia. And there is a whole world of academics out there who are doing this in a whole variety of ways. And this is where networking is so important. And now any of you who have just gone, Ugh, networking, I get it. Don't worry. And. I wasn't gonna announce this today. This was not part of the plan, but I'm gonna, if that was your immediate gut reaction was like, oh, I know I should do that, but it's awful. I hate it. Networking sounds so transactional. It sounds so gross. I'm so bad at it. You need to make sure you're definitely on my newsletter because Hot Off the press quarter three of the PhD Life Coach membership is going to focus on academic relationships, dah dah. It's gonna focus on improving your relationship with your supervisor, improving the community that you have around you, feeling part of a community. Extending your networking reach and doing it in a way that doesn't feel horrible and feels authentic and true to you instead. So if that's something you struggle with, make sure you are at least on my newsletter, if not on my wait list, because this is gonna be the quarter for you anyway. There wasn't gonna be an official announcement today, but turns out it was. So there you go. Surprise. I told my members this week, but I wasn't gonna say it on the podcast. There you go. So networking though is an opportunity to identify and spend time with people who may be doing academia differently. And this doesn't mean going and schmoozing round conferences in a kind of self-promotional way, but it means recognizing that there's a bunch of people in your departments, in your universities, in your discipline, but at other universities who are doing this differently and who you may well be able to be in contact with and to learn from. So where do we start and how do you learn? I am a big fan of starting with your peers, so people who have different supervisors to you, whether that's within your immediate vicinity or further afield. Spending time talking to them about what their supervisors are like. Okay, how do they behave? What do they prioritize? Are they good role models? Snoop around with the other PhD students, getting to know them and getting to know more about their supervisors. Often if we've got good supervisors, we take it for granted, right? And it's not until other people are asking that you sometimes realize what you have actually got. That can be a great way of identifying people who have got more of the sorts of qualities that you are looking to emulate and follow in your own life. And from there, once you identify people, you can kind of find out a little bit more about them. What is it? What do they do with their students that makes their students feel welcomed, feel, you know, to succeed whatever it is that you are, you are wanting from them. So we get to sort of explore a little bit, get curious about it, and then at some point you also have the opportunity to reach out to these people. Now am I gonna say that any academic you reach out to is absolutely going to answer you? No. Academics are notoriously behind with their emails, through a combination of just generally being overworked, overwhelmed, and avoiding it just like the best of us. But there are many ways that you can reach out to somebody. Attending departmental seminars and having a chat at the drinks afterwards. Approaching somebody at a conference, just asking them questions about their lives and how they got to where they are can be a really nice way of doing it. We are not trying to get anything out of them. We're not trying to ask them to be your supervisor or ask them to be your mentor or anything like that. We're trying to get to know people to learn more about them and about their priorities and their paths. And when we see it like that, we see it as a sort of exploratory process where we are interested in people and how they do academia. You'll often find that people are very, very interested in having those conversations. People like to reflect on their own careers. Generally speaking. They like people to be interested in what they believe and how they do things. So if you are feeling like your supervisor isn't the role model that you wish they were, let's go find the people that might be. My third question came from Anique and she says, I had a question about the publish or perish pressure. I constantly feel this urgency at the back of my mind to do more things and to do them faster. My PhD is by publication, and I basically quantify my progress by how many papers I still have to publish, but it never feels like I'm doing it fast enough. And she said, is there an existing episode to address this? And I had to think about it, and I think I touch on it a little bit, but I thought it deserved its own answer. And the first thing to say here, I feel like I start all of these by like validating the the comment, but the first thing to say here is you are right. Academic environments are weird hierarchical places where we try and quantify stuff in ways that may not be helpful to the pursuit of good research and certainly are not helpful to the pursuit of good mental health. So the fact that you feel like this isn't a sign that you don't deserve to be in academia, or that you're not strong enough, or more not resilient enough to be here, academia can just be a bit of a weird place. And it is a conversation for another day as to whether it has been purposefully and intentionally created that way in order to exclude people or whether it has kind of evolved that way through competition for resources and a sort of inevitable response to more people wanting to do it than there are spaces that is a conversation for another day. Or they send me your views if you want, but either way. Feeling like you're in a very pressured environment where there are certain criteria you need to hit is completely valid. And for some of you, the criteria might be lots of papers. People who are in arts and humanities, it might be the big monograph at the end of your thesis or whatever it is. So translate this out to different, whatever the kind of hardcore marker that you see in your field is . However, what you get to do is reassure yourself as usual, that's always one of them. It's normal. This is not a marker of you. Second thing to ask yourself, is it true that you should be moving faster? Because sometimes we are under this pressure and we are not where we want to be, but we shouldn't be there yet anyway. So if you are partway through your PhD and you know, the expectation is for you to produce X number of papers, how many should you have produced by now? And I'm putting inverted commas around should as usual. Sometimes we actually are on track, but we're sort of stressing that we are not, and often that's because we are anticipating feeling better once we hit that goal. Let me explain more what I mean. If we're in a situation where we are meant to be producing papers and we know that, and we are moving along that path, we are doing the things we need to do, but we haven't yet reached that point where we can say, I have enough papers, but we are not meant to have reached that point yet 'cause we haven't finished our PhD. I want you to ask yourself, how am I expecting myself to feel once I have enough? Whatever that means. Papers at the end of my PhD. Am I expecting that that will make me confident. Am I expecting that that will make me feel calm? Am I expecting that? That will make me feel secure if you are looking to the achievement of those goals to give yourself emotions Then you are going to feel stressed for the rest of your academic career. I'm really sorry. Because those things are very unlikely to give you lasting emotions. We don't get lasting emotions from changing in circumstances, and this has been shown in loads of different research. It's been shown in research about academia, but it's also been research in things like lottery winners. You think that winning the lottery is gonna make you happy forever, but in reality it makes you happy for a little while and then people usually go back to roughly their baseline level of happiness. Their environment may have changed, but their actual emotions stay remarkably consistent. Now what this means is we get to ask ourselves, firstly, if I expect that I will feel confident, calm, and secure, when I reach my target, how can I induce those emotions in myself now. How can I induce those emotions in myself on the way? And you might said, well, I don't need to. I just need to get there. And then I will. But once you get there, I promise, other goals are gonna come up. Then you're gonna want your secure academic job, then you're gonna want your first grant, then you're gonna want your first PhD student to have finished. Then you're gonna want your first promotion, B blah, blah, blah, blah. And all the time you'll be telling yourself you'll feel better once you reach that next milestone. We need to identify what those emotions are gonna be that we think we're gonna get when we achieve that goal, when we've published enough and we need to think about how we can induce them now. And the way we induce them now is the thoughts we tell ourselves, is the beliefs that we instill in ourselves is the way that we speak to ourselves, okay? Publishing papers is not gonna make the pressure go away, I promise. The second thing you can do is set your own markers of success. If you dislike the markers of success that are routinely used in the environment around you, yes, you absolutely need to jump through their hoops potentially in order to finish PhD, secure jobs, all those things, but you get to decide what your markers of success are and that can be a whole variety of things. That can be around enjoying your work. That can be around what time you finish on a Friday, that can be around doing meaningful work that's changing people's lives, you, that can be around doing work that other people think is interesting and that you can share more widely. You get to pick your own markers of success and focus on those. So you're in an environment that only in your mind respects, publishing as the marker of success. But you can pick other ones too, and we can focus on and celebrate our ability to hit those. The third thing is you also get to put your own boundaries around this too. You get to decide, okay, I'm in an environment that values this. I value these other things. I'm interested in that, but really these are the things I value. This is how hard I am willing to work. This is the hours I'm willing to put in to reach the things that I believe are success markers, jump through their hoops to whatever extent I can, and this is how much I'm willing to put in. If it takes more than that, I'm not willing to do it, and the consequences will be what the consequences are. You get to decide what those boundaries are because if you burn yourself out as a PhD student, hating the publish or parish culture, but forcing yourself to try and adhere to it. Your reward is going to be going into an academic environment where exactly the same is true, and then you get to do it again, and that's not fun. Now, this is not in any way saying therefore you're not cut out for a career in academia. No, a hundred percent no. What you get to do instead is you get to decide. I at the moment, would like a career in academia as long as I can try and focus on these things as well as jumping through your hoops, and I can do it within this amount of effort. And then you get to succeed as far as you can. I have seen people succeed all the way up to professor with that mindset, with the, this is how much I'm willing to give. If it's enough, it's enough. If it's not, I'll do other things or I will choose to walk away, whatever that might be. But you get to decide those markers of success, decide those boundaries. It can feel really hard. It gets easier as you become more senior. It's really hard as a PhD student to put that to one side. I absolutely get that. And it's completely normal for you to feel pressured. But let's talk to ourselves in a way that already helps us feel more confident, already helps us feel calm, already helps us feel more secure. And then we work at the pace we're working to the within the boundaries that we set for ourselves, and we do the best we can. If you don't know how to do that, if you are struggling with how to even speak to yourself to induce those emotions, to take the pressure off, then do make sure you're on my newsletter. Over the next month, I am gonna be starting to tell people more about the membership 'cause we open at the end of July. I'll be telling you more about how I support clients and the transformations that I'm already seeing in the students that are going through that process. So if you're listening to this going, sounds nice, but dunno how I'd ever do that. Make sure you're listening so that you can hear more about the membership in due course. Thank you all so much for listening. I really hope that you found that useful. People on my newsletter, and if you're not on my newsletter, why not? People on my newsletter send me more questions, I'm gonna do another one of these in five, six weeks time. I'd love to be accumulating more questions for it, so drop 'em to me and I'll answer 'em for you. In the meantime, if you have other ones, you're not sure whether I've done a podcast on it before, make sure you check the PhD Life coach archive. Make sure that you search generically. So I've had some questions from people saying, oh, I don't think you've talked about how to do a lit review. I find it really overwhelming. If that's you, I want you to look for overwhelming. Rather than for lit review. I'll occasionally do episodes where I talk about a specific activity like writing or reading, but usually I will be talking about the kind of thoughts and feelings that underpin that. So search for too much to do, search for overwhelm, search for procrastinating, all those sorts of things, and you'll find a ton of episodes. Thank you all so much for listening, and I'll see you next week. Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like 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 the PhD life coach com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics time.

< Today you get to hear a real coaching session with a listener, Ruth, who is considering not finishing her PhD. We talk through the reasons and I take her through a process to help her make a decision that works for her. This is a great episode for you if you ever doubt your own abilities to finish your PhD or if you have any big decisions to make. Transcript Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. And for the first time in quite a while, this is going to be one of my coaching episodes where I get a real life listener to come and talk about something they're finding challenging at the moment. And so I'm super excited to be joined by Ruth today. Hi, Ruth. Thank you for coming on. Ruth: Thank you for having me. Vikki: No problem. So Ruth contacted me. I did a bit of a shout out. Those of you who aren't on my newsletter, you need to be. 'cause every now and again I do a shout out asking for volunteers and Ruth replied to that with a challenge that, to be honest, I hear more often than you might think. And so I thought it would be a really good fit for the podcast. And so that's why we're here today. So maybe we start Ruth with you telling people a little bit about who you are and what challenge you came to me with. Ruth: Okay. So, i've been doing my PhD for on and off for about 10 years. And I'm now at a point where I'm utterly terrified of it and I'm not quite sure if I wanna carry on or not. That is the problem I wrote to you with. Vikki: Yes, yes. And that's why I said it's a problem that unfortunately I hear too often. This, this challenge of, you know, it's not what I thought it was gonna be. I'm having these really big emotions about it and I dunno what to go from there. So let's start by just getting a bit of backstory. So you say you've been doing it 10 years on and off. Yeah. You don't have to go into lots and lots of detail, but just gimme a little bit of a backstory as to how we got where we are. Ruth: Sure. So, I think I started actually in 2016, so it's not quite 10 years. I was working in the education sector at the time. I was in a full-time role. So I think the, you know, mistake number one was probably, you know, trying to work full-time in quite a stressful job with the PhD. My two children were quite young at that point. Ruth: That's how it got started. So the PhD's in education, so it sort of fitted in that sense. I took some leave of absences in that time and as I'm sure you can imagine over such a, quite a long period of time, I've have had some supervisory changes, which have all been fine in terms of the supervisors and their support. Ruth: But every time you have a supervisor change, it was almost like taking another step back, you know, this sort of another six months added, having to rebuild those relationships. And then I got to a point where I needed to leave the education sector. I was working in further education and it's quite a, a stressful and an intense sector to work in, as I'm sure lots of sectors are. So I took a bit of a break, started doing some other jobs, so that I could just be a bit home at the more, a bit more and theoretically give me a bit more time to work on my PhD. I did all right at that for a couple of years and then I basically did my data collection, which was interviews, got to the end of that, and that's when this struggle hit. I am running perilously close towards my end date. Vikki: Okay. So you've got all your data and you are part through your analysis. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: Is anything written? Ruth: I've got a draft lit review that will need reviewing. Of course. I've got half an introduction. I've got the methodology chapter, and then I think that's it in terms of the structure itself. Yeah. I've got tons of other stuff that probably won't ever make it in, but I've got, you know, there's quite a body of work there, if that makes sense. Vikki: Yeah. And then it would be a results, analysis chapter. A discussion, conclusion. A little mini conclusion. Yeah. And that would be the, the structure. Ruth: That would be it, yeah. Vikki: Okay, cool. It's always just useful to get a kind of handle on exactly where we're at with things. Yeah. Now tell me more about what you are thinking about your PhD at the moment. Ruth: So it's a really, if I take this subject and the research question I've got, it's actually really important to me. It's a question that it has always been important to me, throughout my career in education but also, so what I've done is I've collected life histories um, and actually the whole process of, making those connections with the people that were willing to give me their time and their stories that's probably my biggest driver now to completing it because they've given me this, you know, gift, I suppose and I don't want to just abandon that, that feels really, I'm not sure the word is dishonest, but that feels, I don't know, there's a bit of integrity there that I have in myself that I would like to take that forward with them. Vikki: And what's making that feel difficult at the moment? Ruth: I don't know whether it's because I've stepped out of education but also working independently in quite a remote place in the country, it's quite isolating. There's not much networking. I'm distant from my university, and I feel quite stupid sometimes. Ruth: Like I've lost those sparks that you get from conversations from being around other people that are doing this sort of thing. So I feel very alone in it, and I think that means that I rely really, really heavily on good interactions within supervisory meetings. Yeah. And the minute my confidence gets knocked, then I'm like, oh, I'm just really stupid and my, I actually can't do this. I actually can't do it. I don't have the capacity to do it. Vikki: Yeah. And how does that feel telling yourself that ? Ruth: Awful? It feels awful. It feels like I'm really heart wrenchingly sad, really sad. Vikki: Let's drill into it a little bit. Okay. Okay. If you can sit with the sad at the moment. Yeah, yeah. What do you think you mean when you say you don't think you can do it? Ruth: I wonder if I'm clever enough. I get hijacked by big things. So like, you know, this is, I'll be working on the data analysis and then suddenly I think, oh, but what if somebody asks me this, you know, in the Viva or whatever. And then I'll be like, oh, I don't know. And I haven't read enough and I'm not gonna have time to read enough and I'm gonna look really silly. And they're gonna say, oh, wow. What are you doing all of this time? And then I'll think, oh, I can't do it, then I can't do it. Um, so yeah, I, I get easily hijacked by things that, you know, are quite far down the line, I suppose. Ruth: And I have a worry and anxiety about being told that I'm wrong, or I should have done it this, or I should have done it. And then I think, well, why am I doing it? Oh, no! I've created these scenarios in my head. I understand that. Um, yeah. Vikki: So why, and this might sound like a strange one, but go with me. Okay. Why does it feel like a problem to be told that you are wrong or that you could have done something differently? Ruth: That is a good question. There's definitely something about imposter syndrome in there and that fear of being caught out. I remember that definitely when I was working in education,, I kept getting promoted and there was always that, oh no, they're gonna find me out this time. They're gonna find me out this time. And I think that, um, you know, when you've had a poor experience with the delivery of feedback, and then that makes you not want to get feedback. There is a bit of that as well. Vikki: Yeah, no, definitely. And without going into the details of how it was delivered or anything like that, how did that feel for you? Ruth: Okay, so I've had a couple of experiences where that's happened and I think I cried for about a month after one of them. Um, and that was a verbal sort of feedback thing. There was another incident which was delivered via email and it was an interesting one because the feedback within the email was, um, awful. It was dreadful. It made me feel about this, this big. Um, but then when I read through the comments within the body of work, they weren't actually that bad. So it, I was like, I can't marry this up because had I received the document, I would've been able to take that very constructively and worked with that. Ruth: But having it topped with a very, I guess, patronizing type email, really threw me. I don't need people saying, oh no, you're doing a really good job all the time. I'm not saying that I can't take, I can take constructive criticism. As well as a PhD student, I'm a writer and writers get rejection all the time. Right? So I can live with that and I can work with that, but in this case it really, really bothers me. Vikki: Okay. Right. I want us to get a little bit more specific 'cause this something I see with my clients in the membership all the time is that we criticize ourselves for really big things. I am not clever enough to do a PhD. I'm not smart enough to be here. I can't do it. Whatever it is. Yeah. And one of the things I always encourage people to do, and I'd like to support you to do now, is to actually try and narrow that down a little bit. Vikki: Okay. Because a PhD is made up of a whole bunch of different activities, a whole bunch of different skills and stuff like that. And I think it's useful just to be a little bit more specific about what we're criticizing ourselves for. Okay. So tell me a bit more, which bits of this do you think you are not good enough at? Ruth: Okay. I think the thing that I don't think I'm gonna be good at is around the discussion. So if I flip that question on its head a little bit, the thing that I have been good at and really enjoyed was the development of the research questions. Really getting down to what it is that I was doing and then finding the methodology that best fit that. And then doing that so that all was brilliant. I'm even okay with the data analysis. I like that and I can enjoy that, but the deeper I got into that, the more I started thinking, this is all great, but I'm very concerned now about how I write this up as a discussion. Ruth: That is a very different skill, isn't it? And that, that bit, that bit frightens me. I got frightened during the lit review in the sense that I was worried constantly that I was missing something and therefore continually trying to read more and make it perfect and perfect and perfect. Ruth: And I think that that experience, I'm sort of pulling into the discussion in advance and thinking, I'm not going to be able to do this. Vikki: Okay. How does it feel getting a bit more specific about it? Ruth: Better, better, better. Because it becomes less nebulous, doesn't it? . And if, I guess it's, you know, if you can pick bits off and just go, okay, actually maybe it's not the whole PhD, maybe it's just this bit of it. That's makes it a bit more tangible and something you can hold. Vikki: And let's get specific on the other part because, so at the moment we've narrowed it down that actually, you know, you had a bit of some struggles with your lit review. Mostly the kind of, sounds to me, reasonably normal kind of perfectionism that people have when they're writing that sort of thing for the first time. You loved formulating the question, you loved picking your design, you designed it, you carried it out. So there's a huge chunk of this that you actually really enjoyed and felt that you were pretty good at. Ruth: Yes. Vikki: And so now we've got to more specific about which bit of the PhD is the discussion that feels really challenging. Now I wanna get more specific about you. So, rather than saying I am not good enough to write a discussion, what specifically are you concerned that you can't do for that discussion? Ruth: I think I guess the easiest way to explain this would be to be writing the discussion and maybe even the conclusion and thinking that you've added something to the body of literature only for, to then discover that actually everybody already knew it. There's definitely that, and that I will, perhaps because I'm not immersed in that world anymore, that I will miss something really, really obvious and therefore by avoiding it, I won't miss it. Vikki: So we're most concerned that you'll miss something Ruth: Yes. Vikki: And that that'll mean something bad if you do. Ruth: Yes. Vikki: So does that mean you think you can write a discussion, it just might miss something? Ruth: I'm concerned I will write it wrong, that I won't understand how it should be written and therefore write it wrong. That probably sounds really silly, doesn't it? Given that you can, and I have read, you know, other people's PhD thesis in, you know, not just in this area, but in lots of different areas, just to get a, you know, a flavor for, you know, structure and language, et cetera. But I, I am concerned about that. I'm afraid of that. Vikki: What would wrong mean though? Because again, we are back to using very general phrases. What does wrong mean? Ruth: I guess, if I imagine a scenario where I send a chunk of work to my supervisors to have a look at, for them to come back and go. No, no, this is not how you do it. And that sounds really daft when I say it out loud, because actually, if you're only a few pages in then actually knowing that at that point, it's quite helpful. It's really interesting because like when I, when I say that to you, that sounds a really silly thing because I'm not gonna get it right first time. Vikki: I mean, I'm not even sure what right means in this context. Ruth: Okay. So really, really wrong. Like, if they were saying, this is not a PhD. What are you doing? Vikki: But this is what's really, really useful for anybody who is generically criticizing themselves. Ruth: Okay. Vikki: Is the more specific we get. Yeah. Either we hit on something that's solvable. Yeah. Like it's learnable or we realize there's not much substance to this. Ruth: Yeah. Okay. Vikki: Because if what you are really worried about is that you end up writing a discussion that is just in no way the shape of a discussion should have. Bear in mind, that could be a whole variety of things, right? Depending on the discipline, depending on the approach you take and whatever, then you get to go, well, how would that happen? Because remember, we are not talking about first drafts. We're not talking about, 'cause if you hand in a few thousand words and your supervisors say, this is no idea what you've been doing, Ruth, this is rubbish , then that don't feel good. Right? But that's not the end of this line. That's not a pass fail issue. That's a, okay, I need to do this again in a different way with some more information from them. But if we are talking about, I'm not capable of doing this, as in the version you submit gets that response from your examiners, then we get to go, really, are we really believing that you are gonna write a discussion? Somehow get it past your supervisors and submit it that your examiner is gonna go, this just isn't even a discussion. Ruth: Yeah, yeah. I can see that. I can, I can see that. That's an unlikely scenario to get to, isn't it? Vikki: And so what, then we get to backpedal a little bit. We say, okay, that's probably unlikely. Okay. I don't want you to call it silly 'cause this stuff all comes from somewhere and it is, it feels so, so true and so, so dangerous. I get that. But we get to just backpedal a little bit. So it's like, okay, what am I actually worried they might say? What is it a little bit more plausible that they might critique me for? Ruth: Hmm. Yeah, because all I can, all that goes on in my head when you say that is that they'll go, you are wrong, you are wrong, you've got this all wrong. But then you'll say, well, what does wrong mean? And I guess I'm worried that what, that they will prob that they could say, if we don't think you're actually up to this, Vikki: but up to what? Ruth: Finishing, Vikki: but, but which bit? Because a viva is not a test of whether you are good enough to have a PhD. A Viva is a defense of a piece of work. Ruth: I, I do understand that, like on paper, but I do feel, I do get a bit hijacked by the thought that actually, even though that's the process, that that's secretly what people might be doing, Vikki: I can't say it never is. Right? I have looked after people in the past. I have coached people who have had viva experiences that I don't think are appropriate. Okay. So I'm not gonna say that that never happens, but it happens way less than people fear It will happen. And it's almost always resolvable, even when that happens. A thesis has to be sufficient work. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: Can be defended in a viva. And what happens when we start getting more specific is we start going, okay, well what are they gonna pick holes in in my discussion? Maybe they'll say they don't agree with the argument I'm making based on my data. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: Maybe they'll say, I don't give sufficient areas for future work. Maybe they'll suggest that I don't acknowledge a key limitation of my work. Ruth: I am worried that they will say, but you've completely ignored the work of Joe Blogs in 2021 or something. Yeah. That's the sort of like, you know, detail that I worry about. That they'll just be like, you know, where have you been? You know, all this stuff's been happening. I am worried about that. Vikki: How do we deal with that? Ruth: I don't know. I don't know. because my approach to that particular concern in the past has been to then basically start trying to rewrite my l review over and over and over again to, and that, that doesn't work because that just sends me back into my little loop of doom. Yeah. Vikki: So the people who were listening on the podcast, you will not have seen me shaking my head. If you're on YouTube, you'll have seen me. No, we don't. We deal with that by saying, yeah. There might be stuff I've missed. I have done systematic, whether it's actually an official systematic review or I have just been systematic in how I've looked at things. I've selected the literature that I wanna include in my thesis. Is there stuff I could have included? Probably. Does it mean my thesis is wrong? No. If the examiners feel strongly about it, I'll add it in my corrections. Ruth: Right. Okay. That does sound a much better approach. Vikki: Now, obviously, I'm not saying, any supervisors listening. I'm not saying, oh, just do a crappy lit review. No one cares, but if you have genuinely put due diligence into your lit review, you've done your best. You know, there's infinite literature out there. We all have to put boundaries around what theoretical frameworks we're gonna talk about, what past literature we're gonna talk about, da, da, da. Vikki: Right. You can check you've made it clear where those boundaries are. I'm including these sorts of studies, but not those sorts of studies. Yeah. I've taken this theoretical approach or this methodological approach because of A, B, C. Yeah. Okay. You can be clear around why you've done that. Yeah. And then there people are allowed to debate it. Yes. That's literally the point of research. Ruth: Yes. Vikki: So at the time of recording last week's podcast, with Dr. Ilana Horwitz, who wrote the Entrepreneurial Scholar, and one of the things she talks about in there is that a thesis isn't the end of a conversation, it's the beginning of one. That theses and research articles are put out there to start conversations and some of those conversations will be, I wonder why Ruth didn't include the whatever method. Yeah. And that's okay. Someone can use that method. You will be someone else's gap. Okay, Ruth did this but never did that. Therefore I'm gonna do that. Ruth: Okay. That's helpful. Very helpful. Very helpful. Vikki: I'm leaving space for somebody else to, to write their PhD in. Ruth: I like that. That's nice. That's a really lovely way of framing it. Vikki: Yeah. It's what we are doing. Right? We look at other people's research and go, oh, a limitation of the Vikki et al study is that she never did X, and that seems important to me, so let's go try. Ruth: Yeah. Okay. Doing it. Yeah. Vikki: We're not saying that they're rubbish and they should never have got a PhD because they didn't do this thing. No, we're saying, oh, look at us finding a gap. Aren't we clever? Ruth: Yeah. Okay. I like that a lot. Yeah. Vikki: Now I know we haven't actually got on to talking about whether you should finish this or not and I think we should get to that. The reason I wanted to do this stuff first is because sometimes we have a whole bunch of stories that are clouding that decision in the first place. Yeah. And it sounds as though you have your fair share of those. Right. It sounds as though there's a whole bunch of stuff in terms of some of the interactions you've had, which we won't go into but stuff around some very, very general criticisms that you're giving yourself. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: That once we start sort of scratching at them a little bit are perhaps not quite as robust criticisms of yourself as they could be. Ruth: Yeah. Okay. Vikki: And the reason that's useful is because as we decide, you could believe all the things I just said and decide not to finish your PhD. Vikki: And that is absolutely fine too. But what we wanna be trying to do is make any decision about whether you are gonna do this from a place where you are essentially thinking you could be fine either way. Ruth: Okay. Vikki: I could choose to do my PhD and I can believe that I could be fine while doing it. I don't have to burn myself out further to do it. I don't have to beat myself up. This doesn't have to be this awful torture. I can believe that I'm capable of doing the next bit and that I'll figure out the bit after that and we'll keep doing that until the thing's done and handed in. Or I believe I can be fine putting this to bed, saying I'm not doing it. Feeling whatever emotions I feel about that, but not making it mean loads of things about myself. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: Okay. Yeah. So let's go to that side now. Okay. How would it feel to decide not to do your PhD? Ruth: I think there would be a very short term relief. But I would probably, I don't wanna jump to the word regret, but I would wonder, I probably for the quite a long time about whether I'd just done that out of fear. It. It does make me sad to think of that. Vikki: Mm-hmm. But that's okay. Sad is okay. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: Sad is a really pure emotion. It would be slightly odd for you to decide not to do something that you decided 10 years ago you wanted to do. Yeah. And you've put all this work. It would be slightly odd not to be sad about that. We don't have to avoid sad. Ruth: No. Okay. Vikki: Yeah. Sad feels rubbish. But it's because you care about it. It's fine. Yeah. We can look after you through sad if needs be. Ruth: Mm-hmm. Vikki: The bit about regret though is optional. Ruth: Yeah. Okay. Vikki: And this is why understanding your process of decision making is so important because if you can make sure that you are making decisions for reasons that you love. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: Then anytime the regretful thoughts come up in future, you remind us, I made this decision for reasons I love. Ruth: Okay. Vikki: And I stand by the version of me that made that decision. Ruth: Okay. Vikki: Tell me what you're thinking. Ruth: Yeah. I am thinking, because there's, when I have considered that option, there's, my immediate thought was, yeah, but how would I explain that to the people that gave me their time as you know, participants. How would I explain that? What would my answer be? And honestly, at the moment, my honest answer to them would have to be, well, I just got really overwhelmed and afraid of it. Ruth: And that doesn't feel like a good reason. That doesn't. If you feel, you feel overwhelmed and you know, you, you take a break and see if you feel better in a, you know, a month or so. Right. You don't just give it up because it keeps you awake at night Vikki: don't you? Ruth: I don't know. That just feels, somebody asked me the other day, I live in a small town. And quite innocently they said, why are you doing it? Are you doing it for your ego? No, they, they weren't being like, you know, funny with me. I really like them, but it was such a good question and I was like, I don't think so because I'm not in that sort of place anymore where, you know, you are sort of bumping into people at conferences. But the equally where I was going with that is there is a part of my ego that doesn't wanna let go of it because, you know, ego's still important. You know, I'm not saying like, ooh, you know, Vikki: but what would it mean about you if you didn't do it? Ruth: I was a quitter. Okay. Quitter gave up because it got hard. Vikki: Okay. For people not on YouTube. You can't see the face that Ruth is pulling right now. Whatcha thinking about the fact that you just said that? Ruth: Uh, I've just started laughing, I think, but I'm not sure if I'm laughing hysterically or not. I don't know. Vikki: Because that's optional too? Telling yourself you're a quitter and the quitting things is a bad thing is completely optional too. Ruth: There's one thing that , so basically when I left my job, right, that was a massive decision. That was a massive, huge decision because it was a, you know, it was a good salary, it was a good position, but I gave time to that decision and I was so confident that it was the right thing, and because of that, I don't regret it. Ruth: So I think that's what you're talking a little bit about. Yeah. If you have confidence in that decision, then actually the, you know, the fact that I gave up a really good position and a really good salary, et cetera, and I'm really happy with that. And I've embraced this, you know, slightly strange new life. Ruth: And I've loved it and grown from it. I, despite the months that I've been thinking about this decision, I don't have that confidence and I almost want that feeling again before I make that decision. Vikki: Why did you have the confidence in that one, do you think? Ruth: I almost don't know because on paper it was a really bad one. Like, you know, I had some really funny looks from that one. Not from my immediate family or anything like that, but you know, from people within that circuit. I think because I, when we were talking about it, and when I came sort of right close to that decision, everything just started to feel right. Everything just started to go, okay, okay. And that, and that, and the decision making process itself brought peace. Ruth: But before I sort of, you know, made that decision and, you know, handed in my notice, I was already feeling better and I have not got that this time. There was something in the whole process last time that felt right. Whereas this time, I keep coming back to that word that it would be quitting. It would be, you know, I know there's the whole thing about, you know, grit and, you know, you carry on but for this one, it just, it's not there. I, I think I'd probably hide in shame a little bit. I feel really ashamed. Vikki: So it's no wonder it's making it a hard decision. No. If one of the options in some ways is tempting and in other ways is shrouded in a load of shame, it's not a surprise. It feels like a really hard decision. Ruth: No. Vikki: I want you to think about ways, and this is not me persuading you to quit your PhD. I genuinely believe you can be absolutely fine either way. Yeah. And I think that is the best starting point for a decision like this. I want you to think about how could it be a great decision to not continue? How would that mean wonderful things about you instead of bad things about you? Ruth: I will be really honest at this like, like point in time I cannot think of a single thing. Vikki: That I am someone who prioritizes her mental health. I, yes, I'm someone who has other options that they can reengage with that are just as meaningful. I'm someone who knows they don't have to finish something just because they started it 10 years ago. Mm-hmm. I'm someone who can make difficult decisions. I'm someone who can look after myself when I'm sad because it didn't go the way I wanted it to. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: I'm someone who trusts that I can be Okay anyway. I am someone and you can, it sounds as though this is true, so I'm gonna make some assumptions. I'm someone who's surrounded by people who will support me regardless of what I decide. Ruth: Yeah, that is true. That is true. Yeah. Vikki: I think that's a bunch of it is things that it could mean about you. Ruth: Yeah, I, I take those, it would never have come up Vikki: It's something I wanted to do once and it didn't work out the way I wanted it to work out and that's a bummer. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: I'm someone who knows when to cut their losses. I. Ruth: Okay. Vikki: And what I would then encourage you to do is then think about the other side, the continuing to do it. But not to think about it with anything that undermines those reasons , because it would be very easy to create a narrative. I'm someone who always finishes what they start. I'm someone who has grit and resilience, da, da, da, all that stuff. But that undermines the other stuff. Yeah. We want both sides to feel true and both sides to feel. Okay. Ruth: Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Vikki: So on that side we might have things like, I'm someone who can work through things one step at a time. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: I'm someone who can look after themselves when they find something difficult. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: That sort of thing. Ruth: Yeah. Okay. Vikki: Okay. Because if over here we like hold up as amazing, the I'm someone who can finish things, then it makes this side a bit sticky. Ruth: Yeah. Okay. I can, I see that and I can see how easy it would just to just do that. Vikki: The other thing I wanna check in before we finish is I think there are ways you could think of honoring the work of the people who contributed to your studies either way. Ruth: Do you? Because I couldn't, I couldn't think of any because I just thought that, you know, everything that they contributed to and everything I've got is all, you know, obviously it's super wrapped up in, you know, protected by the appropriate processes at the university. So I always just assumed that once that book got closed, if you like, then it would just be gone, deleted. Vikki: I mean, you'd need to check with your university. Yeah. But as the pi you can write up for publication one assumes if you wanted to. Ruth: Okay. Vikki: Without submitting it for your thesis. I don't see why. Okay. It would be important to check that there's no regulations to prevent that happening. You'd probably need your supervisor's consent. Ruth: Okay. Okay. That's good to know. That's good to think about. Vikki: There's stuff around informal feedback to participants. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: Stuff around, look, this is the situation. These are the reasons I've made the decisions that I'm making. However, I have done preliminary analysis. These are the sorts of things that are coming out. I've written you a bit of a report that kind of summarizes what I did and what I found so that you can see the sorts of things that came out of it. Ruth: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Vikki: As a kind of non-published, but just for you so you can see that, you know, some love and care and thought did go into this. Yeah. And I think there's some interesting things here. Ruth: Okay. That's really important to me. So yeah, Vikki: we can present at a conference and then never write it up. Ruth: Okay. Vikki: You've shared it publicly. People are aware work has been done. Ruth: Okay. Vikki: You can write a book chapter, there's, there's many, many routes. You can just explain to them the situation and be okay with that too. Ruth: Yeah, yeah. Okay. That is really important for me to think about. Vikki: Because those are sort of what I would call like sticky thoughts. Because when you're trying to make a decision, if you've got a sticky thought in your head, like, I would be letting down my participants. Particularly something where it's really important to you. It's an important part of your sort of sense of self that you are not letting them down. Whatever that would mean. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: Then that sort of sticky thought is important to resolve before you try and make the decision. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: 'Cause otherwise it just sits really heavy on the side of, I've gotta finish this thing. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: Now taking that sticky one away doesn't mean you have to not finish or you have to finish. It means neither, but it just cleans it up a little bit. Ruth: Yep. Vikki: Yeah. And so I think for me, the two thoughts I want you to really clean up before you make any decisions are that this would mean something bad for my participants and this would mean something bad about me. Because neither of those things are true and they're kinda unfair, sticky thoughts. Once you can, you know, we're never gonna make them completely go away, but once you can sort of process those a bit, decide that those are not necessarily just strictly true thoughts. And there's different ways of you being okay and it meaning lots of positive things about you and it not necessarily meaning that you've let them down in any meaningful way. Once we can kind of tidy that up a bit, then we can get to what do I actually just want to do? Yeah. Because you allowed to just pick what you want to do. Ruth: Are you? Vikki: You could just pick for no other reason than it's what you want to do. Okay. Why didn't you finish your PhD? Didn't want to in the end. Why did you finish your PhD when it looked like it was being super hard? 'cause I wanted to. Either's fine and it doesn't have to have more explanation than that. Vikki: Okay. Yeah. And there's gonna be some self-coaching on either side. Yeah. 'cause if you choose to carry on, there's gonna be a load of self-coaching around supporting yourself while you do things that are not just magically not gonna feel hard anymore. No. There's gonna be a bunch of coaching on that side and there's gonna be a bunch of self-coaching on the site if you decide not to. Yeah. 'cause whilst you can believe and tell yourself that you're not gonna beat yourself up for it, you're not gonna have regrets,. Those things are gonna come up 'cause our brains are fishy like that. So there's gonna be coaching, like self coaching on yourself either. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: How are you feeling? Ruth: Um, I was gonna I feel much better. I feel much better, um, because that the whole, I think it's just been, yeah, I'm probably just gonna have to like go and lie in a dark room for a minute. Vikki: Yeah. It's a lot to take in. Ruth: It is a lot to take in. Vikki: It's the joy for doing it for the podcast is you get to listen to it again. Ruth: I know. Yeah, definitely. Um, yeah. The joy for everybody listening to on the podcast is that they haven't seen all of the ridiculous faces I've been making through Vikki: While they could go to YouTube and check them out there, but quite seriously though. Yes, there'll be so many people listening who are empathizing with this, who have either had these doubts or having these doubts, are making these decisions now. Vikki: And I think just hearing somebody else talk them through, hearing where they've got options, I think will, will help a lot of people. So thank you so much for being so, so open and honest about it all. It's important. Ruth: I, I am so pleased that you have picked me to come and talk about it because I think there is, you know, there will be people out there like me. I know there are, and it's, it's scary and it's. You know, it's, you don't really wanna admit it. And I get particularly not to supervisors, so it's, you know, that's not, you know, something you really wanna do. Is it? So actually, yeah. Yeah. Well, I hope that it encourages other people to be brave. Vikki: Definitely. Ruth: Whatever that means. Vikki: I'm sure you have inspired them. Thank you so much, and thank you everyone for listening, and I will see you next week.

< In this episode, I’m joined by Jess Dineen, who is both a PhD student and a neurodivergent consultant, speaker, coach, and founder of NeuroNatives. We discuss the strengths and challenges of being in academia with autism, how autistic people can support and advocate for themselves, and how individuals and universities can better support neurodivergent people. Whether you are autistic yourself, or you want to be more inclusive and supportive of your autistic colleagues, Jess shares both lived experiences and evidence based strategies that will help. Links I refer to in this episode Connect with Jess on LinkedIn and find out more about her business Neuronatives . Transcript Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast, and this week I have another special guest with me. This week I am joined by Jess Dineen, who is the CEO and founder of Neuronatives. So, hi Jess. Jess: Hi Vikki. Great to be here. Great to be on the podcast today. Vikki: I'm so excited to have you here. Why don't we start off as usual people, just tell people a little bit about who you are and what Neuronatives even is. Jess: Sure. So, Neuronatives is a consultancy training company to raise awareness, and make workplaces more neuro inclusive. The whole idea of the business is very much to back what we're saying with science. So really using journal articles, research papers to support what we're talking about. And also backing it with lived experience as well. So I myself late diagnosed autistic and A DHD , and so a lot of what I talk about is based on my lived experience and also kind of client's experience as well. Vikki: Yeah. And what do you aim to do with the organization? Jess: The aim eventually is to run tailored consultancy. So starting off, you know, right at the top, kind of strategy, getting workplace, companies being more neuroinclusive. So thinking about their long-term vision, their hiring policies, you know, everything from recruitment to retention to then how you are managing your team. Um, thinking about your workplace policies, and then down to individual manager training. So how to get the most out of your employees and support them. 'cause the stats are there, you know, the more inclusive your workplace is, the more productive your workplace is, and the higher retention rates it's gonna be. Jess: So that's the aim. And also alongside that we hope to offer more coaching as well. We're quite a small business and we're right at the beginning of the journey but taking very much a tailored approach and not just framework, not a tick box exercise, to make real change for neurodivergent individuals. Vikki: For sure. Yeah. And why does that feel so important for you right now? Jess: I think being late diagnosed myself and the amount of. Kind of effort that I had to go to advocate for myself. And even at the start of the journey, getting diagnosis, getting the forms done but then also in the workplace what I needed. Jess: When I asked for adjustments, you know, to go from working five days in the office to a few days in the office, I cried 'cause I was acknowledging that I needed that support and that that was okay. I don't want other people to have to take all that time to figure that stuff out. I want to be able to it already be in place. Jess: And I think also the amount of stress employees have who are neurodivergent around, you know, advocating themselves, having these conversations, knowing where to start. It should already be happening at recruitment or even hiring stage, um, these conversations as to how to work with me or, you know, what best practice looks like. Jess: So neurodivergent individuals are often already tired just by living life. So to have to advocate for themselves and then advocate for themselves in work, is just another layer of, of complexity and stress, especially if you are autistic. From my personal experience, the kind of social nuances and, how you perform or how you're masking at work is another barrier I guess. So I'm trying to remove barriers, I guess is my, is my, long and short of it. Vikki: Perfect. And as you know, but just for the listeners, we are gonna mostly focus on autism today. So I know you have expertise across both autism and A DHD, but we've had an episode with Dr. Alex Conner on before. So we've talked about A DHD quite a bit and because of my own proclivities, it tends to come up quite regularly throughout the episodes. Vikki: Yeah. And, but I wanted to really get somebody in who has expertise in, in autism specifically. Sure. Yeah. Obviously everything you talk about will apply to both and don't feel like you can't talk about ADHD stuff, but I'm really excited to have somebody with specific expertise and experience in autism, to talk about it. Yeah. So maybe let's start there actually, for people who are less familiar. What actually is autism? Jess: So autism. So it depends which lens we look through. So you might look through the medical model. So if you go to the DSM, so the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders, a word I hate is very much called a neurodevelopmental condition. Jess: So usually diagnosed in childhood, hence neurodevelopmental during the developmental period. Um, and it's where, um, so this is all kind of the clinical terms, not necessarily reflecting my opinion, how it should be viewed. But where someone might have challenges, significant challenges in social interaction, communication, and that could be also difficulties and communication skills, social behaviors that significantly impair daily functioning. Jess: And they do vary from one person to the next, so they might have kind of special interests or all sorts of different things. There's different areas in which you can be diagnosed, but often it looks and presents differently between males and females, and a lot of women are being diagnosed later due to a kind of broadening of the criteria, but also more visibility of what it looks like in women. Jess: The word kind of deficit disorder is something that I do not agree with. I'm very much against the medical model , but as if you wanted to look for kind of a diagnosis that, that is what it, you would find in the kind of clinical literature. Vikki: And how would you prefer to define it? Jess: I definitely would prefer to define it as kind of differences in communication styles, differences in social interactions and behaviors. I wouldn't say I am deficit. I would just think I'm maybe more, for me personally, more direct, more assertive. I hate small talk. I do it because I know that that's what I'm supposed to do, but I don't like it. I think it's also remiss not to say that everyone is unique. So all autistic individuals are different. So you might find someone like myself who, you know, reasonably social and you know, can have a conversation and make eye contact, but it does time me out. Jess: So I guess, older, older kind of literature would say, I'm high functioning and then the older literature might also say someone's low functioning if they're not able to do those things. I think it's, I'm just functioning. You don't see me on the days where I'm not talking and I'm burnt out and I don't leave my bed. Jess: So I think I definitely have challenges. But I would say there are more differences in communication styles and some people love my approach and love my style. Vikki: Perfect. And I know you work across a whole range of different companies and organizations, but thinking specifically about academia, I know you are doing a PhD yourself. Yeah. What challenges do you see autistic people having when doing PhDs and in academia more generally? Jess: I'm actually in my second year of doing a PhD now, so I think I've managed to see a bit of what I've experienced and then others around me and those I've worked with and I think the kind of number one challenge is communication, and expectations. I think in academia we have all sorts of tools. We have email, we have teams or Zoom, you know, whichever the university uses . And I think it's really good at the beginning to start off with, you know, what communication style does your supervisor like? Is it an email, is it teams message or a teams meeting? Jess: Is it a face-to-face meeting? And what are the expectations? I think challenges that I've come across is what are the expectations in terms of communication? What is their role? And some supervisors may be very clear and some may not be. And so I've had to learn the hard way as to what is expected of me and what methods work for my supervisors. But I think also in academia, there's quite a lot of unwritten rules and unwritten kind of structure and hierarchy that is not necessarily apparent to autistic individuals, especially, you know, someone like myself. It's very easy to make those mistakes. So I think it's being aware of those and if you're able to ask someone in the team or if you're able to get that awareness that's really important. Jess: So that's the one. I think second is again, expectations, but more in a kind of deadlines, you know, what's expected of you by when, and agreements as to what that looks like. Sudden changes or sudden like, you know, asked to do a presentation or something really unexpectedly or things like that are very uncomfortable, very, very stressful for those in my experience who have autism. So knowing what the semester looks like, knowing, you know, if you are on a scholarship, what you're teaching, having advanced notice of when you're teaching it, what content you're teaching, not getting it, you know, like three days beforehand. Vikki: I was really interested in you talking about the sort of unwritten rules. Yeah. And I think some of the stuff around how seriously to take particular comments I've seen , people with autism struggle with in academia mm-hmm. Where supervisors make a sort of slightly throwaway comment about, oh, it might be good to add that analysis or whatever. Yes, yes. Um, and to be honest, it's confusing for all students when that happens. I agree. I agree. But if you particularly struggle with sort of the unwritten side of things as it were, yeah then figuring out, does that mean I should do it? Was that an idea? Was that an order, was that a suggestion? What, what did they mean by that? I've certainly seen people come unstuck with that sort of thing where, and you can tell me whether this is something that's accurate or just sort of what I've seen with my clients, but I see that, that my clients with autism tend to fall on the side of taking it as an actual instruction and definitely doing it. Jess: Yeah. That's a really great point. Vikki: Rather than a Did they mean that, I dunno. Kind of, yeah. Jess: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And I think the one thing that I've learned from that is thinking about having a summary of what was discussed in the meeting and what are the action points. So then you can kind of nail down like what you know. The supervisor said this, did they actually mean that? 'cause they have to sign that form and get it back to the senior team, whatever. So a challenge would be, like you said, is taking what they're saying is gospel or literally, then doing a lot of work. And actually that wasn't needed or what wasn't the case. , I remember back when I did my master's, me and my supervisor, and we had to publish the paper actually but she'd asked me to go and look at some journals that might be suitable. So I went away and did a table, the impact factor, the name of the journal, the submission diff, like how it all worked, the, maybe the referencing style. Jess: And I think she just meant a cursory glance. But I had gone and done an Excel table and when we had our next meeting, I was like, this is the table what you asked for. And she was like, oh, and she didn't mean that. And so it was just quite amusing 'cause I was like, okay, like I really need to kind of double check with her and, you know, she does that with me now, is double check what we've agreed to. Vikki: Yeah, for sure. I guess the other one that I've seen a little bit is, and again, I've seen this with people who don't have autism too, but where people get quite fixed on this is how I want to do this study. Mm. And then I think it's an interesting balance between how you sort of, um, what's the word? How you sort of respect and honor the fact that it's their PhD and that this is, this is what they want to do. And sort of understand the fact that there might be less cognitive flexibility in terms of looking at other options and seeing that different ways could work. Vikki: Yeah. Versus your kind of supervisory responsibility For sure. Sort of advice. Yeah. That might work. I'm not sure, but it's high risk or it's not angled at the journal I thought we were going for. Or I wonder if you me, whether that's something you've experienced or seen. Jess: Yes, yes. I think, task switching is challenging for both, you know, those with autism who might have mono tropic interest, where they're focusing on one thing at a time or where those who have ADHD kind of, this is what I wanna do, I'm not, so what I'm doing right now and this is my hyper focus, don't you dare shift my attention. And so I think. For sure. I think that has definitely come, come up with me and clients where you've set up, but this is my intention, this is the gap in the research. This is where I'm going and this is what I'm doing and I'm gonna answer this question. But then whether it's miscommunication or new things come to light where there's a change needed. Jess: And I've recently gone through one where I've gone from doing a systematic review to now, including many more studies in my systematic review. So from 18 to now 41, to then being like, oh, let's, let's do a meta analysis, which will create much, you know, richer research, rich insights. However, it's kind of, for me personally, it's been really hard 'cause I dug everything, you know, dug deep and, and kind of really went down and got all the information and spent almost a year on the systematic review to then be like, actually this isn't right. Jess: This, we need to change. And I think. It's really difficult. And I think that's the first thing is I would for any, you know, anyone who's listening, like it's as a student or whether you're a supervisor who's looking to help their supervisee is thinking about acknowledging that it's difficult and acknowledging that change is hard. Jess: And it is down to the, the PhD student at the end of the day, like, this is their choice and their PhD. However, you have a supervisor for a reason, right? You have a supervisor who has experience, who has guidance and can help you , hopefully to success, you know, to, to completing your doctorate. So that's something that is, has been important for me to remember is I don't know what I'm doing. Jess: The supervisor might not either, but it's really important to, to remember that as how challenging it is you want to create your best work. And if that is the best work, then that's important to go on and do. And that's something with clients, it's, it's having that conversation of. Yes, it's difficult and let's, let's hash it out and let's get through it and talk about it but what outcome do you want to have? And where do you want to be and how do you get there? And, and don't get me wrong, that kind of wrestling and that, you know, changing topic and changing direction can bring up all sorts of emotions, anger, fear, frustration , all sorts , lots of procrastination 'cause I don't wanna start with new task, new topic. Um, yeah. And, and kind of strategies that I've kind of gone with is to say, okay, let's look at this kind of big ugly mess and how do we break it down? Like what are the tasks, you know? Okay. First we'll read about meta-analysis. Look at the couple of different kinds of meta-analysis. Think about the different, you know, whether it's random effects or fixed effects, for example, and this is when you're going granular, but, and then breaking down, like, okay, so let's look at all the studies. What kind of analysis did they do? But like breaking it down into steps. And I think that's something that both, I, I guess someone who has a ADHD and autism for myself, I need to break things down into chunks, otherwise it feels massive and I can't get anywhere. So something that has helped me working with clients to say, okay, with your supervisor, if you can get a check-in point, even if it's 15 minutes, every two weeks, have some goals and these breakdown steps and check in. Jess: And that way you don't have to wait till the, you know, monthly or bimonthly supervisor meeting where you haven't got to where you said you'd get because you're so overwhelmed. So it's realizing that I guess one size doesn't fit all when you're supervising. For the students who are neurodivergent, they will need different things. Um, but on the flip side, your students may be bounds and leaps ahead with the right guidance because they're like, oh yeah, no, I'm know what I'm doing now. Like, I'm, I'm focused and I'm interested and, you know, I can get a loads more done than perhaps, you know, a neurotypical student might do. Jess: I think it's really important to remember that you are, as an autistic individual, you may have strengths that are, you know, way above and beyond, you know, a neurotypical person. There is such a thing as that call, a spiky profile that you may have come across, where you know your executive function, you know your different skills, whether it's organization, memory, time management, you may have, you know, uh, drops, you know, where it's maybe not so good but then huge peaks where your skills outnumber, you know, the neurotypicals on your team. So be very much looking like a, a spiky profile. Um. And, there's quite a few occupational psychologists who do a lot of work in that area around neurodiversity as well, that I recommend looking into Almuth McDowall and Nancy Doyle, and many more names, but they focus a lot on kind of strengths-based coaching. What are the person's strengths? What are they really good at? Some clients it might be attention to detail, so really researching to the nth degree on one area and knowing all about it and being able to tell, you know, the supervisor or teach a topic, whether it's a class, all about that specific area and bring so much passion to the topic because they're so interested in it. Jess: But then also you are coming at something with a different angle, a different perspective, because your brain looks different. There are studies that show the brain looks different under an FMRI scan. So the different parts of the brain are, I don't wanna say different again, but look visibly different. And so remembering that your brain works differently and often your perspective is different, is a huge strength. Jess: So another strength that I've come across with clients I work with, but also within myself is often those with autism, have experienced an awful lot of difficulties, in which case they often have a deep level of empathy and understanding, and can really relate to a lot of people in many different ways. Jess: And these are just the things off the top of my head from my experience and my work. But, you can find lots of different strengths of all the different neurodivergent types, on national Institute of Care guidelines or whether you wanna look at the NHS but then there's an also lot of research papers that talk about the strengths of neurodivergent employees. For example, dyslexia the British Dyslexia Association has masses on the strengths of both dyspraxia and dyslexia. but yeah, I could go on about those all day. But if it's so important when you are working with students or supervisor, your supervisees to think about yes, the challenges, what are their strengths? Jess: How can I encourage them and empower them to not feel, oh, just because I have a, a hidden disability, or I'm neuro divergent that I'm behind or I'm worse off than everyone else, which is not the case. Quick interjection. If you are finding this episode helpful, but you are driving, walking the dog or doing dishes, just remember this. When you're done, head to the PhD life coach.com and sign up for my newsletter. We've all listened to a podcast and thought this is great. I should do something with it, and that didn't. That's where I created the newsletter to help you actually apply the stuff that you hear. Each week you'll get a short summary, some reflective questions on one simple action that you can take right away. You'll also get access to a searchable archive of all the past episodes so you can find the exact one that you need to help with your current challenges. Plus all newsletter subscribers get a free webinar every single month on a topic that affects all PhD students and academics, and you'll always be the first to hear for when my membership opens to new members. So once you're done listening, or even right now, go sign up for my newsletter and make sure you don't miss out. Vikki: So important and I love, I think that notion of the spiky profile and thinking about both at the same time is really useful because I've certainly seen with supervisors, and remember, and we'll talk about this later, listeners, you know, supervisors might have autism too. Vikki: This is not just about PhD students having autism, but certainly if you are a neurotypical supervisor and you have a neurodivergent student, sometimes it can be really confusing, right? Because you're like, Jess is brilliant, she knows her stuff so well. She's so on top of everything. I don't understand why she's having a freakout about talking at a research group meeting or whatever. Vikki: She knows this stuff back to front, inside out. I can't shut her up about it in meetings. This makes no sense. I don't get it. And so I think really recognize, because if you don't understand that, it can be so confusing to understand why someone's having such strong emotions about something. Yeah. That you know they're perfectly capable of 'cause they're so good at that other Jess: Mm. Absolutely. And I think that's the kind of misconception of, especially from my experience, women who are late diagnosis, that they've learn to mask and they've learn to manage all of this. And it gets to a point of burnout and significantly impaired, daily functioning where women just can't, basically can't manage anymore. Jess: And I think that's really important is having that curiosity and that open communication to say, these are my strengths and these are the areas that I find difficult and this is what happens. And I think having a psychologically safe environment, even though it's an overused term, but somewhere where you can say, Hey, this is really difficult, or this is causing me a lot of anxiety. And being real and honest I think super important to be able to acknowledge it and hit get it out in the open and move on. Because I think the supervisory role isn't always an easy one 'cause you're both, you know, an academic and you're pushing the student further ahead, but then you're also acting in some sort of pastoral capacity, whether you have officially given that term or not, but you are meeting the student, you know, most regularly compared to anyone else. Jess: So you will see that kind of ups and downs. So, it's really important to have that kind of open conversation and that also then takes awareness of both the supervisor and the PhD student. I think that would be my recommendation is reflecting a lot and thinking about what you want to share, but, and explaining why. Jess: 'Cause I think the supervisor's not there to fix everything 'cause it's very much a independent journey, but they want you to do your best. So you're trying to helping them understand how you can get there. Vikki: Yeah. I've done a few episodes recently where we've talked about mental health, we've talked about doing challenging research. We've talked about doing PhD with chronic illness and other disabilities and that sort of thing. And in all of them I try and find this balance between what can you do as an individual so you've got something that's kind of a bit empowering, that I can grasp hold of this and change my own situation. Vikki: Yeah. Whilst also at the same time recognizing that you are not responsible for the environment, that universities have a duty of care to support students with different needs. Yes. So I wanna kind of talk with you about both of those. So let's start with the individual students. So if there's a people listening, which I know they a hundred percent are, so people in my audience who have autism themselves, both students and academics, what can they be doing that can improve their own situations? Jess: Yeah, that is a really great question. I think first and foremost, acknowledging that you are neurodivergent and you are not neurotypical and getting rid of neurotypical expectations of yourself, knowing that you will not necessarily work nine till five. You will not sit down at your desk, nine till five. Jess: You may do, but you most likely won't. And so it's not acknowledging that, you know, some days you may have, you know, this kind of idea of a spoon theory where, you know, your maximum number of spoons might be five and some days it might just be one spoon. And this is really difficult to do. But acknowledging today, I have one spoon, so I'm gonna do one little bit. Jess: If I have five spoons, I'm gonna crack on and maybe do a lot more. So first of all, neurotypical expectations. Get rid of them. Secondly, I would be very careful about your environment. What is draining and what is, you know, not draining is probably the better way of saying it. So if you're studying or if you kind of force yourself to work in an area that is really draining, whether it's sensitivity to noise, to light, kind of comfort, you know, the chair you're sitting on your workspace, you know, be really careful about like where you put yourself. Jess: 'Cause as, as an autistic female myself, I'm very sensitive to light, to noise, to my surroundings. I can't work if people are in the area and that they might be watching me work and they might not be, I don't do well in a shared office, in a shared environment. I don't get anything done 'cause I'm too worried about like, oh, how, how does my face appear? Jess: Do I look friendly? Do I look grumpy? Am I like fiddling with my feet? 'cause I'm trying to concentrate, you know, that's not socially acceptable. So finding an area where you can be comfortable, I think is that you are in charge of that. Whether that is, you know, in the floor of the library or whether that's a home in your bedroom or whether that's your kitchen table, that's something that, a practical nature is useful. Jess: One other thing you can do is, and I know it can be tricky, but applying for disabled students allowance. So if you are diagnosed, you can then use that, and get support, whether that's physical support. So in terms of, you know, clearly laptop or kind of software that can help you, it might be you're able to access coaching, or you're able to have, you know, a new desk and chair that's more comfortable. Jess: And that works on an annual basis, so you're able to get that each year as a student. And if you are a supervisor listening, you should be able to get access to work. So your access to work through the government enables you to, the government's hope is to stay and work and to keep you employed. Go check it out 'cause it is really useful and it also works for those who are self-employed as well and you're able to get access to that. Vikki: Um, and again, and obviously just for listeners listening, this is kind of UK centric in the specific Jess: Yes. Apologies. Vikki: All good. But just to clarify that for my many listeners who are not in the UK Yeah, most places will have similar versions of that. Jess: Yeah. So that would be, get someone to help you to sort that out if it's difficult for you to do. So I think in the last one is probably being kind to yourself. 'cause I kind of mentioned at the beginning, I think especially if you have a late diagnosis or you are entering, you're just starting academia again, it's watching what you say to yourself in your head and which is very much easier said than done. Jess: Um, but often it's thinking about, you know, the shoulds I should have, could have, you know, and you talk to yourself the most. So it's trying to be kind and, and look at what you have managed to achieve. Jess: Having goals each week on things that you can try and meet, um, realistic goals are really helpful when you have days that you are not achieving or you are not completing something and due to maybe your energy levels. Jess: The last one would be just keeping an eye on yourself and looking after yourself. So it's easier said than done of course, but eating well, trying to get as much sleep, rest, exercise as the usual. Jess: I took myself out for a short walk earlier today 'cause I was stressed out and overwhelmed and that really helped getting out in the sunshine, seeing, seeing some nature. Yeah, I'm not great at it, but trying to put in these routines, um, it does help as well. Vikki: Definitely. Here's something that I've always found difficult in both when I was supervising, but also now with with clients sometimes as well. How do you find the balance between accepting things are the way they are and there, there are some things that you are never going to change and mm-hmm versus the things that with support and development, you could learn to do, if you see what I mean. I know we never, I'm not talking like we're gonna develop a way autism and we wouldn't want to, that's not what I mean. Vikki: But like I see some students who have autism being quite like, I can't do any of those things. Yeah. I have autism. I can't do them. And I see others being a bit more like, okay, if you want me to do a presentation, I'm gonna need this, this, and this in order to make that possible and I need some padding either side of it to allow me to decompress and blah, blah, blah. Vikki: Where do you find, especially, you know, maybe I'm just thinking about it as a supervisor again, but where do you find that balance between encouraging somebody to consider ways they could be supported to try something versus not pushing them to do something that's not what their brain yeah. is set up for, or whatever? Jess: Yeah. I think it's a tricky one. My initial answer would be it really depends on the individual and it depends on whether it's a matter of confidence and, you know, believing in themselves or whether they will most likely have a meltdown or a shutdown down as a result of that experience. Jess: You've got to be very careful understanding the difference, I think. And it might be that they are able to build up small steps so that they then avoid a shutdown or avoid a meltdown, or it may be that that's not possible. And I guess it depends on the individual and what their goals are. Jess: I think, you know, as students come to you for coaching, it's like what are their goals and finding realistic goals and where they want to get to and what those small steps in between look like as kind of wins. And in terms of accepting, there may be some things that they may always get really tired in social environments that may never change, but it's can we minimize which social environments they go to? Jess: Can they join lectures online? Can they get the support in terms of maybe more counseling from the university to talk through things or kind of like you said, like what buffering and what padding can be put in to help them. Jess: Or it may be that might not be something that they'll ever grow in and that might stay. Just like someone who's maybe nonverbal, may never be verbal, may always, use for example Makaton or another sign language to express what they're saying. Jess: So it's very unique to the individual. It's not a hard and fast rule. I think it's as a supervisor, as as a coach, it's thinking about, I guess what is the goal for them? Where do they want to get to and how, what, maybe working together, what are achievable steps to get there? Because only they will know themselves and what they're capable and what they're really just saying. No, I can't do it, but actually they can. Vikki: Yeah, and that's the difficult bit, isn't it? I think sometimes, especially if you're late diagnosed and you've spent time telling yourself you should be different and things, I think sometimes the person doesn't necessarily know which it is either. 'Cause I can see it happening both ways round, right? Mm-hmm. Vikki: That, especially somebody late diagnosed being like, no, no, I can, I can learn how to do this. I can handle this, da, da da. 'cause they don't wanna accept that they can't. Yeah. Yeah. But then on the other hand, people being quite fixed at, no, I definitely can't when actually it's sometimes, not always. Yeah. Sometimes the lack of confidence that you talked about. Yeah. Actually with the good support they could. And so I think that makes it kind of extra complicated 'cause it's not like the person with autism has this absolutely clear perspective Of exactly where their boundary sits with that. Jess: True. Yeah. That's true. I'm afraid, I don't have the hard and fast rule with that. It is a unique and engaging on the person, how much you can push them and encourage them. And you're very much saying it from a place of, I think you have this capacity, can we try it together? Jess: And they might say no. Or they might say, actually no, Vikki, I'm gonna take a shot. Let's, let's try this or like four sessions later, they might say, actually Vikki, I realized I said no to this, but actually I think I might try it. And it might just be building that trust with you to find that they might try that again. Vikki: I really like this sort of figuring it out together, having that kind of, whether it's a supervisory relationship or coaching relationship or wherever this sort of help, let's figure this out. Let's think about what that would look like, what might make that possible. One of the qualities, so I talk about being your own best boss quite a lot, and one of the qualities that we talk about a lot in that is curiosity alongside compassion. Curiosity, coming from a compassionate perspective, but being like, oh, I wonder if this would help, or I wonder if we'd be better off just saying, we are not doing those things for a while. For sure. Yeah. Or having that kind of thing of let's figure things out. Let's be open and honest and see what we can do here. Jess: Yeah. I think you quite right. It, it's a relationship, you know, it's a professional relationship, but it's still a relationship and it's one way you can kind of explore things and think, okay, what is possible? Jess: You know, what, what happens if we try this? What, you know, hypothetically, what would that look like or what would come up or maybe where have you done this before? Vikki: So we sort of started there talking not only about what people can do for themselves, but also how supervisors can support students with autism. Yeah. Um, let's, let's build on that a little bit more so how can anybody who is neurotypical in the university environment so this, whether you're a student or a supervisor, how can they support and make the most of working with people with autism. Jess: Yeah. That's really great. And I think even the fact that the supervisors are asking, you know, how can I make the most of this? How can I empower or support my supervisee is the first step you really want. Jess: But I think what I would kind of initially say is, you know, if the university has any sort of neurodiversity awareness training, go to them, you know, learn, I think is the key thing is to learn, you know, what might it might look like. Jess: And then secondly, acknowledging that each person's experience and diagnosis looks different or, or you know, that how they are neurodivergent looks different. So I'm autistic, but you know, you might meet somebody else who's also autistic and we may come across differently. And I think in the reason I'm saying is that it's important for a supervisor to think about, maybe starting like a How to work with me document. Jess: And that might look like, you know, preferred communication styles. So again, talking back to what we said before, like shall we have an email chain or shall we have an email with a summary and then we have a teams meeting and maybe we have videos off or videos on. They have may be transcription if transcription's allowed to kind of record what's being said or allowing note takers into the meeting. Jess: So it's that kind of thing would be included in the how to Work with me document and then setting clear expectations as to this is how often we'll meet, this is what we're gonna be covering. This is my remit of what, you know, I don't want, maybe either doesn't want to talk about anything personal. Jess: They might not want to be asked, you know, what they got up to the weekend. That's okay. So those kind of I guess rules of engagement is the maybe a nice way of putting it. And then also being prepared to continually reflect on what's working and what's not working as well and trying to create a space where that can happen. And all this is best practice and, you know, in an ideal world, and it's understanding that supervisors are usually squashed into their other lecturer duties and head of whatever they're doing. So it's trying to create something that's simple and effective rather than an extra burden of time and energy. Vikki: Yeah, definitely. And I think it's really important to recognize that the environment in which people are supervising is, is not always easy. But I also think that. You know, this stuff should make everyone's life easier. In fact, so much of what you said today just really strikes me as just universal good practice, right? Yes. And I know that's kind of the principles of universal design and all that, that most of the things that are set out for people with disabilities or neuro divergences, um, will, it will benefit anybody. Vikki: One that we haven't really talked about that I think is quite useful is thinking about sort of giving space for somebody to have an initial reaction. 'Cause one of the things, especially, we were talking about changing stuff mm-hmm Before, yeah. One of the things that I've noticed, both in supervision and in coaching, is that sometimes somebody with autism will have quite a strong initial reaction to a change. Vikki: Yeah. But that if you, as the person who's either suggested the change or that supervising that situation or whatever, can manage your own emotions about their reaction. And stay kind of calm and present. Then often with some time, and the amount of time can vary hugely. Right. Vikki: Whether they need to go away and come back tomorrow, or whether it's a five minute, have glass of water and go stretch your legs or whatever. But learning to manage your own emotions in that moment and not feel apologetic or defensive or all of those things, and just kind of giving it space for a second. Jess: Yeah. Vikki: I think can then really allow that person to have their legitimate reaction. But then also afterwards to choose what their actual response is. Jess: Mm-hmm. I mean, yeah. And I think that that then comes back to the how to Work with me document as to if there are changes. Because, you know, in an ideal world, PhDs go to plan. Everything follows, you know, step one, step two, step three. Best chapters are written up, done. But you know, nine times out of 10, that's not the case. Whether the data collect was incorrect or whether, you know, the systematic review turned into systematic review and a meta analysis. Jess: But I think it's then saying, okay, if changes are made, how would you like 'them communicated? Yeah. Would you prefer 'them over an email and then we'll discuss in a meeting? Or would you prefer me to bring up in a meeting at the end? And then you can go and we can discuss it. And again, we're not gonna be able to cover every eventuality in a how to work with me document, but acknowledging that part of being autistic is you may not cope with change or you may not manage that in a neurotypical way. Just as if you are excited about something, you may impulsively say something that's great or you may say something that wasn't very helpful and you need to apologize. I think it's acknowledging that, that that impulsivity is part of an ADHD diagnosis. And that it's not someone just being rude or, you know, having lack of self-control 'cause it's a legitimate executive function. Like it's, it's something that's not, it doesn't go so great always. Jess: Um. I think it's, uh, those things are important to consider. Vikki: Yeah. And that's where I think, so I do supervisor training, not specifically on this area. That's way beyond my scope of practice, but general supervisor training. And one of the things that we talk about a lot in that is not projecting your own reasoning for behaviors onto other people's behavior. Vikki: 'Because often if somebody is late for a deadline, say if the supervisor's, somebody who take deadlines very seriously, they assume that means Jess isn't taking this seriously. Or whereas we know that regardless where you've got, ADHD, autism, or nothing at all, sometimes you miss deadlines even when you are taking it very seriously. Vikki: And similarly, I think, you know, like with the impulsive thing, sometimes somebody who's very neurotypical, quite reserved. All those things might, well, I would only say that if I was being really rude and disliked the person. And so one of the things we spend quite a bit of time thinking about is how you can almost have that kind of flexibility to recognize that there's a likely, especially if you know that they've got diagnoses, there's likely to be a bunch of reasons why they just said the thing that that came out grumpy. Jess: Yeah, sure. Vikki: And it's hard, right? It is. Even if you're neurotypical, you're tired and you're busy and all those things, it's hard to always do that. But even if you can do it in retrospect Yeah. Vikki: Where afterwards you're like, yeah, that might have been impulse rather than anything else or whatever. I think it would really help. Jess: And I think, you know, as, as I said, I'm doing a PhD and I'm still learning and I'm still, you know, getting things wrong and, and, you know, apologizing or, you know, saying things and being like, should anyone, is anyone bothered by that? Like, I don't know. Should I send an email? Jess: Should I send a teams message? Am I overthinking it? And this is where it's, it's great if you have, you know, a couple of supervisors and perhaps they all have maybe different roles or different strengths. You know, that some might be more pastoral and some might be more academic. Jess: And maybe you have the opportunity to sense check with maybe the pastoral type supervisor, you know, how did that go? What do you think? And, you know, this is all an ideal world, but, it can be quite nice when the team is a bit more blended and even if, you know, someone might not be necessarily that pastoral focused, it might have someone else in the team that can support. Jess: And yeah, it also, that added layer of complexity is if perhaps, your supervisory team, someone is neurodivergent and maybe very different, you know, in how you work. Um. So, yeah. Vikki: Or very similar, right? And this happens personality wise as well as neuro divergent wise, is there's, there's obvious challenges if you've got someone who's neurotypical and somebody who's got autism, for example, they may have misunderstandings. But I do think there is also, I have been personally in situations, not with PhD students, but with like undergrads and that sort of thing where I, there's me and my enthusiastic non-diagnosed ADHD self and they've actually got ADHD and every meeting, it's just like, we could do this. Jess: Oh yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So many ideas. Vikki: And if you haven't got awareness around that, and similarly, you could have two people who are autistic that are just absolutely fixed on this is how we are doing this, this do, do, do, do. And then something comes along and no one's got the kind of capacity to be flexible about it. Vikki: So I think. It's not always when you're different. I think there's danger in similarities too sometimes. Jess: And I think your supervisor training, it sounds really important because I think a lot of, from my understanding, a lot of supervisors, and this is just my experience, I don't think they have a lot of training and I don't think that's provided. Jess: So it's very much they have to figure out as they go along. And, you know, they want their PhD student to finish within the allotted frame of time and they want them to meet the goals. There's a lot of pressure on them to help the student get there. So I think it's not the easiest role for them either. Jess: And I think often the student doesn't, if they've not been around the university set, they may not know that or appreciate that. So it's another thing to bear in mind and say, this supervisor may only have, you know, five hours a month to actually support you if that. Vikki: In my experience, most supervisory training focuses on procedures, right? It's like, what forms do you need to fill in, when, what requirements of you, what's the minimum rules of engagement, right? The you have to meet once a month and blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. Vikki: And some universities do provide others, as I say, I, I provide much more detailed supervision, which really gets into how your thoughts and emotions influence the way you supervise and how expectations of supervision can be so different between different people. Vikki: Yeah. Not just with neurodivergences but also with people who come from different countries who have different experiences with their own supervisor previously as to what they expect a supervisor would provide. Um, yeah, I think it's a huge issue and I think it's something that invite universities should really be investing a lot more in than they do. Jess: Yeah, absolutely. And the thing is, I'm, I can only speak for the clients that I've had and the clients I'm working with, but then also for myself, you know, I'm, you know, a heterosexual white woman, I don't have that kind of intersectional lens. I'm not able to talk from that. And I think that's something that is, is also huge in understanding, you know, and listening to autistic voices from an intersectional lens, whether that be, you know, gender identity or whether that is race. And that's something that I'm painfully aware of when I do my training is, you know, there's only so much published research as well from those different intersectional lenses. So, that's really important to think about and consider, um, as well. Vikki: And probably I assume variations in diagnoses rates as well. I mean, you mentioned gender differences in diagnosis, but I would be amazed if there weren't differences in diagnosis rates amongst different ethnicities and races. There are with most things. Jess: Yeah. Mainly also due to stigma and understanding, and how it looks maybe as well. We're so far behind in that sense. And that I mean, they've only just decided that you can be diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. I think it was like 2012 that, that was possible. And then to have a combined diagnosis. Just there's so much progress still yet to be done. Vikki: And we obviously wanna, we wanna avoid, 'cause I do think there is a tendency for people who have a kind of passing interest in this stuff to sort of notionally diagnose the people around. And I don't think that's helpful either. No. I'm a big believer that if you self identify as having any of these things, then I'm down 'cause you know Yeah. You, if you identify, you know, you Yeah. You know yourself. There's a lot of barriers to getting officially diagnosed, but for sure different to diagnosing someone else. Vikki: Yeah. But one of the questions that I encourage people to think about is how would I behave if I knew they were autistic, for example. And asking yourself, are there ways you can just do that now anyway? I would give them really clear instructions after a meeting and I would make sure I pre warned them if there was something coming up that might be surprising. Vikki: You could just do that for everybody without ever mentioning the A word. Yeah. You know? Oh, definitely Never telling them your suspicions, but instead of just assuming that they're stubborn or whatever. Just do those things and Jess: Yeah. And I had that with a client the other week was, I had people coming up to me after the training I did all during one of the breaks, and their question was, you know, what do I do if they're not diagnosed or I suspect they are, how, what do I do? And I'm like if you are managing someone, you will understand what the strengths and challenges are of all your employees and who you're working with, and then you will help them play to those strengths and support them in their challenges. Jess: So how to work with me guide and I keep talking about it, but it is just a what works for that person and it doesn't matter if they have a diagnosis or not because from a practical, everyday working style, not necessarily from a legal standing, but it is, it's so important to treat someone as individual. Jess: And if you're not doing that already, start doing it because your team will all work differently regardless of whether they neurodivergent or not. So it's, you get to know your team and like you said, if, if you think that they may be that, that, that way ask and just say, don't say, are you autistic? Say, how does that work for you? Jess: Like, do you enjoy that kind of setup? Does this space work for you? Just from a curiosity, decent human being perspective. It's not always rocket science then I think people can be really worried that, you know, they have to give someone a diagnosis before they can start asking questions. Jess: But it's how you ask the question and it's what kind of questions you're asking in terms of, you know, I noticed that you were quite quiet in the last meeting, you know? I want to make sure all employees voices are heard. You know, if you've got any thoughts, feel free to send me an email with them. And you're not singling someone out in terms of you think they're autistic, but you are, you are just kind of asking them, how did that go? Vikki: Yeah. So you've started touching on this already, but what can people do at a sort of institution level to make things more inclusivefor people with neuro divergencies. Jess: Yeah, so I think a lot of organizations already have like an equality policy, so a DEI policy. And in those policies they include disability, but they don't explicitly talk about hidden disability. So neurodiversity, , to start with having a visible neurodiversity policy on the website, on their job, saying we support, you know, an inclusive and neuro inclusive environment. Jess: Doing training on how to be inclusive in recruitment, how to, support managers, you know, to train them as to how to work with neuro divergent employees. What would be wonderful would be mapping the workplace of all the, you know, campus. You know, what, what areas are quiet, you know, designated space. Jess: Just like often have a prayer space. You know, are there quiet spaces for neurodivergent employees or students? The canteens are an absolute nightmare for me. The lighting is a nightmare for me personally. For many people that I speak to, they can't stand, just the space, they're very sensitive. Jess: It's very draining. For many people I work with, they often have like a watch, like a Garmin or something, and their body, they have a body battery or some sort of thing where if they're on campus, it goes from maybe 90 down to five. And it's all of those things that are intangible that, that really affect. Jess: So having some sort of sensory map as to say these are the areas that are high traffic, these are the areas that are quiet. Even if it's color coded would be useful and allocating space. What else? Uh, training everyone from, you know, people at reception, you know, there's a lot of sunflower lanyards floating about on campuses now, which is great, but what does that actually mean? Jess: How can you support employees or students, down to maybe the catering teams to, the academic staff that support staff to the librarians, helping everyone understand what that might look like, and do regular ones and mandatory. I think a lot of this kind of stuff, unfortunately, is optional. Jess: But you have, you know, one in five or one in four are neuro divergent, you know, the stats are there. The NHS England and, and NICE guidelines is there, you know, , whether they realize they they're neurodivergent or not, or whether they're disclosing the neurodivergent or not, they need support. Jess: I think it's from, you know, if you talk about the life cycle of an employee starting right, recruitment and kind of advertising, you know, using clear, simple language in the job description, not having, you know, must be a self-starter and must be, you know, all these kind of lingo that might not necessarily be relevant to the job role just copied and pasted on from a previous job role. Jess: And that that will discourage people from applying all the way through to, okay, now you're managing someone. You've never managed someone who's neurodivergent before, what's available to a, the manager and to b the employee? And how can you support them? Can you encourage 'em to apply for access to work? Jess: What is that? Help the employee understand . Start having a conversation as to what reasonable adjustments can we make? That should have also been discussed in that kind of initial period as to what kind of things might they need? Jess: And that's a conversation with HR. The first step is awareness and training. And then after that it's digging deep into kind of strategy and policy to really integrate it across the organization. Vikki: It really resonates with my episode a few weeks ago where I was talking to Kyrstina Francois about doing PhD with physical disabilities and illnesses. And one of the things that she was really talking about is how it's exhausting and often very difficult to have to suggest your own accommodations because especially ...so she has illnesses and conditions that have come on over the last year or two. Vikki: So it's not something she's always lived with or anything like that. And they're like, what do you need? And she's like, I don't know, what can I have? And that strikes me as quite similar to some of the stuff you are saying here, that having almost packages of if you are running a conference you need to do these things for your neurodivergent members. If you are running a module, you need to do these things. If you've got a PhD student, these are the options that you could put out like say for them to choose what might be useful or whatever. Jess: Mm, for sure. And I think what works for some neurodivergent students might not work for others. So for example, if you're dyslexic, using dyslexic fonts or installing a Chrome extension, that makes everything into a dyslexic font as readable. You know, using apps that can make your screen a yellow color and providing high contrast helps you to see better and read better, but all of these things, it's, it's, it's providing that kind of, the training and documentation to, to help, you know, supervisors and, and lecturers and, and also students know that that exists, you know, a lot of this stuff is free. Jess: Inclusive teaching is a huge area that I looked at when I did my fellowship to the Higher Education Acacemy, you know, how can we be more accessible and inclusive. And I think Covid was a, you know, although a horrible experience, it meant that a lot of lectures had to be done online and a lot of things were recorded. And I did my masters during that time, and that was brilliant for me because as someone with ADHD, I was able to get up and walk around and move about whilst listening. I was able to pause things, go back over things. I think it's, knowing that different approaches work for different students. Vikki: Perfect. Now, if people have been interested, engaged, inspired, all of those good things by the stuff you've said today, as I'm sure they will be, where can people follow you and find out more? Jess: Sure. So, I'm quite active on LinkedIn, so you can first head over there and drop me a message or you can follow our company page. We also have a website, neuro natives.com , feel free to contact us there, with any inquiries, whether you want, coaching, whether you want, training and awareness sessions, or whether you want something more tailored, we can do whatever you need. I'm afraid I don't have Instagram, don't have Facebook too distracting , so you'll find me on LinkedIn, and also our website. Vikki: Yeah, perfect. And I will put links to your LinkedIn in the show notes and to your website. Thank you Jess, so much for today. That is super, super important and it was, yeah, wonderful having you here. Jess: Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to talk through all of these things and I hope it's been useful for the audience and yeah, it's lovely chatting to you as well. Vikki: Thank you everyone for listening. I'll see you next week. Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like 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 the PhD life coach com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics time.

< One of the most common comments I hear from PhD students is that reading always takes longer than they expect. In this episode, I share four elements that you need to take into account when deciding how much time you are going to give an article, book or other piece of writing. By being more intentional in considering these elements, you can be much more accurate in how long each piece will take to read and often read it in less time. This is crucial for anyone at any stage of their research career – not only will it help you to manage workflow and hit deadlines, it will also improve your understanding of the literature. Transcript This week's topic really came out of a coaching session in my membership. So in the membership, students have the opportunity to come to what we call open coaching, which is where they can bring anything that they're finding challenging at all, and I will coach them on it. And I had a student come who was struggling to know how long it took to read a paper. Okay, and this is something that comes up all the time, and so I thought, you know what? We'd had such a useful discussion about it there in the session that I thought it'd be a great opportunity to share with all of you listeners as well. So when you are planning out what reading you need to do, I want you to think about how you decide how long it'll take to read an article. And in most cases, one of the things I get told more than anything else is I'm really bad at judging how long it takes. And there's a few underpinning beliefs with that statement that I think it's really worth us questioning. So "I don't know how long it will take to read this paper" really has the underlying belief that there is a set amount of time that it will take and that you have very little control over it. And I wanna remind you that neither of those things are true. There isn't a fixed amount of time that it takes to read any particular paper, and you have a huge amount of control over how long it takes. So what I'm gonna do in this episode is explain to you how people usually do it and why I think you'd benefit from doing it in a different way. And the specific suggestions I would make that are gonna massively speed up or at a more kind of complex level, make you much more in control of how long it takes to read a paper. 'cause this also isn't just about speeding up, right? This is about spending time on the right things. So we're gonna make it faster, we're gonna make it more predictable, which it's gonna make it so much easier for you to organize your time and to get stuff done. So let's get started. Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. I am Dr. Vicki Wright, the PhD Life Coach. I'm an ex professor and certified life coach, and I help PhD students and researchers to overcome overwhelm and imposter syndrome so that we can actually get our work done and enjoy the process. We are gonna dig in to how we can take more control over how long it takes to read a paper. And for those of you who are in the more kind of arts and humanities where you're studying from books and archives and all that stuff, this can get extrapolated out to any length of document that you are talking about. So when I say article, just insert whatever word is appropriate for your discipline. Okay. Now I want you to spend a moment just thinking, how do I currently estimate how long something will take? Do I estimate or do I just start reading? Do I decide this is the thing I need to read? Let's go or do you actually try and estimate? A lot of people don't even try and estimate. They start reading. They have two versions of an article. They either haven't read it or they have read it, they don't read it, or they do read it. And that's kind of two binary options. Hint. In this episode today, we're gonna think about how there's a lot of inbetweens there as well. So they either just get reading or they take a rough guess on how long it should, whatever should means take, based usually on two things. I want you to see if these are the same two things for you. What I see with my clients, the two things that usually get taken into account is how long is the article or book? How complex is the article or book? If it's long and complex, we're gonna take a long time to read it. If it's short and simple, we'll take less time to read it. And it sort of feels as though that's intuitively true, right? That has face validity. It kind of makes sense that if something is long and complicated, it's gonna take us a long time to read it. And if it's simple and short, it's gonna take us a short amount of time to read it. I think this is where we're falling down. This is where we're wasting time. This is where we are making it really hard for ourselves to judge how long things take. So I'm gonna share with you four other things that I think we need to think about in order not to work out how long it will take to read this article. But in order to decide how long we are giving this article, okay, I want you to notice the difference in how I described that. On one hand, is this quite passive, sort of, I wonder how long it will take as though there's some truth out there, which is how long it takes. And over here is how long I have decided to give to this article. These are very different. It is much more empowering to think about how much time am I giving to this article than how long will it arbitrarily take? Now in order to decide though, you need to be taking into account the length of the article and the complexity of the article. Definitely. But I'm gonna share with you four other things that I think you need to also take into account so that you really know what options you've got, and you can then make decisions from there. Once you understand those options, you'll often be able to read an article much, much more quickly than you are at the moment. And if it takes as long or even longer than it currently does with my approach, you will know exactly why and you will have chosen that rather than it just ending up taking a long time. The reason that most people think that they're the most important variables is because what most people do when they're reading an article is they start at the beginning and they read all the bits until they get to the end. And they go more quickly through the bits that are simple that they understand and they go more slowly through the bits that are more complex, that need to be taken in more. And therefore, if that's the approach, if that is your definition of reading something, then yes, absolutely. The length and complexity of it will be the main variables that predict the amount of time it takes. And usually what happens is the length of it shouldn't catch a by surprise 'cause hopefully we can see how long it is. Although with electronic versions, that's not always as clear. Um, but the complexity sometimes catches us out. There's more of it that's more complex than we thought. Therefore, we go slower. Now the twist that I want you to make in your thinking that will then open up all these tools that I'm going to share with you is that we don't need to read, in fact, we shouldn't be reading by picking up an article, starting at the beginning, going to the end, and that's it read every time. What we should be doing instead is making a conscious decision about why we are reading that article. So as well as length and complexity, the first of the four things that I want you to take into account is purpose. We need to be thinking about the purpose of us as an individual reading that article at this time point. Okay? And the at this time point is important as well. And I'll get to that. One of the things I get my members to do in our coworking sessions, if they're reading, if that's the task they've turned up to do, is to actually write a sentence before they start reading the article. Write a sentence or two sentences about what it is they're specifically intending to get outta this article. Why that article? What do they want from it? Because think about it, right when you read an article. Sometimes it's because that topic is absolutely central to what you are doing in your thesis and you need to know everything about it. Other times you read it because you are gonna be using a similar method to that person. You know, they were investigating something completely different, but they did the same data analysis strategy that you are going to use. Other times you are looking for something to back up a kind of passing point that you are making in your general introduction. So, as an example, many of you know I used to be an exercise scientist. So kinesiologist, those of you in North America. And so let's think of that as an example. If I'm reading for a exercise intervention that I'm doing to look at the effects of exercise on some biomarker, then some articles will have done exercise interventions on that same biomarker using similar, similar methods to me, and I'm gonna wanna know that paper inside out, back to front, every detail of it. When did they do their measurements? Exactly? How did they measure that biomarker? Absolutely everything. Especially the method and results particularly, I wanna know in absolute depth. However, when I'm writing this up, I'm gonna need a paragraph at the beginning of the introduction. That's going to be something like the generic physical inactivity is associated with a number of adverse our health outcomes, including type two diabetes, reference, obesity, reference, cardiovascular disease reference, and whatever else, right? Reference. And I just need references to fill those in. I'm also potentially gonna read papers where they measured that biomarker, but not in the context of exercise or they did the same exercise intervention as me, but with different markers. Now. I need to reference all of those things. I need a reference for my exercise intervention. I need a reference for how I measured the biomarker. I need a reference for how I analyze the data. I need references for all of this stuff. I need reading for all of this stuff, understanding but how I read each of those articles is gonna be completely different depending on why I'm reading it, which purpose it's having. Now, even if we backtrack in time, maybe I don't know yet exactly what my study's doing, then the purpose is to get a feel for the types of exercise interventions that have been done in relation to this biomarker, or to get a feel for what biomarkers have been shown to be modulated by this intervention, for example. So sometimes it's not as simple as I need to know this specific thing, but my specific reason for reading it might be to familiarize myself with what else has been done in this specific bit of the literature. So our first job always is to know why we are reading it. A valid reason is not background. If you find yourself going, oh, I'm reading it for background. I'm reading it. 'cause I don't know enough, I'm reading it. 'cause I don't understand enough yet. I need a broader understanding. That's too vague. We don't want that. I want you to get as specific as possible. Why is this the article that made it onto your desk, onto your screen? Why is this the article that's on the to-do list for today? I'm reading this article because so and so has a strong reputation in this field, and they're working on a similar population that I'm gonna be working on, and I want to understand better how they justify that decision, for example. Get really, really specific about it, because we cannot judge how long it's gonna take to read this article if we don't know that. Now you may remember, I said at this time point, this is not just about why am I reading this article? It's why am I reading this article at this time point? And the reason I emphasize that is because often what we think when we read something is that we should read it thoroughly enough and make good enough notes that that is our only time reading it. 'cause that's efficient, right? That's the efficient way to do it. Only read it once, get everything you need from it and then you are won't have to read it again. Won't that be efficient? You'll have this wonderful note system. That's not efficient because the problem is every time you read that article, you should and probably are reading it for different reasons to last time and even more complexly you are reading it with a different brain now because when you read an article when you are final year PhD student, those of you who are there already know this. When you read it as a final year student, you read it in a completely different way and with completely different understanding than when you read it for the first time. So we are thinking what is the purpose of reading this for me at this time point with what I am currently trying to do. That's what we mean by purpose, and that is gonna really influence how long we are gonna take over this. Because in my example, if I'm reading this so that I can say physical inactivity is associated with type two diabetes incidence, for example, then I am not spending a long time reading that article. This is not a controversial point. There's about a billion articles that I could reference to do it. I want a nice meta-analysis. I want a nice systematic review. Something like that. We have a quick look. Is it published somewhere good? Does it seem to be methodologically sound? Does it make the point? I want it to make. Boom. It'll do no prizes. Forgetting the absolute perfect one. Do I need to read every single aspect of it? Exact. Every single bit? No. I'm just backing up a point at the beginning of my introduction, okay. The purpose is simply to be able to back that point up. If the purpose is to understand the methodology. Do I need to read all their introduction? No. I need to know what they did and what they found, and then I need to read in detail the method. So I'm gonna direct myself to that bit of it, which means that I've now got a much better way of estimating how long this will take. 'cause if I know I need to understand how they designed their exercise intervention. Translate that out into your discipline, then I'm much better able to guess how long it's gonna take me to figure that out. Whereas if I'm trying to read the introduction or the results and all the discussion and everything as well, and dah, dah, dah, who knows how long it will take? 'cause it depends how much I understand the things they did. Quick interjection. If you are finding this episode helpful, but you are driving, walking the dog or doing dishes, just remember this. When you're done, head to the PhD life coach.com and sign up for my newsletter. We've all listened to a podcast and thought this is great. I should do something with it, and that didn't. That's where I created the newsletter to help you actually apply the stuff that you hear. Each week you'll get a short summary, some reflective questions on one simple action that you can take right away. You'll also get access to a searchable archive of all the past episodes so you can find the exact one that you need to help with your current challenges. Plus all newsletter subscribers get a free webinar every single month on a topic that affects all PhD students and academics, and you'll always be the first to hear for when my membership opens to new members. So once you're done listening, or even right now, go sign up for my newsletter and make sure you don't miss out. So purpose is one of the four. That then relates to the second of the four things I want you to take into account. And the second is centrality. And what I mean in this context by centrality is how fundamental is this article to what I'm doing? Now you may say, how do I work that out? All of them are important. It's not true. If I asked you to write an abstract that sums up your whole thesis and that you were allowed to give me three references that inform your thesis, you would be able to narrow that down. It's tricky, but you would find articles that probably are a very similar topic, a very similar methodology, very similar philosophical underpinnings, dah, dah, dah, and that are very central to why you did what you did. In fact, many of them may be, this is what we know so far. Paper A or whatever, but they left this gap. They uncovered this unknown bit, which is what my thesis is now gonna do. Those articles are super central to your thesis. The articles that are central to why you use that particular method. That's a little bit more peripheral because now they only have the method in common, but they might be different topics, or they might just be a methodological paper or whatever. They're slightly less central. The articles that are just sort of backing up introduction points or providing a bit of extra context or whatever. Those are less central. Those who watching me on YouTube will be able to see. I'm making kind of target type circles in front of my face. So we've got the articles that are right at the bullseye, and then we've got the articles that are further out from the center. We need to be reading the articles that are more central to our work in much more depth and much more detailed understanding than the ones that are much more peripheral. So is this an article that's central to what I do? In which case I'm probably gonna read it slowly. I'm gonna read it many times for many different purposes, and I'm gonna know every bit of it inside out, versus is it much less central or is it simply serving one point, or is it kind of a nice to have but not crucial in which case I'm gonna read it in less depth and I'm gonna read it more quickly. So the purpose, why are we reading it and the centrality of it both are gonna influence how long we are gonna decide to take on this article. The third thing we are gonna take into account is how familiar we are with the type of work we are reading. Because, and this was one of the things that came up in the coaching session, is that many of you will be working at intersections between disciplines. I was super interdisciplinary, so I was often working at the intersection of psychology, neuroendocrinology, immunology, exercise sciences, kind of a smush between those. So as you can imagine, some papers, if you gimme an exercise intervention where it's got some simple biomarkers, I can read that inside out, back to front, understand every bit of it very, very quickly. Not a problem. I am an exercise scientist at heart. If you give me an article where, instead of how it's still an exercise intervention, but instead of being a simple biomarker, they're doing some complex immunological measurements of some description. Gonna take me a little bit longer if you give me a pure, you know, say, 'cause I often was looking at articles where I was looking at the impact of, I don't know, some particular hormone or whatever in vitro on an immune outcome. So a much more pure neuroendocrine immunology study, then I'm gonna be much less familiar. I'm still all right, you know, but I'm st I'm much less familiar with the techniques being used, with what makes a good study versus a weak study, with what controls there should be, da, da, da. My expectations are much blurrier. And the reason we take this into account is because it is reasonable to expect you to take longer to read something that you are less familiar with the topic area than if you are more familiar with it. Now we do always have to remember that purpose though, because sometimes when something's less familiar, we expect ourselves to understand every single word of it. And it may be even if it's quite central to what we are doing. If for example, my purpose is not to replicate their methods, then perhaps I do need to understand exactly why they chose those immune markers, exactly why they chose those hormones, exactly why they manipulated it the way they did. But I probably don't need to fully understand media that they used and why the incubations were the length they were and why they did that wash routine or whatever it is, right? I probably don't need to understand all of that 'cause I'm not doing that. So even where we are less familiar sometimes what we get to do is decide that, you know what, I'm not big on this stuff. That's not my specialty and it is not that central to what I'm doing. So that bit I can skim or that bit I can pull out the key bits that I need, but I don't need all of the detail. So I want you to notice I'm giving you four things, but they all super sort of overlap and interact with each other. So we've got the centrality, the knowing the purpose, we've got how familiar we are with the discipline and the kind of the content of this sort of a paper. And then the fourth one is really about our expectations of ourselves because one of the things that became really clear in the coaching session yesterday is that clever people expect themselves to understand everything. And if you are working at the intersections between disciplines. At the beginnings at least, that may not be realistic. So if you are reading, in my case, an immunology paper, a pure immunology paper that is related to what you are doing is outside of your familiarity and you understand the purpose of it because it's gonna relate to the measures you are taking or whatever. We also have to tell ourselves what level of understanding am I expecting myself to get on this read? Because like I said, we are gonna be reading these articles if they are central, and if we have a key reason to do so, we are gonna be reading these articles more than one time. And it may be that at this time point, it is not reasonable for you to expect yourself to understand every nuanced element of the article, even if you will need to eventually. So this is a bit different from when you decide, you know what? I don't need to know that nuanced stuff. 'cause it's not central. It's not the purpose why I'm reading it. This is a bit different. This is stuff that you probably will need to understand in detail that probably will be central to your work, but you don't have to get yourself to have that 100% understanding of every detail right now. And that's because it's really hard to understand every nuanced detail of something where you don't have pre-knowledge or pre framework in place. When we're reading stuff from within our disciplines, the reason it's faster is because we intuitively know what the words mean. You know, the technical words, we're familiar with them. We don't have to translate them out. We don't have to think about it, and we've got a whole kind of background of knowledge and understanding on which to hang this new information. Whereas when you are reading something that's outta your discipline or in a discipline that you are sort of just going into or collaborating with, you don't have that framework. You don't have that base understanding of what the technical words mean, of where this fits or whatever. And if you try and understand every level of a paper all at once. A, it's super hard, super frustrating, but b, it takes forever because you're trying to hang details on a very wobbly framework. So if you understand, okay, this paper is gonna be central, I understand why I'm reading it at this time point, I'm not very familiar with the topic. Therefore, my expectation for this read is for me to get a superficial understanding of the key main points, for example . That then intersects with our kind of purpose for reading, but we are really saying, you know what? With my current level of familiarity with the current stage I'm at in my PhD, what we're aiming for is a rudimentary understanding and your brain will tell you no, but you need to know it all. No, but what if the examiner asked this? What if you can't back up that? That's okay. We've got time. PhDs are a long journey. We are gonna read this article again, but if on this read through our fundamental purpose and understanding of ourself and our own understanding is that we need to get a sort of overview of the key points. They're making a kind of framework on which to hang the rest of our understanding. That's what we need to focus on this time, and that's where we get to decide, okay, I've got an hour to pull out as much kind of basic understanding as I can. I'm not gonna worry about all these nuanced different definitions. I'm not gonna worry about exactly why they did X, Y, z. I wanna know what did they do? Why did they do it? What did they find, for example? So we're bringing into it a layer of compassion, understanding for ourselves that we can't expect ourselves to understand every single detail on this particular read through. So those are the four things. So we already identified two length, complexity. But we're gonna take into account how central it is to what you're doing, exactly what your purpose is for reading it, how familiar you are with the topic area already, and how much kind of compassion and understanding you're giving yourself as to what level of understanding you're expecting this time. From there, we get to decide rather than find out, 'cause this is an active choice, we get to decide how long we are giving to this article. Now the one bit that then adds on top of all of this is your note taking strategy. Because the thing that takes a lot of time often is not just the reading, it's the note taking. And when you are note taking, you need to take into account all those things I just said, why am I reading it? How central is it? What do I know already? All that stuff you need to be taking into account when you choose what notes you are taking. Often we think that the purpose of notes is to have a shorter summary of that article for us to refer back to later. That is not the purpose of notes. This is why AI note taking will never replace your human brain unless we learn to use it a lot better than we do at the moment. The purpose of your notes is not to have a precised version of the article. The purpose of your notes is twofold. And again, you need to decide which of these you're doing at any one time. One purpose of notes is to focus your attention and help you process your thoughts on paper. This version of notes, you could just bin it after you've read the article. The purpose is not record keeping. The purpose is to help you keep track of what you are thinking about while you are reading that article in order to better understand the article. As an example, I love to draw a flow chart. I love, especially if I'm doing some sort of, it's like an exercise trial or that kind of thing, or even an immunology protocol. Love to draw a little diagram that shows the protocol, the timings, when measures were taken, all that stuff, for example. So one purpose of notes is to just allow you to see your thoughts, to pour them onto the page, to see them, to keep track of what you're reading and to facilitate the reading process. Those are valuable even if you never, ever look at them again. The other form of note taking is to keep a record of what you read that is relevant to the point of why you are reading it this time. It is not to provide a summary of the entire paper. It is when you've decided the purpose of why you are reading it, how central it is to what you're doing. Then the bit of notes that you are gonna actually file somewhere and keep, is only going to be related to the reason you are reading it this time. So if we're reading it this time, because you're working on your methodology, you only need to make notes on your methodology. And I can hear you. I can hear you screaming at your phones or whatever you're listening on this game. Yeah. But that's so inefficient because then I'll have to read it again later when I need the other stuff. Yes, you will. Yes you will. And I promise this is still more efficient. The reason this is still more efficient is because you don't know exactly what you'll need next time when you read this again in three months time. So you are now trying to second guess what it is you might need in the future, which means you are much more likely to over note, to write far too much. You are also much more likely to be noting in order to keep track of what they're saying. Rather than noting to keep track of what you are thinking about what they're saying, which is what notes should be. Even the notes that you are gonna keep. I want your notes to not just be they did this method, using this for these reasons. I want your notes to be, they did this method in this way for these reasons. I'm a bit concerned about why they didn't have a control for whatever, or whether their exercise intervention was long enough, or, I really liked the way they included two baseline measures or whatever, right. So the notes you are taking on the specific bit you are reading for a specific reason that you have identified 'cause you are in control of your PhD. You make notes on that, the intersection between their thinking and your thinking, where that overlaps in that gorgeous Venn diagram. That is what we are noting. Not everything. We are noting the bits we need right now that are what you are thinking about what they've done. When you read this again in the future, you are gonna be reading it with a different brain. So your brain circle is gonna be different shape than it was. You are gonna be reading a different bit of it for different reasons. And so the intersection between their thinking, you are thinking it's gonna be somewhere else, it's gonna be a different place. You can't do it now. That's why these dreams people have of what I need to do is just to get a complete, like library of all my reading with all my notes, and then it'll be super easy to write. No, you, you don't, it's not even desirable. It's definitely not possible. It's not even desirable. You need to be reading the things that you need to read, making notes of the thoughts you are having about the stuff that you need to be reading, how it has implications for your work right now. This also is a little bonus for you, is a massively useful way to transition from writing about the work of others in a kind of narrative reporter way versus writing your thoughts about a field in a thought leader, senior academic sort of a way. If your note taking is always the intersection between your brain and their work and never just a faithful replication of their work, then you are always building that habit of asking, what do I think about this? And from there, that helps. Knowing how you are gonna do your notes helps you inform. How long you're gonna spend on this article, because if you know that what you need is a detailed outline of their methodology, you can have a think about how long that will take for you to write out, for you to pick out, turn into something that you can record. Whereas if you've got to take notes on everything, how long does that take? Who knows? It also is an added, added bonus. This massively helps with overwhelm because one of the worst things about reading is its ability to spiral in 50 directions. You think you're just reading this article, by the time you've read the whole article with a vague kind of, I need to know it purpose and made all your notes. You've got 40 other references that you need to go and look up now, and you're suddenly like, oh my goodness. If every paper I read gives me 10 new references. I'm, how am I ever gonna get through this? This is just gonna extrapolate wildly, Hey, we don't need to do that. Because if we are reading it for its methodology, we don't need to look at all the different background articles. If we are reading it because it works on similar population to us. We don't need to read all the articles about how they did their analytic strategy. Okay. We read for a purpose for reasons that we have chosen, to a level that we have chosen and take notes in a way that enable us to do the thing we're trying to do at the moment. And from there, it's so much easier to decide how long it takes, and then people will say, okay, yeah, I decide how long it takes. And then it takes longer. And my answer sounds so flippant, but hopefully you guys know me well enough to know that I mean it from a good place. Don't. My answer is don't. If you decide you are giving this article an hour, and at the end of the hour you're like, oh, I need more time. Don't. Get it done to the level you are able to get it done in the time you've been given. What that means is if you gave yourself an hour and you decided what you are doing in it, it means you've started reading it in more detail, at a greater depth, at a level of understanding that you don't have, that you've gone off and looked up their references or whatever it is. You've deviated from your plan. Don't. Give yourself the hour and do as much as you can in that hour. You can come back to it another time if you need to. If you need to read it for more depth in a later date. If you need to read it for a different reason at a later date, come back to it. Happy days. But this is how, by taking control of it, identifying exactly what we're doing and deciding how long it takes, that is how we stay on top of our workloads. That is how we actually stick to deadlines. Now, some of you, I'm doing a lot of like objection answering here. I can hear your voices in my head. Some of you might say, oh, but that takes out the joy of lit reviewing that, you know, I love to just immerse myself in the literature. Then that's great. We get to decide that. If you decide, actually, what I wanna do is spend an afternoon, two days, a week, a month, who knows? Immersing myself in the literature with the purpose of having fun, chasing rabbit holes and not having to be intentional. Great, do it, but decide that intentionally, because if your purpose is to dive into the literature, enjoy swimming around, enjoy following rabbit holes, then what you can't do is at the end of that period of time, moan about the fact that you haven't got a structured lit review out of it. Moan about the fact that you haven't "got anywhere". Because that wasn't the purpose. The purpose was the pleasure. The purpose was enjoying following these little trails down through different bits of literature and stuff. So even that. You can still do it. Just choose it as the purpose and therefore focus on enjoying the process 'cause what I see people doing is they tell me I wanna be able to follow the literature. I wanna be able to go down rabbit holes. I really enjoy it. That's why I get to distracted. But they simultaneously beat themselves up for not making enough progress, not being focused, never getting anywhere. You don't get it both ways. You get to decide, am I reading this thing because I'm intentionally trying to develop the method section of my thesis or whatever. Am I reading this thing to generally enjoy swimming around in the literature? Am I reading this thing because I need to learn about this particular approach or this particular argument? Why am I reading it? Use that to decide exactly how you do it. Taking into account the state your brain's at where, what time it is in your PhD, exactly what you're doing, decide how long it's gonna take, and then spend that long on it. I say that like it's easy, your brain is gonna argue with you. Your brain is gonna say, oh, but I should probably write these bits down. Oh, I should probably take a bit longer. Just know that that's gonna happen. And remember, you don't have to listen to that bit of your brain. You can go, yeah, yeah, I know you think that, but this is what I decided. I decided that I'm reading it for this purpose to this level of depth, for this amount of time and making notes on these things. And that's what we're doing. And I know you've got a bunch of concerns about it, but that's what we're doing. I want you to try out this week. Let me know how you get on. If you are not already on my newsletter, why not? You get summaries of all of this stuff and you get access to the PhD Life Coach podcast archive, which is a completely searchable resource that has everything I've ever done in the podcast summaries, take home messages, they're categorized. You can control F and find whatever you are struggling with at the moment. So if you're not already on the newsletter, make sure you head over to the websites. Sign on up. I will send you that and every week you'll get a reminder about the podcast and of course my free monthly webinars as well. Hope to see you all at one of those soon. Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next week. Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like 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 the PhD life coach com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics time.

< In this episode, best selling author Sophie Hannah shares her “Book Ahead” method for managing multiple projects when you already feel behind. Born in the midst of a particularly busy year of writing, the first iteration of the Book Ahead method not only got the job done, it also changed how Sophie felt about herself, her other projects, and one of her long-standing “bad habits”. If you feel like you’ll be behind forever and want a technique that doesn’t just involve simply working more, then this is the episode for you! Links I refer to in this episode About Sophie Hannah and the Dream Author coaching programme Pre-order Sophie’s new book, No One Would Do What the Lamberts Have Done – UK , North America ; available at other good bookshops! Transcript Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast, and I am joined by another guest this week, and I am, I always say I'm excited, but I'm particularly excited because this is a good friend of mine as well, and international bestselling author, Sophie Hannah. Welcome. Sophie: Thank you. Thanks for having me on. I'm very excited to be here. Vikki: It's perfect. So Sophie and I met because we did the same coach training and kind of moved in the same circles for a little while. Sophie has a coaching program for aspiring and current authors called Dream Author. Um, and we'll link to all that stuff in the show notes and well, we were having a conversation right, about how you manage all your different projects 'cause i'll get you to tell the audience a little bit more about yourself in a minute, but you're always juggling so many different writing projects and I just find it fascinating and that's where this whole conversation came about, I guess. Sophie: Yeah. So, last year I was juggling, I am always trying to do too much. Like way too much. I have this. And it's not a bad thing. I think it's actually a good quality. I have this kind of form of extreme optimism where if I want something to be true, then I just decide it is, and then I do everything I can to make it true. Sophie: So if there's lots of things I fancy doing, I just think, well, of course I can do all those things. And I don't often have realistic thoughts about what I'm actually capable of. And in many ways this causes problems. It certainly caused me a few problems and a lot of stress when I've committed to, you know, four things at the same time and then I find I can't deliver on time. Sophie: But actually there is, I have found, and I've only really realized this quite recently, there is also an advantage to assuming you can do too much and committing to do too much. And the advantage is that even though you do often stress yourself out in the process of trying to sort of handle this massive workload, you also train yourself bit by bit to be able to do more. Sophie: And this was a big eureka moment for me just a few days ago because I had got to the point where I thought, right, I'm not going to, in future, take on too much. I'll only take on what I can handle. And then I realized that what I can handle easily now is so much more, such a vastly greater amount of things because I've taken on too much in the past. Sophie: So then I thought, right, I need a middle ground. I need a middle ground between don't take on more than I can handle and sort of don't take on more than I can handle in a way that means I never grow my capacity to handle more. So that's where I'm at with it now, and where I'm at right now is, I do want to take on too much, but deliberately and calmly and without stress and with a plan to not necessarily make it work entirely, but make it work as well as it can work all while feeling no stress. But this is very much a 2025 development and learning, because in 2024 what was happening was I was taking on too much, Not really seeing any advantage that there could be in doing that and just feeling all the stress. Sophie: So I had committed to write three books and write and deliver from start to finish, three books between November the seventh, 2023, and January the 30th, 2025. So on the 7th of November 23, I knew that I had to start and finish three books in 15 months. And that felt quite scary to me because also they had to be good Vikki: and we should probably put in context for everybody as well. I mentioned your dream author coaching program. The books is obviously what you are famous for and you know where you've built your career and all of that stuff, but you are also running a huge coaching program. You are also doing retreats, you are also doing talks for a whole variety of different places. It's not even just writing these books, right? Sophie: Yeah. Oh. Oh, not at all. I mean, my coaching program at any given time contains between 1300 and 1500 people typically. So I am the coach for more than a thousand people now. It works a bit like a gym membership in that if everyone came in to use the cross trainer on the same day, the gym would soon encounter problems. Sophie: Not everyone asked for coaching on the same day. So it's totally manageable, but it's a lot, a lot, a lot of work. So yeah, when I thought I have these three books to write in 15 months. The, the thought in parentheses was as well as all my hours of coaching. So it felt like a lot, and it was a lot. Sophie: And what I found was that in 2024, roundabout, no February, late February, 2024, I was not as far ahead as I knew I needed to be in order to meet that deadline. And I started to feel down about it. Depressed. Uh, not depressed. I mean, I'm, I'm quite a jolly person, so I never feel seriously depressed, but just as though there was this weight of stress and almost like having to accept failure on the doing things on time front. Sophie: And I just kept thinking, I'm behind with this book. I'm behind with this book. And I was taking for granted that because I was behind with that book, which was book one of the three, the first I was gonna write. Because I was behind with that one, I thought, well, obviously I'm then gonna be behind with the next one, and then I'm gonna be about even more behind. Sophie: So I saw it as a kind of domino effect of behind ness and then I was listening to a session with a life coach, an American life coach called Tiffany Han. I was in her program, which was called the Gentle Productivity Club, which was brilliant, and it was all about how to be productive but also not exhaust yourself. Sophie: And she asked a question in this coaching call, which was something along the lines of have a think about what hasn't occurred to you yet. Like what haven't you thought of? What brilliant thing have you not thought of? And maybe you'd never think of it unless you think of it now, I can't remember how she phrased it, but it was just a completely open invitation to kind of say to your own brain, what is it that's not occurring to me? Sophie: That it would just be brilliant if it did occur to me. And what occurred to me as if by magic was the idea that just because I was behind with one book did not mean I had to be behind with any other books and that I could get ahead on the next book while being behind on this book. So I thought, huh, okay, so where are we? Sophie: It's, I think it was March. I had planned to totally finish book one by, let's say end of February. That's right and I had, I had finished it on time, but then it came back with loads and loads of notes and I saw that a massive rewrite was gonna be needed. Vikki: So listen, before you carry on Sophie listeners, I want you to remember that like big ass author here, getting billions of edits, same as we moan about when they come back from our supervisors and stuff happens to the best of us. Sophie: And actually, you know, one does want it to happen because, you know, whenever I get my edit notes and then I reread the book, I think, oh cripes, the first draft really was flawed and it's supposed to be flawed. Sophie: And the edit process is so lovely when you see it as just like, ah, now I get to make it good. First I got to make it just exist. Now I get to make it as brilliant as it can be. So I, I love doing the whole edit process, but I saw that it was gonna take quite a long time, and I had planned to start writing my next book at the beginning of May after a nice break between books. Sophie: And I thought, no, no, no, that ain't gonna happen because this book is gonna take me probably until the end of May now to do all the edits. And then I thought, okay, but what if I could get ahead on the next book while being behind on this one? What might that look like? And I thought, well, I'm still in March. Sophie: I could start the next book a whole month early and start it while I'm still editing the other one. And so not only would that enable me to practically get a bit ahead on the next book, but it would also completely shift the way I thought about myself and where I was at productivity wise, because suddenly just as if by magic, if I did this, what I came to call the ahead and behind method, I realized that I would not be able plausibly to think of myself as someone who's behind with their work, because I wouldn't be only behind, I would also be ahead. Sophie: That would be great. And like being ahead in one way and behind in another way, kind of cancels each other out. And then I could think to myself, well, I'm right on time, really. If I'm ahead, I'm behind. I'm kind of doing okay in terms of deadlines. And unlike almost everything I've tried to implement where normally there's a few teething problems, the minute the second I started trying the ahead and behind approach it just worked at an almost miraculous level. My thoughts and feelings and general kind of vibe in my mind about both books was massively elevated very quickly. Not only did I love getting ahead on the next book, which I will explain how exactly I did that. I loved that process. I was like, here I am. I'm a month ahead. Sophie: Look at all this brilliant stuff I'm doing so early. Aren't I good? Aren't I diligent? But also enjoying that so much had a knock on effect on the behind book, which no longer felt like quite such a burden because I was like, where every time I sat down with the behind book to work on that I was like, well, look, only this morning, I was really enjoying myself with the ahead book. Sophie: So do I really wanna give this book the label, the Behind Book and feel bad about it? Why not just think of it as another book I'm writing and try and enjoy it? So it just worked amazingly well, but it only worked well because I found a way to do the Ahead book that was compatible with doing the Behind book. Sophie: So the Behind Book was my main work of every day, apart from when I was coaching, but you know, when I had my writing time, it was the behind book that I was. Working on writing. And so I was sitting in my usual position with my laptop on my, on a cushion, on my lap, typing away for a certain number of hours. Sophie: And I thought, well, I don't, I can't be doing that with two books at the same time. I just can't. That would feel oppressive and like, uh, I was overloading myself. So I thought, well, okay, how can I do the ahead book in the most different way possible so that it really feels like a different activity in a different part of my day. Sophie: And I can't exactly remember how I came up with it, but it, it felt to me as though, like the answer was just obvious and there, and so what I did was reach for my phone every morning. So the first thing I do every morning is I get my phone, which is charging on the bed side table next to me. I do Wordle, the New York Times game. Sophie: I share my WORDLE scores with my mom and my sister and my son-in-law. And I thought, right instead of them putting my phone down, I will keep it in my hand, open a new notes file and just record myself. 'cause there's a little button you can press if you're in notes, where you just record yourself speaking. Sophie: And I will record myself speaking some words of my ahead book into my phone. And then later on I will look at those notes, type those words up. But that will just be a secretarial task, the writing, the creating is gonna happen in bed before I've even put my glasses on, dictating into my phone, and I'm gonna make it deliberately feel like a fun thing rather than a work thing by choosing an amount of words to aim for every day that feels so easy and doable, that it's just like can't possibly fail. Sophie: So for me, the number I chose was 400 words a day. And I tried it out. The first day I went to my notes file, press record, started speaking a bit of the book, a bit of the ahead book. I'd got to 400 words in no time. Once I'd done a couple of, well, maybe three or four chunky paragraphs, I then copied and pasted those words into something called word counter dot net, and I saw that I'd done like 470 words. Sophie: I was like, great. Done. And it just works so brilliantly. And there's so much more to it than that. But basically the way I was able to do it so effectively was to make the ahead book. I actually now call it the Book Ahead Method, and I'm determined to do it now from now on for every book even when I'm not behind on another book. So I'm, I'm just gonna do the book ahead method 'cause I just loved it so much. But the key, when I did have that other book that I was late with, the key was to do the book ahead book just in completely different way. And it just worked brilliantly. I was able to then do everything, feel great about it, lose the stress, and most importantly just not feel at all behind because there was something very important that I was ahead on. Vikki: I love this and I love the one little gap I'm gonna fill in. 'cause I remember it from when you first told me about this is the, where it came from, because I remember you talking to me about a bad habit that we have in common, which is scrolling on your phone when in bed in the mornings. Vikki: And we had talked before about like, how do I stop doing it? Da, and I remember you saying. I've decided I just like being in bed on my phone and if I'm gonna be in bed on my phone, I might as well do this rather than that. And so I love the way that you were, rather than sort of being like, must be more disciplined, must get up, must go and work at my desk like a proper person or whatever. Vikki: You're like, I keep doing it. I obviously like it, so i'll stay here and I'll do this. I'll write my new book from here in a voice note. And I love that. Sophie: Yeah, and I think one of the reasons this method works so well for me was that, as you say, I attached it. So I, I knew I wanted to do something, which was the 400 words a day, and I deliberately attached it to a firmly ingrained habit. Sophie: So we both know having done our coach training at the Life Coach School, when something is just a firmly ingrained habit, it becomes easy to do, like brushing our teeth or putting our glasses on in the morning. It just happens because we expect it to happen 'cause it's a habit and I knew that. So I thought, okay, this habit that I've always thought should I try to get rid of? Sophie: Because lots of people disapprove of picking up your phone first thing in the morning and not getting straight out of bed, but kind of lounging around. You know, all of those things. You can hear lots of people saying why you shouldn't do them. But I just, you know, having observed myself for 52 years, I just do lie around in bed in the morning and reach for my phone and stay on my phone. So I was like, why not really use that fact? And that firmly ingrained habit to produce something absolutely amazing and have fun in a slightly different way. I also knew that if I incorporated the ahead book writing into my kind of stolen, rebellious time of lying around in bed in the morning then it would make the writing feel like part of the fun bit stolen from my working day, not part of the dutiful, doing the work bit. And I knew that for a contrarian like me, who, if you're familiar with Gretchen Rubin's, the Four Tendencies, which I'm sure lots of your listeners will be, she basically divides everyone up into four categories. Sophie: Upholders, obligers, questioners and rebels. And every time I do a quiz, I come out as a rebel. So I knew that if I did my, you know, it's, I'm writing the book, I shouldn't be writing at the moment, you know, and I'm writing it when I'm lying in bed, when I should have got up. I knew that would add to my enjoyment and motivation, and it really worked. Vikki: I love that. And it also means that it didn't steal time from the other book, right? Because I'm sort of trying to hear what I think the listeners might be thinking and stuff, and one of the things I can imagine is them saying, yeah, but surely you got more behind on the book you are behind on if you are giving time to this book. Yeah. And I think this idea of stealing time that you weren't using for other work is, is hugely important. Sophie: Yeah, that is such a good point. So at no point, not even on a single day, did any time that would otherwise been spent on the Behind book get stolen? All of my ahead book writing happened when I definitely would not have been writing my behind book anyway. Sophie: So lying in bed, I mean, typically before I did the book ahead Method, I'd spend half an hour to an hour lying in bed just looking on Rightmove, Instagram, Facebook, X and BlueSky. Um, at least 20 minutes looking at things people had written that I thought was silly and getting cross about those things in an enjoyable way. Sophie: And I was like, okay, so I can do that for five minutes and spend 15 minutes writing a bit of my ahead book and then I started to branch out. So sometimes I would do my ahead words, uh, when I was walking the dog, or you know, if I was in the hot tub near where I live in Cornwall, there's a hotel with a hot tub that I like to sit about in. Sophie: And sometimes I would just have my phone. I'm such a rebel. I take my phone into hot tubs and my mom outrageous. My mom can't bear it. She's like, whatcha you doing? It might fall in. I'm like, but it fallen and so far it does not fall in. And I would just record my book ahead, words in my phone in the hot tub, and then I get to stare out at the nice view. And you know, so I, but I always made sure it came from time. That wasn't time that belonged to the Behind book. Vikki: And you've touched on this already, but the other thing that kind of really stuck out to me is the impact of changing your self-concept with all of this stuff as well. Because again, often I think in academia, we think about work in quite a, sort of a boxed way, right? Vikki: That I've only got the, I've got these hours to get stuff done, and if I'm doing other things then I'm not. But it sounds as though even within those hours that you are working on the behind book, you were working more effectively and more enjoyably because of the mindset shift. Sophie: Completely because the overall picture and story was no longer a negative one. It wasn't the case that I was behind on Book one and therefore behind on Book two. And no doubt, by the time I got to book three, I'd be even, I'd be so behind, I might as well be, you know, in another time zone. That was no longer the case. The minute I started doing the ahead method and it worked. I was like, I'm, I'm ahead as much as I'm behind, which effectively means. Take all things into consideration. I'm pretty much on time, perfectly on time. What could be better, you know? And, and I just, yeah, it, it changed everything, but it wasn't a kind of hard one. You know, if I make an effort, maybe I can feel, it was like instant. The minute I started, everything just changed completely and even I started not to care or worry or stress if the behind book even got a bit more behind. I was like, yeah, that's fine. That's meant to be the behind. Who cares when that's finished? It'll get finished at some point. But the most important thing is that on my ahead book, I'm way ahead and, and the whole process actually it really did kind of come true. 'Cause what happened was. By the time I finished and handed in the Behind book, I had about 55,000 words of the ahead book. I then read through those 55,000 words 'cause I thought, right, what do I do now? Does do I carry on with my ahead method now that there's no other book taking up my main working day? Sophie: And I thought, well, no. Now I should make this the book I'm writing. I read the 55,000 words and they weren't really. I couldn't have just like said, right there are the first 55,000 words, I'll just write the rest. Because they were fragments and scenes, they weren't stitched together at all. I'll say a bit more about that in a minute 'cause that is quite important. Sophie: But even so, having read them through, I thought, I know this book so well. I know what it's about. I know what all the main things are. I know the characters so well. So I kind of started from scratch writing a first draft of the book, but it didn't feel like a first draft. It really felt like a final draft because all the invention had been happening as I wrote the 55,000 words. Sophie: So to turn that into a coherent book was way less work and effort, and that was a surprise, like when I read through the 55,000 words and thought. Oh, this is not really a book. Like this isn't even three quarters of a book that I just finish off now. This is a load of amazing material that has to be turned into a coherent book. Sophie: And at that point I was like, ah, this is gonna take eons. And it just didn't, it all just fell into place because so much of what was important was there already, and I, I just knew the thing inside out and because I'd had that experience of writing it in such a fun way, turning it into the proper book felt like fun as well. Sophie: And just editing it then felt like, felt like the whole process felt like really good fun. Now, this is where I need to tell you a really important bit of the book ahead method. So, because you want to make it feel like fun and not like your main work that's occupying most of your working day. What you don't wanna do in the book ahead method is allow any perfectionist thinking to creep in. Sophie: You don't wanna think, right how, how best to start this scene. No. The minute you start thinking what's the best way to start? Or you know, what's the best opening for chapter one already you are into serious work thinking. So I just decided that what I was gonna do was that at the beginning of every book ahead writing session, I was gonna think to myself, okay, what is something that definitely has to be in there? Sophie: No matter what else happens. So in the case of my ahead book, which is called No One Would Do What The Lamberts Have Done, it's about a family that does the unthinkable, an ordinary family that does the unthinkable. And I deliberately don't say what the unthinkable is 'cause I want people to read it and find out. Sophie: But I knew. There were certain things that had to be in there. There was, for example, an argument about resemblances that a mom and a son had to have. So I thought, right, there's just no way, no way on earth that book is not gonna contain the resemblances discussion because it's an important clue. So I thought, right, start there. Sophie: So I literally started in the middle of a scene, and it's a mum and son arguing about this, based heavily on an argument that my family actually had where I said, Hey, who does? We were watching a movie and I said, Hey everyone, who does she remind you of? And my son said, no one. I was like, no, no, she does. She does. Look. Look at her. Who does she remind you of? He said, she doesn't remind me of anyone. Mum. I know who you are thinking of. It's so and so. I was like, wait, if you know, I'm thinking of so and so. That has to mean she reminds you of so and so as well. He was like, no, it doesn't, she doesn't remind me of anyone, but I just knew she, it turned into the most absurd argument and that argument had to be in the book. Sophie: So I just started with that argument and then the next day I was like, okay, what else definitely has to be in there. Well, there has to be the bit about the song that the mum sings to the dog. They've got a pet dog who is very important in the story. He's like a member of the family, and he has a day song and a night song that his mom, his human mom sings to him. Sophie: They both have to be in there. So every day it was like, okay, what else is super important and has to be in there. So what I ended up with when I read those 55,000 words was just loads of small bits with no edges, as it were, just centres of scenes almost. But they were all the most important scenes that I ended up with because every morning I think, what's the next most important thing that's definitely going in? Sophie: So actually it's like just a brilliant way, as it turns out, I didn't know it was going to be, I was like, okay, well this'll have to do, but it turned out for me anyway, to be a brilliant way of getting all the essentials down there. And kind of pushing my perfectionist tendency out of the way going, no, no, you don't get to be fussy about grammar and how are we starting this chapter? Sophie: You just get to move aside and we're just going to the heart of something that really matters for the book, and we're just writing from there without any care in the world, and it just really worked. Vikki: Yeah, because I think there's something about that lack of a sort of linear approach that also presumably made it feel more different. Vikki: Than what you were doing in your other book too, because I can imagine if it was like, read what the 500 words I wrote yesterday and write the next 500 words, then it becomes a bit more like, Ooh, what does need to come next? Sophie: Yeah. It was so, not only was it completely different from the behind book approach, it was also completely different from anything I've ever done before. Sophie: And from the kind of person I am, I, I had to just say to myself, there's only one way this is gonna work. And this is if you do, if you approach this in a way that someone like you would just never approach anything. But that was very liberating. Mm. Right. I'm gonna forget, I'm, you know, miss, I am literally Mrs. Linear approach. You know, you can't get more linear than me. Most of the time I'm the kind of person who goes, right, well, before we go to the supermarket, we've got to plan our route and we've got to make our shopping list. You know, I like to get organized, get ahead of myself. And I just thought if I try that with this. I'm just gonna kill it stone dead, because my brain will be like, wait, we've already got all these linear responsibilities over here with this book. That had to feel completely different and fun and more like playing wordle. Like, oh, a fun thing I do in the morning, you know? Let's see. What words appear today? Vikki: How would you, so I've got some ideas for this, but I'm interested in your perspective. So this is a PhD. Podcast as you know. We may well have listeners that write fiction that are like, oh my God, this is amazing, but I wanna translate it through into the sort of work that PhD students and academics are likely to be doing as well. Sophie: Absolutely. And I, and I can do that because my father was an academic, my husband was an academic for many years. My son-in-law has just finished university, so I'm very, very familiar. I've got loads of close friends who are academics, so I, so yeah. Ask me about how it really, so how Vikki: would you envisage if, if people listening are like, okay, right. I'm behind. I, you know, my thesis is due at the end of the year. Um, I am meant to have handed in a draft of the first two chapters. Um, how would I even consider getting ahead on chapter three because it's, you know, I need my references and I need my data. And it's structured. It's not outta my head the way fiction is. Sophie: Yeah. Well, I think from an academic point of view, there's loads of ways you could actually use this. So you could use it in relation to chapter three. If you are behind on chapter one or chapters one and two, but you could also, you know, let's say you are doing a PhD on, um, you know, the philosophy of freedom from versus freedom to which is a big moral philosophy question and that's what your PhD is on. Sophie: But you happen to know that your next brilliant academic work is gonna be on, um, should a dog be allowed to be Prime Minister, let's say. Yeah. There are philosophers who argue all kinds of strange and extreme. I, I know of a politics, a former politics professor who genuinely, seriously believes that six year olds should be given the vote. He argues this in all seriousness and I was inspired by this to decide that dogs should absolutely be allowed to be prime minister because let's face it, what could unite the country more effective? You couldn't, no one could disagree with the dog's policies 'cause dogs aren't able to have policies. Sophie: I mean, fantastic on so many levels. Anyway, let's say that's your next philosophical work that you are planning. You could start doing the ahead method in relation to that. You are like, okay, what might I want my introduction to say and what are my key arguments that I'd want to put forward? Sophie: So whichever feels most useful or inspiring to you, you could do the ahead method with, you could even say, okay, I might only be on chapter one or two of my PhD right now, but one day I am gonna win the Nobel Prize for my academic writing and the book that will seal the deal, my great master work that everyone will read for centuries to come is gonna be on this topic and I'm gonna start doing the ahead method with that. Sophie: So it's whatever feels like it works for you. Now, I'm guessing with a PhD student, You might worry about being behind on chapters three and four more than you'd worry about your great masterwork. So you should choose the thing which, if you got ahead in relation to it, would most effectively offset the feeling of behind in relation to whatever you're behind on, if that makes sense. Sophie: So it's probably more likely to be chapters three and four. But who knows? It's just whatever works, whatever. Whatever changes things so that you think and feel differently about where you are in relation to the work. Vikki: Yeah, no, definitely. The example that jumped into my head is, usually people write the introduction to their thesis and the general discussion of their thesis last, right? Vikki: They have either they write up as a series of papers or they have a more traditional kind of lit review, methodology, and then a series of results, chapters or whatever. I. And one of the things that struck me was that those sections, yes you have to do separate reading for them to some extent, but often those sections are about contextualizing the work that you've done. Vikki: They're about interpreting the work that you've done. And I could definitely see a situation where your kind of current role is writing up one of the results chapters of your thesis. Yeah. But that you started brain dumping bits of text that you might use in your general introduction or your general discussion because like you say, you don't know the exact results you are going to find, but you know you need a section about the limitations of your studies. Vikki: You know, you need a section about possible future directions. You know, you need a section about where your work fits in the context of other people's work. And while some of those things might need you to go away and figure out the actual details of them later, the kind of notional ideas of stuff you need to say often is in your head. Vikki: Yeah. Yeah. Especially if you can, as you say, put aside that perfectionism, being able to say like, you know, I'd need here to refer to the paper by somebody or other whose name I've forgotten, but that's okay. It's the one where they did this. And then keep talking. So as long as you can kind of put aside that perfectionism of actually knowing the exact details. Vikki: 'cause as you say, that's secretarial, that can be added later. Yeah. Um, I think you could get hugely ahead of those chapters. Sophie: Yeah. Yeah. And your ahead writing could be a series of notes and just things to remember. Or it could be, you know, if you think of a particular line you really want to say that, that brilliantly encapsulates an argument you want to make. It can be that as well. Vikki: Yeah. And I think doing this, even if your main body of work at the moment is reading, getting ahead of the writing I think is useful. I mean, I'm a big proponent of writing when you're reading anyway, but having that kind of thing that if the majority of your time at the moment is reviewing the literature, having that time where you wake up in the morning and you just. Vikki: Write stuff verbally about the, what you recall reading yesterday and why it was relevant and why you think it might not be relevant and those sorts of things. I can imagine it also being a really good way to process your thoughts about the stuff that you're reading at the same time. Sophie: Yeah, completely. But I mean, there's so many ways it can work and, and just, we haven't covered this yet, which I think is important in another way, which is just thinking, It's not just this anymore. 'cause I think when you've got a novel that you're working on or a PhD that you're working on, it can start to feel like an oppressive thing. Sophie: Looming over you. That just blocks out everything else. The minute you start doing something else, creative or intellectual that you care about, then that looming scary thing suddenly becomes not the only thing. And it has to kind of take its place in an overall picture that contains other things you're working on. Sophie: And that is so powerful just in and of itself because it's like, oh, what about this over here? You are not the only thing in my life, PhD or novel. And it's very empowering. Vikki: Definitely, and I think you can also make it feel more like what you imagined PhD might be like too, because I think often people come to their PhDs, especially people that come to their PhDs not straight after their masters. Vikki: They've made kind of a conscious decision to come back to it. It's a topic they love. They sometimes have a slightly romanticized view of what that's gonna be look like, right? Or, you know, I'm gonna be doing this intellectual work and waning around thinking high thoughts and dah, dah, dah. And suddenly their supervisors are saying, can you gimme a Gantt chart? And you're like, what? That wasn't what I envisaged. And I feel like you could create some of that, that sense of it being what you envisaged. Sophie: If your main work project at any given time is say, a Gantt chart, then you can use your ahead writing time to do the kind of writing or PhD work that you looked forward to doing, but just in relation to a different bit of your PhD. Vikki: Yeah, and that's where I want everyone to be really clear. We are not saying that this has to invo involve voice notes in bed in the morning. 'cause I can hear some people going, you know, oh, but I, my brain doesn't wake up or whatever. That's not the point. The point is that it's really distinct from how you normally work. So for some of you, so I have a good friend, who will say writes books, and he loves writing longhand in a beautiful notebook. And so it might be that maybe your real PhD work, you're in there, you're doing your data, you're typing away on your laptop and things like that. Vikki: But in the ahead part you've got a beautiful notebook and a fountain pen, and you only do it in slightly glamorous looking hotel foyers, but once a week you go off and do that or whatever. Right. Sophie: Yeah, and I, I massively would love to write something in a beautiful notebook. Uh, I, I take all my notes in a beautiful notebook, but that Yeah, precisely. That's the kind of thing you are ahead method of writing can be whatever you want it to be. There's loads of people who would absolutely hate why around in bed talking into their phone. I mean, like, some people would be like, no, I've woken up. I want to get up and have a shower. It's attaching it to what works for you that matters and making sure it's different from your main task of work at that time and more fun feeling. More, more sort of easy and light feeling. Vikki: Yeah, definitely. Sophie: You then get to witness yourself doing work on your PhD and having fun. Or I get to witness myself writing a novel and having fun. That reminds me by proving to me that actually writing novels can be fun. So then I look at the other novel I'm writing, I go, well, what if you could be fun? You haven't been for a while, but like, what if you could be? Sophie: And it all just has a knock on effect where you end up having much less stress and much more fun. Vikki: I love this. Sophie: If you try the ahead method and you love it, you can then do it even when you are not behind on something else, and that is what I decided to do. Sophie: I love the ahead method so much. I thought, well, why not just write all my books this way? Why not just write. I'd like to go down from 400 words a day to 300 to make it even lighter and easier feeling. But I am seriously planning to write my next book at the rate of 300 words a day, all via the book ahead method, even though I won't be behind on anything else. Sophie: So that's why I changed it from ahead and behind to, yeah, I giving names and titles to things. So originally when I introduced this in my Dream Author coaching program, I called it Ahead and Behind. But then when I decided I was gonna do it anyway, even if I wasn't behind, then I changed it to the Book Ahead Method and I am gonna do it even when I'm not behind on other things. Vikki: Love. Amazing. Thank you so much, Sophie, for coming on. It is super useful. Tell people a little bit more about what you're up to at the moment and what books they should be looking out for. Sophie: Well, I am finishing my next Poirot novel. So one of the things I write is the new series of Hercule Poirot novels at the request of Agatha Christie's family. And I'm just putting the finishing touches to the latest one of those and preparing to launch the book I've mentioned already, which is called, it's a very long title. No one would do what the Lamberts have done, which I call Lamberts for short. And then I'm apart from that, I'm coaching and doing lots of swimming, which I always do. And planning the next stages of the dream or for coaching program, which is about to develop in various ways. Vikki: Can't wait to hear about that. We will put links to Dream Author and to where you can find out more about Sophie and her writing generally in the chat. Thank you so much, Sophie, for coming on. Thank you everyone for listening and I'll see everyone next week. Take care. Bye-bye.

< Most PhD students and academics spend a lot of time telling themselves they’re not doing enough, they’re behind or they’re not good enough. Even if you truly believe that’s true, constantly having those comments in your head makes everything feel more difficult. When I talk with clients about intentionally choosing other thoughts, they often struggle to come up with thoughts that might help more AND that still feel true. In this episode, I give you nine examples that you can pick up and play with today! Links I refer to in this episode What to do when you get contradictory advice How to coach yourself (and why you should) Why what you do matters (and when it doesn’t) Transcript I want you to imagine I've got some magical tool where I'm able to look inside your head and see what thoughts you say to yourself most often. What would I see? Think about the last time you were sat at your desk or wondering about your research. What thoughts would I see in your head? If my members are anything to go by, it's probably things like, I'm not good enough to do this. I dunno what I'm doing. Other people are so much further ahead than me. This is too confusing. Those sorts of things. Do you recognize that in yourself as well? If so, you are in the right place. Don't worry, this is completely normal. PhDs and academia do something to our brains that mean that we just develop this habit of speaking to ourselves like that. And one of the things that I often work on in coaching is how we can choose other thoughts. Now I wanna reassure you, this is not gonna be toxic positivity. This is not gonna be, everything's great and I can do everything and I'm the best, I can do anything I set my mind to. We're not doing that, okay? But what we are gonna do is identify some really specific thoughts that might help you more than the ones that you're focusing on at the moment. Now when I say this in coaching in my membership classes and stuff, people are often like, yeah, but what thoughts? I don't even know what would help at this point. So that's what this episode's about. I'm gonna share with you nine thoughts that I think will help you to enjoy your research more and to get more done than you are at the moment. Let's make your brain a more pleasant place to hang out. I'm Dr. Vikki Wright, ex professor and certified life coach, and I'm here to help make your PhD and academic journey feel just a little bit more fun. So this week we are gonna be thinking about nine things that you can say to yourself more often. Now, the first thing I wanna really clarify here is it's really important you only choose thoughts to emphasize your head that you at least cognitively believe. Let me explain what I mean by that. Often people say to me, I know that's true, but like in the inside, in my heart, I don't always believe it. That's fine. If you feel like that about the thoughts, no worries. We will practice thinking them, we will practice believing them. It almost doesn't matter too much if deep down they don't quite feel true yet because that's what the practice is for. However, if I say any where you think, you know, I just don't actually believe that, that's okay. We don't have to think those ones. This isn't an exercise in making you believe things you don't already believe. This is an exercise in helping you give at least as much space to the useful things you believe as you do to the unhelpful things you believe. We all have a whole variety of thoughts in our head that often contradict each other. That's why our heads are such complex and joyous places to be. And what we seem to do is somehow think that we should spend lots of time, or that it's inevitable we spend lots of time thinking the thoughts that we believe that make us feel rubbish. And put very little effort into thinking the thoughts that we also already believe, but that we just don't think about so often. So I'm gonna emphasize nine that I think are really useful, that I have seen help the clients in my membership over the years. But I also want you to identify some of your own. If you have other thoughts that help you and that make you feel good and make you feel empowered, happy days. In fact, I'd love to hear about them. If you're on my newsletter, you can just hit reply to any of the newsletters. Let me know what thoughts you are going for, or if you follow me on Instagram at the PhD life coach DM me there. Let me know what thoughts work for you. Now, if you are gonna make up your own, at the end of this episode, I'm gonna give you a few tips as to how to make sure there is helpful as you think they'll be. So make sure you listen to all then. The first one is always so important when we talk about it in our classes, and that is that your thesis needs to be defensible. It does not need to be perfect. There is no absolute definition of correct. It needs to be defensible. Now, those of you who are academics, the same is true about the methods of any paper you write for publication. It needs to be defensible. Defensible either to the examiners of a Viva or defensible to the reviewers of an article or defensible to your grant body who you're applying to, whoever the kind of assessing body is. There's no right answer. Often we tie ourselves up in knots thinking there's a correct version of this, that if only we can identify the correct argument or the correct analysis, everything will be okay and we'll know, we'll be certain. It's not true. Put 40 academics in a room and they will very rarely agree with each other. There is no right version. Your work needs to be defensible. Does it mean there's not some other cool way you could have done it? Of course not. There's a hundred different ways you could do any study. You just need to be able to defend why you chose the way you did it, why you made the arguments you made. And show that you understand the implications of those choices. That's what you need to do. It doesn't need to be perfect. It needs to be fit for purpose. Somehow thinking about it like that, this just has to be defensible. It needs to be fit for purpose releases just a little bit of that pressure we put on ourselves and enables us to move into, can I justify why we did it this way? Yeah, totally. Let's go. Let's do that convincingly rather than panic about whether we chose the right way. The second thing I want you to tell yourself more often is that you've done difficult things before and you can figure this out. Often when we're in the midst of like a really hard, difficult thing, we just think there's no way out. This is the one, this is the one I can't do. This is the one I have no way of getting past. But you felt like that before. And the joy for me working with PhD students is, I know that's true. I know for 100% that's true, or you wouldn't be doing what you're doing. Either you've got an excellent academic track record or you've got a really cool and interesting background in some other industry that's enabled you to come in and do a PhD. There's various routes to PhDs, as we all know, but all of them involve achievement in your past life. And one of the things I've noticed with my clients is that we're really good at forgetting that achievement. We're really good at writing it off, either not thinking about it or attributing it to luck or attributing it to the support we got back then, or whatever it was. You have done difficult things before and you're gonna figure out a way to do the thing you are doing at the moment. Now, one thing I will say, this is where my membership comes in useful is. Some of you will have developed unhealthy ways to get difficult things done. Some of you might be looking back and going, yeah, I've done difficult things before, but I did them in unsustainable ways. I did them through beating myself up, working stupid hours, neglecting my health, all of those things. Now, if that's you, you really need this podcast and you need to jump on my waiting list for the membership next time because that's a fair point. If you are looking back and going, you know what? I did do difficult things, but not in a way that I wanna do them anymore. That's where you need some support to work through that, and that's something I work through with the clients all the time. But even in that situation, reminding yourself that you are someone who is capable of feeling this feeling of confusion and moving through it to achieve the task can help you in this moment to think about how you wanna address this particular problem. The third one, and this is one that has been my mantra for probably the last six or seven years since I kind of thought of it and came across it, and this is the notion is anything gets done one step at a time. As many of you who've been listening for a while now, I have a brain that likes to shoot off in 47 directions at once and expect somehow to be able to do all of them at the same time. Now. I'm getting better at that, but it is still my natural tendency, and so I probably use this phrase. 5, 6, 7 times a day, at least, one thing at a time. In fact, it's the latest piece of advice that my very expensive coach has given me, which is slightly ironic that I'm paying a lot of somebody, a lot of money to tell me things that I do usually tell myself. When it comes to my business, one thing at a time. I can develop different elements of my business one step at a time. You will do your research one step at a time. If you hear your brain going, and then I need to do this, and then I need to do that, and then I need to do that. I want you to pause, breathe for a second, and remind yourself one step at a time. What's now's job? What's the one thing that would be most useful if I moved it on? Now, what's one thing? Everyone does this one step at a time. In fact, I'm gonna give you a sneaky one bonus bit here just based on something that we discussed in a group coaching session yesterday. So one of my clients was talking about, she was starting some data collection in the laboratory, and then she had a couple of papers that were also on the go. More of a review paper and more of a database paper. And she'd been advised that it might be useful to put one of them to the side, and she felt like that was a failure. She felt like that was sort of her not being able to handle more than one thing and she felt like she might would find it difficult to come back to that later. Now, we talked about some of the benefits of doing things one thing at a time, or fewer things at a time. And we talked about how actually if you're gonna put something to one side, you can say, you know what? That's not now. So she decided that one of these papers could go to one side. We talked about things like, what do you actually call that? You know, do you call that dropping it? Do you call it abandoning it or do you call it putting it on the side for now until I can give it my full attention, for example, just the way we describe it makes a difference. And if we're putting it to one side, intentionally, we're popping it out there on the shelf. We can also do that in a structured and useful way. So we talked about what could she do with the data, with the current state of the manuscript to make sure that it's super easy to come back to later. So when we remind ourselves that we can and have to do this one step at a time, we can also think, okay, these other things that I'm deciding are not now things. How can I put them to one side mindfully so I don't feel like they've been abandoned, and so that I know that I've structured them so they're easy to come back to later. That makes this all feel a lot easier. Thought number four that I want you to cultivate is one that members have asked for. Oh, no. We'll come. We'll say that in the next one. Thought number four that I want you to cultivate is for when you are telling yourself that you don't know something. I don't know how to do this. I don't know what to write. I dunno what order to do this in. I don't know what analysis to use. I want you to remind yourself this isn't a don't know problem. This is a, I haven't decided yet problem. Okay. The difference, and I've talked about this a couple of times on episodes recently, so check those out. But the difference is if you don't know something, it means there is a factual truth out there for you to go and find. So this might be, I don't know how to run structural equation modeling or whatever. Okay. There's gonna be decisions in that too, right? But you might not know the technicalities of even how to start that. That's fine. I accept that's a don't know problem. That's a go and find a book. Go and find an expert. Look up how to do it problem. But the vast majority of these things when it's, I dunno what auditor to present this in, I don't know which analysis to pick. I don't know which argument to make. These are decisions. 'cause this relates back to that first point, that there's no perfect way to do a PhD or to do your research. There's no right answer here. It's not that you don't know the correct answer, it's that you haven't decided. And if you frame it like that, suddenly the power is back with you. Because if you realize that the only thing standing between you and moving forward is making a decision, then you can start asking yourself, how do I support myself to make a decision? What options have I got? How can I make it easier for me to make this choice? What advice do I want to seek in order to make this choice? But ultimately, it's your decision. Okay, that can feel scary. I get that. It can feel scary, but ultimately it's empowering 'cause it is not this kind of vague cloud that you don't know. It's something you get to pick and you are capable of picking. Quick interjection. If you are finding this episode helpful, but you are driving, walking the dog or doing dishes, just remember this. When you're done, head to the PhD life coach.com and sign up for my newsletter. We've all listened to a podcast and thought this is great. I should do something with it, and that didn't. That's where I created the newsletter to help you actually apply the stuff that you hear. Each week you'll get a short summary, some reflective questions on one simple action that you can take right away. You'll also get access to a searchable archive of all the past episodes so you can find the exact one that you need to help with your current challenges. Plus all newsletter subscribers get a free webinar every single month on a topic that affects all PhD students and academics, and you'll always be the first to hear for when my membership opens to new members. So once you're done listening, or even right now, go sign up for my newsletter and make sure you don't miss out. Now this fifth one is gonna feel like a funny one and I'm gonna explain it 'cause it came straight out of a coaching session and that is lazy, useless people get PhDs. Okay. Lazy, useless people get PhDs. Now, I wanna clarify things before you all come at me. I am not saying that PhD students and academics are lazy or useless. Any of them. I am not saying you have to be lazy or useless to get a PhD or a research career. What I am saying instead is that most people who've done a PhD, are doing a PhD, have at least at some points, if not often, told themselves they're lazy and useless. Okay. When you've had one of those days where you just can't get into it, you're procrastinating wildly, you're beating yourself up about all the stuff you should have done and you're looking at everybody else just carrying on and getting their work done. Side note, they're probably not, but anyway, do, do, do. They're working away and you are just not all of us have told ourselves we are lazy and useless. The joy of having been in this sort of career as long as I have is that I have seen all those people who call themselves lazy and useless, go on and get their PhDs, go on and have the careers that they wanna have. Lazy, useless people get PhDs. I will extend that to say people who believe that they are lazy and useless, get PhDs. Now. I am not gonna endorse you continuing to tell yourself that you're lazy and useless, okay? Not gonna allow it. You are banned. But if you have those thoughts, you can still get a PhD. Number six is about feedback. Now, whatever stage of your academic career you are at getting feedback can be really challenging. Maybe it's from your supervisor on a first draft. Maybe it's from dreaded reviewer two, maybe it's from your grant agency's feedback on your application. Getting feedback can be tough. So this thought has two components to it. The first is that it is okay to be upset by feedback. There's something in this kind of, I don't know, like positive culture thing that you sometimes see online that we should just go, oh, all feedback is information and this is fine. It will help me grow. And it's like, that is true. Okay. I stand by that. But we're humans. We are not robots. We are emotionally invested most of the time in the things that we're doing. It is completely normal and completely okay to be upset if the feedback is not where you thought it was gonna be. Okay. It is nothing wrong with you. It doesn't mean you have to fundamentally like change the way your brain works, become a different person. There is nothing inherently wrong. Emotions just give us information. There is nothing wrong with getting upset. In fact, allowing ourselves space to experience those emotions, allowing ourselves a little gap to be like, yeah, I'm just upset about this. I don't need to reframe it yet. I'm just upset. 'cause I thought this was in pretty good shape and now there's a billion tons of work to do on it. That's okay. Not expecting yourself to get the feedback and go, okay, I'll work methodically through each comment at time. No, go and have a sulk about it. That's fine. No big deal. What we are gonna do though is we are not gonna make it mean a million things about us. 'cause that's where we go wrong. We get upset about it and then we extrapolate it out to mean that we don't deserve to be here and all that stuff. We're not doing that. The second part of this though, is that I want you to remember that feedback is information and you get to decide how you are going to use it. So it's okay you have an emotional response to it. All good, no problems, but you also get to decide how you're gonna use it. For some of you, this is gonna be about prioritizing. I have members who are right in the last few stages, you know, last month or two of their PhDs, and they're having to decide which things they have time to change, which things they have time to action. Which are things that are just gonna have to ride and we'll see how it goes. That is completely normal to have to prioritize that, that other times this is about getting contradictory advice. You know, most of us who've been in academia for a while will have received reviews from journals where reviewer one says, oh, you should include much more about x. And reviewer too says, oh, you should include much less about X. And you're like. And if you see that as annoying and contradictory, it gets incredibly frustrating. Whereas if you see that as, oh, that is information. That could tell me different things, right? So that could give me the information that, you know what I'm probably hitting this about, right? If some people want a bit more, some people want about a bit less, that's probably about right. Or it could be telling you that you know what, you're not hitting either. That people either want much more or they want less, and we need to make a decision as to which is better for the paper. And only we get to decide that, right? We get to take that feedback, we get to combine it with the information we have in our heads. Go back to the intentions that we had for this article and make a decision from there. So feedback is information. You are allowed to get upset about it, but you get to decide what you do with that information. I actually have a podcast episode about handling contradictory feedback if that's something that you struggle with. So do go check that out. Thought seven is that what you do matters. And in fact, this is so true I did a whole episode about it recently. What you do matters no matter how. Esoteric and random your topic feels what you do matters. Pur, pursuing information for the good of the world or for the just joy of knowing new things is important. What you do matters. You are making a contribution, and it is okay if it doesn't always feel like that. Every stage of your academic career. There'll be times when you feel like what you're doing isn't making a difference, but I want you to remind yourself. Especially in the current climate, in academic world where everything can feel like a struggle sometimes, the work you are doing is important. Intellectual curiosity and exploration is important for the world, the population, the future, the past, everything. You are doing something that matters. You are making your contribution to it, and it matters. You matter. Number eight is one that often comes about later on in the PhD journey. And again, I've talked with clients about this this week, and that is that moment where you are returning to chapters you wrote early on in your PhD with the intention of sort of finessing them, improving them, ready to be actually submitted with the rest of your work. And what often happens is you read them and you're like. Oh my goodness. I thought these were in a better state than that. I thought these were nearly finished and actually they're a bit rough. And that can be really disheartening because what is common is for people to focus on the fact that, A, they've got lots of work to do, and B, that if their work's not as good as they thought, then they must not be very good. Those are the things that are most common that I see come up all the time, and they miss something really important. What they miss is the fact that you can identify flaws in your previous work means one thing. It means that you are now better than you were back then. It means you are more expert with more nuanced understanding and better skills than you were when you wrote that. Looking back at old work and thinking, oh, I could do that better now is nothing but a celebration. That is a beautiful thing. That is you visibly seeing your learning and development in front of you on a page. I want you, instead of going, oh, I got so much work to do on this now to go, I know how to make this better. I'm now better than when I wrote this. Let's go. Let's bring this up to my current standards of knowledge. This is an exciting thing. It is not a sign you wasted time writing it. Writing it was how you got as good as you are now, but the fact you can see that it's not perfect, that's a wonderful thing. Let's make it better. And then the ninth one, I'm gonna get feisty. The ninth one is one that, to be honest, is the area of coaching that I struggle with most because one of the things with coaching is you are supposed to stay at least semi neutral about the circumstances that somebody's telling you about. You're not meant to like jump in the pool and get involved and sort of be like, oh my goodness, this is terrible, or whatever. Number nine is it is okay to expect feedback from your supervisor even if they're busy. I was a supervisor. For a really long time. I get it. I trained other supervisors. I worked with hundreds of collaborators, and I get it. Supervisors are crazy busy. They have so much on, they are so overwhelmed, they're so overburdened. If you are listening, I see you. I get it. I was there for a really, really long time, and if any of you supervisors listening are starting to feel guilty, I wanna contextualize what I mean by delays here, because I saw collaborators all the time. My colleagues feeling really bad 'cause it had been a couple of weeks, three weeks that they hadn't given feedback on an article and feeling really, really guilty about it. That's not what I'm talking about here. Students, if you expect to get it back within a few days routinely, you are probably underestimating the workload of your supervisors. However the number of times I work with clients where they say, and obviously I've only got the client side of it, who knows what the other side is, but where they say that they submitted something four months ago, six months ago, last summer, whatever it is, and they haven't heard back. And when they chase, the supervisor says they'll get to it. I'm sorry. It's just not okay. I'm gonna go right out there and say it controversial. I don't care. That's not okay. You are not doing your job as a supervisor. Your supervisor is not serving your needs if they are taking months and months and months to get you feedback. Okay, now. Don't get me wrong, you need to be in careful communication with your supervisors so that you can try and time the feedback that you need for appropriate moments so that you know it doesn't coincide with them prepping for a big conference or right in the middle of their marking period or whatever. So giving some warning as to when it's coming. Great. Agreeing some boundaries around how long you're gonna take over getting feedback back. Great. In fact, I think I might do a future episode about feedback because there's, I think a lot we could all do better to make the whole feedback process a lot more efficient. But if you are just not getting feedback, that's not okay, and it's okay to be cross about that. We'll talk in a second what you can do about it, but I think a lot of supervisors think that students are often a bit entitled as to what they want. In my experience, it's the opposite. I hear clients all the time justifying why their supervisors are just far too busy to give them feedback and it's okay. 'Cause they are, you know, they're really important in their field and they've got a real lot on, and I knew that when I agreed to work with them. And, you know, it's, it's okay. And I'm like, it's not okay. It's not. That isn't good enough. You need feedback. Even if it's quick and dirty feedback, even if it's, this is roughly on the right lines, that's not, try this next, let's go feedback. If that's your situation, I want you to talk to an academic, some other academic in your unit to figure out what is normal in your discipline and what is okay and what's not. The trouble is universities don't always have good systems for dealing with supervisors who don't do this stuff. Often it's a known thing that particular academics are rubbish at giving feedback, and somehow no one can do anything about it. But you don't have to think it's okay. If you're a supervisor listening, my biggest tip for you is be honest with your students. If you've missed the boat and you are feeling really guilty about the fact that you haven't given feedback for a while, just speak to them. I'm really sorry. I should have got this back to you sooner. I haven't, which is the most useful part for me to move forward now. And stop asking for polished drafts before you give feedback. I was ranting about this on Instagram this week. If you saw it, I apologize, repeating myself, but stop asking for polished drafts. I'm gonna talk more in the feedback episode about why it's a terrible idea, but it's essentially like decorating a house before you've actually checked whether somebody likes the layout of the house. Don't do it. It's a waste of everybody's time. Give quick and dirty feedback. Allow somebody to move on with a bit more information. And students if you are getting neglected by your supervisor, you deserve better and it's okay to say so. Now, if you are one of the unusual students that's sending a manuscript for comments on a Friday and getting pissy that you're not getting it back on Monday morning, take a little look in the mirror. Let's not do that. We have to accept that everybody's working in a really pressurized environment at the moment, and there will be times when your supervisor drops the ball. They're not the people I'm talking to. I'm talking about the people who just routinely don't reply. Who routinely say, I'll get to it. I'll get to it, I'll get to it, and never get to it. Those are the people I'm talking to. So there is nine things that I want you to keep telling yourself much more often than all the other unhelpful things that you are telling yourselves. Let me know which one's your favorite. If you're on my newsletter, just reply to that. If you're not, why not get signed up? One things that people on my newsletter are going to get, and this is brand new at time of recording, is a gorgeous Google Sheet summary of every podcast I've ever done. The key points from it and the links to where you can find it so that you can use Control F and search, find whatever topics you're interested and find me wittering on about it. So it's like your ultimate archive of all things PhD life coach. So make sure you're on the newsletter so you don't miss out on that. Now, I promised at the beginning that if you were gonna come up with thoughts of your own, that I would give you a few pointers. First one, I'm gonna ban the word just from it. So if the thing that you are saying to yourself is, I just need to get on with it, I want you to take a second look and see if there's a different way of saying it. The reason for that is that saying just makes it feel like something's easy and it's not true. Okay. When we are saying, I just need to stop procrastinating, there's no just about it. Stopping procrastinating is a tough thing to do. So, be cautious around that. I want you to make sure that you are not secretly insulting yourself in your attempt to motivate yourself. So if you are sort of saying, get off your bums, stop being so lazy and get it done. Let's not speak to ourselves like that, not routinely, not if we're trying to change the way we speak to ourselves. You know, every now and again as a kind of, if you're doing it from a lighthearted, affectionate place, not so bad. But if you are trying to break a habit of beating yourself up all the time, let's not do it by insulting you. I want the things do you choose to be around, how capable you are, how achievable this is, why this matters, why you are the person to do it, and that it's okay to have emotions, but we don't have to make it mean a whole load of stuff about us and our futures. Your research is really important. Let's tell ourselves these things more often and actually enjoy getting it done. Thank you all so much for listening, and I will see you next week. Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like 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 the PhD life coach com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics time.

< In this episode, I welcome Dr Ilana Horwitz, author of the new book, The Entrepreneurial Scholar. Being entrepreneurial isn’t just about starting a business — it’s about thinking creatively, seizing opportunities, and applying academic skills in innovative ways. We explore how PhD students and academics can develop an entrepreneurial mindset and connect with people outside their field to unlock new possibilities. Plus, we talk about how academic careers can be enriched by embracing flexibility and finding new ways to contribute to society, whether through collaboration, commercialization, or interdisciplinary projects. Links I refer to in this episode Find out more about Dr Ilana Horwitz here . The Entrepreneurial Scholar website (Ilana’s book) Transcript Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. I am really excited to introduce academic and author Professor Ilana Horwitz, who is an assistant professor of Jewish Studies and Sociology at Tulane University. So welcome, Ilana. It's so wonderful to have you here. Ilana: Thank you so much for having me, Vikki. No problem. Vikki: So we are here to talk about your new book, which at the time of us recording this now is not quite out and I believe you are expecting an exciting parcel today. Ilana: Indeed. I think I'm gonna get a box of books that, uh, when I, when my first book came out, actually, that was probably one of the most exciting moments. You open up that book, it's like giving birth to a child and I'm so excited for that feeling again. Vikki: So good. Make sure you record it. Get your, Ilana: oh, I do plan on it Vikki: record your unboxing video. Perfect. But by the time you guys are listening to this, it will be out, it is called The Entrepreneurial Scholar and I've just been binge reading it and I've learned so much already. So let's start, before we dive into the book, tell people a little bit more about you. Ilana: Great. So as you mentioned, I work at Tulane University, which is New Orleans, Louisiana, and I'm a professor of Jewish studies and sociology. But my training is actually from a school of education. I went to the Stanford Graduate School of Education and my PhD is in sociology of Education and also I'm a sociologist of religion. Ilana: So my work is really at that intersection and I write a lot about the role mostly in the United States about how religious upbringing and social class and gender and race and ethnicity influence people along the life course, particularly in their educational trajectories. Vikki: So fascinating. And we ended up having a bit of a chat before this. I got very distracted looking at your first book, which I'll get you to give us the title of in a second on that topic, which just looks fascinating. So I may need to get you back at some point to talk about that stuff. Ilana: Sure. So my first book is called God Grades and Graduation- Religion's, surprising Impact on Academic Success. And it was published by Oxford University Press in 2022. And that book actually came out of my dissertation. And it is a book primarily about how being religious in the United States is associated with academic outcomes, both at the K 12 level and then in higher education. Vikki: That's so cool. I'm so glad I asked that because I obviously didn't know it came out of your dissertation. I think for doctoral students, hearing that the work they do doesn't have to just sit in a thesis somewhere and never get read again. That, you know, people do convert and get it out there so that people are reading. I think that's really exciting and fits with this notion of being an entrepreneurial scholar, right? Ilana: Yeah, absolutely. When I actually, we'll probably talk about this, but I had no intention to become an academic. Uh, and when I did decide to stay in academia, I really made a commitment to myself that everything that I wrote was going to make it into the public in some way, shape, or form. Ilana: I really was resistant to the idea that my work would just like sit behind a paywall and collect dust on bookshelves. And so every time I do, I write anything academic, I also write a lot of public opinion pieces about it or engage in public scholarship. And so yeah, the book is one of the ways in which I sort of executed on that commitment to doing work that reaches beyond the ivory tower. Vikki: Amazing. That leads perfectly into how did you end up writing a book? You said obviously have that sort of mindset that you want to get out and make a difference and have an impact in the world as well as your, within your academic work itself. So how did you end up writing a book about entrepreneurship in scholarly world? Ilana: Vikki, it was the most unexpected book imaginable. I really had no intention to write this book. It really happened by accident, and it actually kind of happened in a way that I think what entrepreneurship teaches us. And that is, it came out of a moment of failure and of a moment of public scholarship. Ilana: So here's what happened. At the end of my doctoral program, I was already, beyond having to take classes. I was in my sixth year, but I decided to audit a class taught by Sam Wineburg. He's a historian of education, but he's also very committed to public scholarship. And he was teaching a class about how to do publicly engaged work and not surprising the final assignment for the class was to write an op-ed. So most students in the class decided to write about their research, and at that point I was really spending a lot of time kind of reflecting on my own PhD journey, which was very unusual. I came from a background in the business world and working at some startups and then in research and evaluation. Ilana: And I didn't start my PhD until I was 30 and I just took a very different approach to it. And I noticed that although I was very stressed out and I didn't have a job and I was sort of experiencing a lot of crises in the way that my classmates were also experiencing, there was something about the nature of academia that I loved in a way that my colleagues found really debilitating. Ilana: And so I decided to reflect on this in this op-ed. So I submitted it to Sam, and Sam, um, was really encouraging and he was like, this kind of has two threads. You need to pick one or the other and go with it. And I picked a thread and basically like it failed. I won't go into sort of the details of, you know, what I was arguing in that first version, but I submitted it to several public outlets and it failed sort of repeatedly over the course of a few months. Ilana: And it was really discouraging and eventually, and I gave up on it to be honest. And then Sam, who I stayed in touch with after I graduated, he was like, you have to put it out there. Like there was really good stuff in there. Don't give up on it. And so for two years, Vikki, I sat on this op-ed, uh, and I, and it was on my to-do list and every, you know, week or so, it would move to do next todo list and I would never do it. Ilana: And it was the summer of 2021 and I was actually just about to start my position at Tulane. It was like middle of June and I was starting in two weeks and, 'cause I had a postdoc between, finishing my PhD and starting at Tulane and I was about to go home and then I was like, you know what, Ilana, you have childcare right now, you have like an hour. Why don't you take out that op-ed and see what you can do with it? And so I like finally found it in my files online and I read it and I went back to one of the original vision, like the direction that I didn't take. And, and I just sent it off. Ilana: I sent it to Inside Higher Ed where I already had published something and they replied right away and they said, this is great. We'll take it. Wow. And the title of that piece was called why PhD Students Should Think Like Entrepreneurs. And it came out a few weeks later and I got a few emails, you know, from professors. I got some emails from directors of graduate programs, from some from therapists. And then I got the most unexpected email and it came from an editor at Princeton University Press. Peter and Peter said. I just read your op-ed, this is great. Do you wanna write a book on this topic? And I was like, are you for real? Ilana: Are you, are you sure? I was like a nobody, I mean, I had like not started my position. My first book hadn't come out. I hadn't been in the New York Times yet. Like nothing that has happened to me since had happened at that moment. But he said, we have been looking for someone to write a book like this, but no one has that kind of background in entrepreneurship and the business world to have the credibility to write it. So we think you're the right person. And that is how this book came to be. Vikki: I love that. And what I love most about it is you started by saying that it was kind of luck and those sorts of things. And I just love how there were so many bits of that story that if you had responded differently to them, you wouldn't have ended up where you were. So that final piece, the fact that that guy was looking for that and he know, read your piece that bit. Might be luck, but all the way from what you chose to write about the fact that you tried to submit it. The fact that you coped with that failure, you, the fact that you kept in touch with the professor, that you were memorable enough that the professor reminded you that you really should think about this stuff. You went again there. All that resilience and everything. There's so much that led up to this happening and I just think that's such a useful story of how people create their own luck. Ilana: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right and I actually start the book with that story because I think it's an perfect illustration of a key point that I make in the book, and that is to be, to think entrepreneurially. Ilana: You need to ask yourself, who am I? What do I know and who do I know? And the lesson that I learned in that op-ed is when I tried to write it the first time when I picked a thread, I was writing from a sort of place of something I didn't know a lot about. I was so writing it for a K 12 teacher audience. Ilana: And when people read it, they were like, it's clear that you've never taught in a K 12 setting. And that's true. I had never been a full-time K 12 teacher. And when I revised it, I really leaned into my own experience working in entrepreneurial settings and in the business world. And that is when it was able to shine because I was speaking from something that I had experience in. Ilana: And you're right, the fact that I kept in touch with Sam and the fact that I reached out to Inside Higher Ed to publish it where I already knew somebody. Like I leveraged a lot of my own skills and connections, and that is a really big piece of entrepreneurial thinking. And ultimately, like with entrepreneurial thinking, you put stuff out to, into the world and you don't know what's gonna be come of it. Ilana: And I think this op-ed is the best illustration of that. Like, I had no idea that this would ever, I didn't plan for this. And that's I think how some of the best things happen. Vikki: Absolutely. So you've touched on this a little bit already, but just for people who haven't thought about , in this context, what do you mean by entrepreneurial? Because often I think when people think about this, they're thinking about startups, they're thinking about side hustles, all that stuff. How are you applying that to academia? Ilana: My definition of entrepreneurial thinking is as follows. It is the ability to generate an idea. So instead of a product, right, you're generating an idea that is the product that scholars put out into the world. It is the ability to generate ideas with very limited resources while navigating an environment of high uncertainty. And that is really the way entrepreneurs go about their work. I think there's this idea that, oh, entrepreneurship, people wanna make money and so they come up with a product. But oftentimes, what ends up happening is someone sees that there's a solution to a problem, and then it becomes an entrepreneurial venture. Ilana: And I wanna be really clear that when I say and use the term entrepreneurship, I am not talking about trying to monetize our ideas. And I'm not talking about any sort of like academic capitalism because I think that's where I think people get hung up on the word. And I make a distinction in the book about sort of good business practices, which are often around management, but entrepreneurialism isn't about good management, right? Ilana: That's about efficiency and having good systems in place and that stuff is important. But entrepreneurial thinking is really about, I'll say it again, being able to generate something new like an idea with very limited resources while navigating an environment of high uncertainty. Vikki: So good. And I was particularly excited to see your background 'cause one of the things that I see amongst my PhD student and even academic clients is this belief that entrepreneurialism in its sort of more traditional sense is the kind of realm of the engineers and the scientists and things. And often my humanities and social science and arts students a bit like the world doesn't care what I'm doing. I'm doing this little niche thing, nobody cares. I think it's interesting, but that's not always enough to keep me going on a gray Monday afternoon like it is here and to have somebody who comes from the sort of academic background that you come from talking about entrepreneurialism, I thought was just a really, was a really eye-opening. Vikki: And obviously, you say in the book that the people you speak to go across a range of disciplines, but they skew that way because they're the people that you are in your community's. I wonder if you explain a little more about, about that. Ilana: Yeah, so this book is based not only on my own experience, but also interviews with about 45 people from a range of backgrounds and institutions, so I would say the vast majority are still in academia, but they were people who I got to, when I put out calls and I said, who do you think of as entrepreneurial in their work? And so some of these people got nominated and some of them are people who I also think of as being entrepreneurial, although they themselves wouldn't necessarily have used that word. Ilana: And then I also talked to some people who either left academia to pursue some sort of entrepreneurial venture or never were in academia, but are entrepreneurs in other ways, because I wanted to really try to understand some of those mindsets and dispositions that help them do their work but certainly my own background having worked in a couple of startups and then in the business world, and my own lived experience. I immigrated to the United States and my parents were very entrepreneurial , that also helped me inform, uh, this book. Vikki: I love it. And honestly just for the, I mean the stuff that you put in it is amazing, but then having all of those interesting people giving their little pearls, I found myself just writing down, look up so-and-so, look up so-and-so look up So andSo as I was reading, 'cause there were so many bits. I did also spot friend of the podcast, Alison Miller, who has been on talking about academic writing before. So I was like, oh, I know her. Ilana: Yeah. That's exciting. That's always lot of fun. Vikki: So I wanna know how this goes down with academics. When you tell academics that they should be more entrepreneurial or that they might benefit, let's avoid the word should, they might benefit from being more entrepreneurial. How is that generally received? Are they excited or does it feel like another thing they've gotta be good at or Yeah, what do people think? Ilana: Yeah, it's a little too soon to tell 'cause the book hasn't come out. So I don't actually know what kind of reactions it's going to yield. When I did the op-ed you know, I think most people at first don't recognize that they think in entrepreneurial ways and so if they're willing to sort of like go past the idea of, oh, entrepreneurship is icky, entrepreneurship is about making money, entrepreneurship is about, sort of Silicon Valley and all the things we might hate about it, if they're willing to look past it and really, uh, reflect on what I mean by it, they can see how they can embrace that in their own work. Ilana: And I think one of the key things that I want people to take away from this book is that I want people to reclaim their sense of autonomy and see themselves as having more agency in their work. I know you talk about the idea of being your own boss, and I talk a lot about that too because one of the things that I noticed is like people lose a lot of their sense of agency while they're doctoral students. And I can understand why that happens, right? You come in and you're basically working with your advisor and all these other brilliant people and you're at the bottom of the totem pole and you feel like you have nothing to offer 'cause everybody else has already come up with an next great idea. Ilana: But there's something about academia, you know, that beats that agency out of you and that excitement out of you and makes you feel completely at the whim of the system. And the system of graduate education is not working particularly well, at least here in the United States. And there's a lot of challenges with it. But like we can't keep bemoaning the system. We gotta work with what we already have. And so I'm trying to get people to reclaim their sense of agency in a system that's broken. And I think if they're willing to hear that, that can feel really empowering. Vikki: Yeah. Definitely. My clients are often torn between wanting to be independent and being told they need to be independent but at the same time feeling as though there's a right answer that their advisor or supervisor wants to get them to. And so they find it often very difficult and quite scary to put their ideas out there. And so I think creating an environment where that's exactly what they're doing and what they're intended to be doing is amazing. I loved there was a section you had with, um, Sophie von, am I saying that right? Um. I was a professor of education who was talking about seeing all the things you do as a graduate student or as an academic, as a re, as a opportunity to learn rather than as just another thing to do. Vikki: So I'm gonna write this in order to learn how to do that, and I'm gonna go to that conference in order to learn this stuff. Rather than that kind of tick box exercise that often people are like, oh, I need one of them to pass. I need one of them to graduate. I need that for my cv. I really like that idea of grabbing autonomy over your career and your learning and grabbing those opportunities. Ilana: Yeah, absolutely. One of the key things that I try to convey in the book, and this was something I didn't understand going into the PhD program to be honest, there was a lot that I didn't understand about the whole enterprise. I didn't have any family members who had gotten doctorates and I was a little clueless, but one of the most sort of illuminating moments, and I talk a lot about this in throughout the book and including in the introduction, is that during my orientation when I got to Stanford, one of the speakers, Eamonn Callan, who's a philosopher of education, he said, your job is no longer to be a consumer of information. It is now your job to be a producer of knowledge. And I think for me, that very simple advice changed my entire relationship with academia and the educational enterprise because it was true, Mike, my whole life, I'd been asked to be really good at consuming information and regurgitating back what I learned. Ilana: And I actually, to be honest, was never particularly good at that. And I was not really that intellectually curious. I did all the stuff that you're supposed to do through high school and in college, but it was always about like checking the boxes. And actually after college I said I never wanna like be in an academic setting ever again. Ilana: It's very ironic that I ended up as a professor, but when I started my doctorate and I realized like, oh, I am no longer actually being evaluated on my ability to regurgitate information. In fact, no one is ever gonna look up my grades again. And now everything that I do is for the purpose of my own curiosity and figuring out the answer to a problem or a puzzle that I have, and I get to determine what that problem or puzzle is, how I wanna solve it, when I wanna work on it, and how I wanna put it out there in the world. And I think that was so liberating for me to view myself in that way. I mean, like, I get to play detective all day long, that's my job. Ilana: And then I get to write about it and tell people what I learned. It's super liberating. But I think you need to really, uh, sort of see yourself as agentic in that process and not do things like just check the boxes. In fact, if I had just checked the boxes, I would've never taken that class on public scholarship and I wouldn't have taken a bunch of, I audited so many classes, I was like, I'm at this university and I just get to do this for free. Ilana: Like, why not? So I really took advantage. I took classes in improv and in public speaking and things that weren't directly related, but have helped me in so many ways. But you gotta take agency over the journey. Vikki: I've written, remember one of the bits you noted that you found that really liberating, but that many of the people around you found it quite scary. So if listeners are thinking, you know, oh yeah, but that sounds exciting, but that sounds terrifying too. What would you say to them? Ilana: I think the reason it's terrifying is like, let's think about the person who often ends up in a PhD program. There are people who have been so good at school their entire life, like they've really , figured out how to do what in sociology of education, the three Rs of the hidden curriculum of schooling, the rules, the routines, and the regulation. Ilana: And they've done it so well and they're like experts in schooling. Those are the people who end up in PhD programs quite often, right? That they're so good at it, that they're like, oh, I should go pro. And actually being a pro at schooling doesn't translate well in academia necessarily because you have to have a lot more agency in the process than you had before. Ilana: And you have to be willing to chart your own path, to network with other people to ask for help. And another thing, this asking for help piece is really difficult because if you're a person who's been like a pro student and have like figured it out and gotten to the top of the game, it's really hard to ask for help. Ilana: And it's also really hard to feel like you aren't the expert anymore, right? That you aren't the best in the room. Now there's all these other people who are better at sort of school than you are. They know more than you and it's very humbling. And it's also debilitating. And so I think for a lot of people sort of losing that structure of schooling. Ilana: And I think in the US because we have these couple of years of coursework and we have the comps or some version of that, there are these couple of years where there is a script. And then the script gets taken away. And that is the moment when I think things fall apart for a lot of people and for me, because I never really liked the script of school, script of schooling I was like, this is awesome. I was just like in a playground. Vikki: Yeah. I empathize with that a lot. My mom has a running joke that I've been telling people what they should do since I was a child and that it gets less obnoxious as I actually know stuff. But as a child it was pretty awful when I was telling everyone what to do, now slightly better. Vikki: Um. So, but what, what do they do? I'm gonna push you back though on Yeah. What do they do? Those, those, so if listeners to this are going, I think that's me. I think I'm a people pleaser. I'm someone who's, I learned how to tick the boxes, how to prepare for exams, how to, you know, hit all the mark schemes and everything. And now I don't know, what if that's me, what do I do? How do I develop these entrepreneurial skills that you talk about? Ilana: Yeah. So one thing I think is really important is to view scholarship as a community sport. And I think in the humanities, particularly, this is challenging because a lot of humanities folks do very independent work. They do solo authored monographs. Whereas in the social sciences, at least in sociology, I can co-author a lot of things. And so if you are listening and you're like, oh, well I can't sort of collaborate with people in my actual scholarship, you can actually collaborate with people in things that aren't necessarily your writing. Ilana: So thinking of scholarship as a community sport means really thinking like ex maximally about who was in your network and trying to grow that network. So I'll give you an example. Like when I got to Stanford, I have an amazing advisor, and I was really grateful for all of his guidance and feedback along the way, but you know, there were things that he was really fantastic at and knew a lot about and could give me direction in a lot of things. But then there were things that he was more limited in. And so I never viewed him as sort of like the sole person who was helping me. And I developed a network of both mentors and collaborators who have been really pivotal. Ilana: And so one of those people, for example, was Professor Lee Schulman, who just recently passed away, but he had been at Stanford for a long time. He was an emeritus professor, but he came to campus on a regular basis and I happened to meet him, actually through synagogue, and I was really interested in his work and he was very invested in the doctoral students at Stanford who were interested in the intersection of education and Jewish studies because it was something he was personally interested in. Ilana: And he was like, you know, I'm happy to meet with you. And most people would be like, oh, that's so nice that he said that. I'm not actually gonna take him up on that. And I totally took him up on that. You're like, I'm, I was like, here. I'm like, and we started having coffee. He loved when people would come to his office and he had this espresso machine and he would make, you know, me a cute little coffee and we would sit and really like my dissertation idea and the data that I have all came out as a result of one of the meetings that I had. What happened was we were just chatting and he would tell me a lot of stories and he happened to mention that he was going to a meeting at a local foundation to talk about some research. And I said, wow, I'd love to be a fly on the wall at that meeting. And he was like, oh, lemme see what I can do. And two days later, you know, he emails me and he's like, I got you a seat at the table. Come Vikki: amazing. Ilana: And so I show up and it's this amazing room of scholars and some funders. And one of the people who I ended up meeting was this guy at Notre Dame, professor Chris Smith, who was talking about this data set called the National Study of Youth and Religion. Ilana: I had never heard about this data set and he mentioned, he was like, oh, he's like, we did this big study, we followed a nationally representative sample of teens in the United States for a 10 year period. And we have this over sample of Jews. And we hired, um, as sort of someone to do something with those data. Ilana: And nothing ca really came of it. So if anyone in the room knows of any doctoral students who need a good underutilized data set, they should reach out to me. And I was like, uh, hello me. And so right away I reach out to Chris and I was like, I really would love to have that data. And this, this fundamentally changed the entire trajectory of my PhD. Ilana: I then got access to those data. They were incredibly willing to share it. And I ended up doing a dissertation that I hadn't even sort of thought about, all because I put out a lot of ideas and sort of questions out into the world, and a lot of like, relationships out into the world. Ilana: And one of the things about being entrepreneurial is like, you never know what's gonna stick and what it's gonna yield. And I think one of my biggest pieces of advice for people is like, you can think of yourself as like, you're, you're in charge of making dinner tonight, right? Ilana: And so you might pull out a recipe and say like, here's X, Y, Z ingredients and I'm going to make this particular recipe. And some of us view our research in that way. I'm gonna follow x, y, Z steps and I'm gonna get to something. And I view it differently. I view research as a, a much more sort of uncertain enterprise. And so I'll say, oh, I need to make dinner tonight. Here's X, Y, Z ingredients in my pantry. Let's see what I can make out of this. And I actually don't know what the final product is gonna be. And I encourage people to sort of think of the work that they're doing as having this uncertainty and leaning into that uncertainty because there are sort of surprises that come along in that process that yield really, really, um, unexpected and often great things. Ilana: And if we plan too much and then there's failure or something goes awry, we kind of fall apart. But if you know that there's gonna be failure, like, and you know, there things are gonna fall apart, and then you can sort of work with the surprises that come along the way, you're probably gonna be more successful because you'll have less of a crisis when things do fall apart. Vikki: Yeah, and that was one of my the favorite parts of my book actually. So for the listeners, the book's kind of divided into four big chunks, isn't it? I think of different kind of qualities and one of the areas was navigating uncertainty. And it's something that I really see my clients struggle with a lot. Vikki: The kind of, I don't want to waste time doing things that don't work out. There's this real sort of false sense of efficiency that if you know what you need to read in advance, then you know how long it's going to take. You'll be able to work your way through that. If you know what you are writing, you'll only read the things you need to read in order to write that. And I really en enjoyed that section, how it sort of turned on its head, that actually uncertainty is what's gonna lead us to something interesting. Ilana: Right. Um, absolutely. And I think another thing listeners can ask themselves is, is to navigate this uncertainty, you need to really ask yourself, okay, who am I? What do I know and who do I know? And what I mean by that is like sometimes. We have, um, we can lean into sort of skills that we have and look to other people to help us with skills we don't have. So let me give you an example. When I ask myself, like, okay, well who am I? What do I know and who do I know? Let me focus on the, what do I know? So for example, I am a mixed methods researcher. I do both quantitative and qualitative analysis. I can work with big surveys, data sets, as well as with qualitative interviews. But I am not the best quantitative social scientist out there by far. I can certainly understand all this stuff. I can do a lot of the basics, but it's not it's not something that is my strongest suit. And so I collaborate with people for whom that is their strong suit. And as a result, I'm able to put out publications and put out ideas into the world that I couldn't have generated myself. And it would take me, I'm like pretty strategic in thinking about like, well, it would take me x amount of time to figure this out on my own and maybe that's a good use of my time right now. Ilana: Or maybe I collaborate with such and such person who really has a strength in that. And then together, right, we can put out something into the world that's faster and better than either one of us could do alone. Right. 'cause you also have to think about like, who do I know, who are the people who might have this area of expertise? Um, I'll give one other example of sort of how to think about that question of like, who am I? What do I know and who do I know? You might, have an idea that you wanna put out into the world. And I talk a lot in the book about the importance of putting our ideas out there early and often, and not waiting until like we're into it six years and then feel so good about it that we feel like we can share. And I know that is advice that some people disagree with because I think the earlier you put ideas out there, the more feedback you can get from people and it helps you clarify in your own mind what's interesting and what's not , but eventually, let's say you wanna share it, and let's say you're a doctoral student right now, and you're like, well, I'm not gonna get into, you know, the Guardian or the New York Times or whatever publication, right? Ilana: And that's totally legit. Like you probably won't, but maybe you could get into your local newspaper or maybe your graduate school can cover your research. So it's helpful to think about like, okay, well who do I know sort of within my domain, who might be interested in putting this research out? Ilana: Maybe they put it out on their blog or like early on when I was in grad school, I was talking with someone at the sort of Stanford communications office and I was telling them about my research and they were like, oh, that sounds so interesting. Like, we'd love to write something about it. And that was actually like the first piece of media coverage I ever got. Ilana: And you have to be willing to be a little bit wrong and to put yourself out there, like you have to know that if you put something out there, you have to be willing to have people critique it and engage with your ideas. And you have to be willing to say like, oh, actually I was a little bit wrong on that. Because no scholarship is perfect and sort of being, being willing to change your ideas is a very important part of this mindset. Vikki: Yeah, definitely. And I think one of the things we often talk about with my clients is what you make particular things that happen to you mean about you. And one of the things that I loved in the book was you talked about how if your intention is to look smart, then you are gonna delay putting stuff out there. You're gonna delay until you are absolutely sure, you are definitely right. But if your goal is to move an idea forward and find out interesting things, then if someone's got a reason your idea's bad, let's find it out now and move on and change it and tweak it and get it to something that's actually gonna work rather than this kind of trying to protect your sense of self, I guess your, the sense of your own ability, Ilana: right? You have to sort of figure out what is the, the moment at which you feel like your idea is solid enough and you have enough evidence to back up your idea that you can put it out there. Like, I certainly wouldn't suggest doing this, you know, in the very nascent stages. At the very nascent stages, you should be work shopping your idea within circles within your institution, who you really trust and with people you really trust. Ilana: But once you have enough out there, it may not be a perfect story. And only you can sort of figure out for yourself whether it's ready to go out in the world. But there's this children's book, I don't know if you guys have it in the uk. It's called Like, what do You Do With An Idea? It's the same author who wrote, what do you Do With a Problem? It's this great children's book where basically like this little kid, this is the one that's, what do you do with an idea? He has an idea and at first it's like really, really small, but it's like he feels this like emotion about it. Ilana: Like he's excited about it, but he's also a little nervous about it. He doesn't know if he should share his idea with other people because he doesn't wanna get critiqued or he doesn't want other people to say it's bad. And over time, this book, this idea kind of grows and he's nurturing it and he feeds it. Ilana: The book says, and he plays with it. And I love this sort of analogy, this idea of like feeding your idea and playing with your idea. Because eventually the character in that book puts is, that feels good enough about their, that they've nurtured their ideas so much that they're ready and confident enough to put it out in the world and know that they're gonna be willing to withstand the critique that it might, or the reactions that it might yield. Um, but yeah, you have to nurture your idea. You have to play with your idea. You have to sort of marinate on your idea. And, um, and I think with that then there's, this comes this moment which you're like, okay, I'm ready. I'm ready to put this out into the world in some maybe even very small way. Yeah. Vikki: And I'm not sure whether this episode will have come out by the time yours comes out. I think it will. I talked recently with Tony Stubblebine who is the CEO of Medium, and he was talking about academics writing for Medium , and that blogging site being an outlet for these sorts of things. So if you are interested in this, listeners, then make sure you check out that episode too. Ilana: And I would say that the process of writing is actually really important. Mm-hmm. Because even if you're like, well, no one's gonna read it, it's fine. It's okay if nobody reads it because you have gone through the exercise of actually articulating your ideas in a way that is accessible to a public audience. Ilana: And that is one of the key skills like. One of the things that I learned from Sam Wineburg, one of the first exercises he had us do in that public writing class, he said, write a letter to a family friend or a family member , who's not an expert in your field, but you know, has a sort of a, a college degree, right? Ilana: And explain your idea and your research to them. And it was remarkable how difficult this was for people to not use the academic jargon to sort of start from a place where everybody can understand what you're doing and so just the like actual simple act of explaining something can be incredibly clarifying in your own mind. Vikki: Yeah, absolutely. So going back a few years now, but when I was still an academic, there's a scheme in the UK run by the British Association, which is for academics to be media fellows. So you spend a month or six weeks working with a media organization as a science journalist. Mm-hmm. So you full on leave behind your university. Vikki: I went to Dublin in Ireland, to work for the Irish Times for a month as a, as a science journalist, writing on everything. So a few bits to do with my topic, but mostly everything else I was writing ridiculous amounts. And that that skill of being able to take something complex that until you spoke to that scientist you didn't even know anything about, and now you've gotta turn it into something that's digestible and interesting for readers of a newspaper is fascinating. I was taking so many notes when I read this book, the one one bit that was in the disseminating your ideas section that was just so fascinating. Vikki: You are gonna be able to correct me on pronunciation again. But David Labaree, I believe was his name. Uhhuh. Yeah. He was talking about how, now I'm actually gonna quote this 'cause I loved it so much. One way to keep your neurotic self-doubt under control is to bear in mind an important guiding principle for good writing. You are under no obligation to provide a perfectly uncontestable story. And then I believe he went on to say, the confidence to write isn't the same thing as the confidence that your analysis is completely rock solid. And I just. I thought that was so freeing. 'cause so many of the people that I work with are desperately trying to make sure that everything they write is completely unrefutable so that their supervisors don't criticize them, so their examiners don't criticize 'em, so that the academic world at large don't, and I thought that notion that it needs to be defensible, but doesn't have to be irrefutable, I thought was just so freeing. Ilana: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, uh, David Labaree is one of my mentors and certainly my own mentality is very much shaped by his attitude. And, look, there's so much self doubt, and it's really hard to take that advice, I encourage people to find really small ways of being able to do that. And when I say like, you never know what, what you put out and what it's gonna yield in the world, like, here's another example of something that was totally unexpected that happened to me. Ilana: I had been running a multi-year study at Stanford about, um, looking at students who identify as racial, ethnic, and religious, uh, minority students. And at some point I felt like I had enough data. We weren't finished with data collection, but I felt like I had enough data to make an argument, about the way in which an elite university, might be contributing to religious polarization in this country. Ilana: And I wrote this op-ed and I, it's, I think it's an inside higher ed. I think it's called, like how universities contribute to religious polarization or something like that. And I put it out there, it got published, and then I ended up being asked to be a speaker for the Heterodox Academy. Ilana: And then a foundation contacted me and asked me to review a bunch of like, grants. Like all sorts of stuff ended up coming out of this and the thing about thinking entrepreneurially is like, you, you just don't know what something is gonna yield. And I think that there's an excitement to that, that I hope people can embrace. Vikki: Yeah, definitely. Now I have a, the flip side of that to ask though, because there will be some people listening for whom this all sounds exciting and interesting, but a little bit terrifying. A little bit like they, we've talked about them a little bit, but I also know partly 'cause I was one, but partly because I've supervised them, partly because I work with some now, there are the students who want to do everything and so this is like music their ears, right? Vikki: They wanna write for this and write for that and be involved in all the, you know, have the side hustles that you talk about in one of the sections, have all of that stuff. How do you strike the balance between what is the kind of, I'm gonna say right amount, obviously there's no, yeah. What is an appropriate amount of throwing stuff out there versus taking on too much? Vikki: 'cause I've certainly had students in the past where they were doing so many other things, I was a little bit in the background kind of going, um, you you have got a thesis. Yeah, we a thesis there. We should do that too. So how do you help people to kind of find, if they're at the kind of, I don't wanna say too entrepreneurial, but if they're at that end of things, how do you help people find that balance? Ilana: That's a really great question, and you're right, a very valid point that sometimes it's easy to go off in so many directions. And I remember when I was writing op-ed, some of my, um, friends were like, oh my God, you've spent like 20 hours on this. Is this really good use of your time? And at first I was like, yes, this is a good use of my time. Ilana: And I think I got to a point, I don't remember how many hours I had sort of poured into it, but I could tell in my mind that like it needed a break. So you do have to be really strategic about how you use your time and it's hard to give very specific guidance on it, but you have to be able to calibrate like when the stuff that you're doing is actually advancing your networks and advancing your scholarship and advancing sort of your teaching. Like is it advancing your work or are you stuck and sort of spinning your wheels? And maybe it just needs a pause, and maybe you come back to it. Like, I think a thing to know is, you can always come back to something. Ilana: Um, but like, I'll give you an example. Okay. I, of how I, I thought about sort of how do I strategically go about things when I was a doctoral student so that I wasn't spreading myself too thin, but I also was gaining different kinds of experience. So, , at one point I was probably in like my fourth or fifth year, uh, and I realized that I didn't really have any teaching experience because it, the way my doctoral program was structured was that we got funding, but it was to do a research assistantship, not a teaching assistantship. And I was like trying to get ready to go on the job market and I had no teaching background, which was ironic 'cause I went to a school of education and I learned by going to some workshop that like you have to be an instructor of record for it to be taken seriously, especially at more teaching focused and liberal arts universities. Ilana: And I was like, okay, got it. How do I make that happen? The first thing I did was like, I became a TA but that didn't feel satisfactory to me 'cause I wasn't their instructor of record. So then I was kind of like talking with people about this and I didn't really know what to do about it. Ilana: And then one day I got an email from a classmate of mine who had gone to church and struck up a conversation with a department chair at a local community college in a sociology department. And he was, he asked her, he was like, do you know anybody who could teach a sociology class? And she was like, oh, say that. Ilana: And she thought me. And so she emails me, she's like, do you have any interest in teaching a sociology class at the community college down the street? And I was like, oh my gosh, this could be a way to get that teaching experience that I want. But I also, first of all, when I told a couple of faculty members that I was thinking about this, they were like that's a terrible idea. Whatever you do, do not do that because it will take you away from the actual research that you are supposed to be doing. And so I sat with that information and then I also knew it was gonna be a lot of time. And so ultimately what I decided to do was like I was gonna teach this class despite what my, some of my advisors were saying, and the reason I wanted to do it was not just like so I could have this teaching experience, but because I wanted to be able to actually practice saying out loud the concepts of sociology that I was writing about and learning about because I knew it would help cement them and sort of clarify them in my own head. Ilana: And also I was, training as a sociologist of education and the kinds of students who actually go to this community college are precisely the kinds of students who I write about, right? They're first gen, low income students who are often like parents and working multiple jobs. And I was like, if I really wanna write about this population, I should actually interact with them because most of them are not hanging out on the Stanford campus. Ilana: But the way in which I thought about doing it strategically was like. I found a colleague who wanted to also get the same kind of experience and we basically came up with the idea that we were gonna pitch to the community college and we were gonna split the class. Meaning that I would teach half of it and she would teach half of it and we would split the pay. Ilana: But that way we both became the professors of record and we only had half of the work. And so, and in that way, and also a lot of that teaching that I did was at night. Um, and so at night I wasn't gonna be working on my research anyway 'cause I had kids and that like wasn't how I was gonna spend my nights. Ilana: And so luckily my, you know, my husband was willing to take on the extra childcare, um, for me to be able to do this. And it was a great decision. I learned a ton in the process. One of them became my letter writers for when I went on the job market, which was really helpful. And so there was this strategic thinking about like, mm-hmm, okay, you have to think about the cost benefit analysis, right? Like, how much am I time am I putting into this? What am, what is, what is it detracting from? What could I get out of it? How might I be able to think creatively about how to minimize the work, or make the work strategic? And that's the kind of thinking I would encourage for your listeners as well. Vikki: Yeah, I love that. And I love how if you are clear about why you're doing something and what you're trying to get out of it, you can then make those decisions in that strategic way. Because like I could imagine students who, if their supervisors say, no, you shouldn't do this, going, okay, you are right. I'll stick to researching. But I can equally imagine people who say, well, I want to, so I'm going to, but then do it, do the whole thing, do it as fast as possible because I mustn't spend too much time on this. Do it in a kind of stressed way because my supervisor doesn't think I should be doing this really. Vikki: So I just need to get it done and dah, dah, dah, and then not get out of it any of the things that you talk about, like the, the benefits of doing these things. So I loved the way you were really clear on you partly wanted it so that you had that thing on your cv. I'm instructor of record, but also so that you were developing those skills as well, but also recognizing you didn't need the whole thing in order to do either of those things. Vikki: So I think being really clear on why you are doing it and what your, what skills, not what outcomes necessarily. 'cause we don't always know the outcomes, but what skills you're trying to get out of it can really help you to plan that strategically. Ilana: Right, absolutely. And um, first of all, also I got paid to do that, which was also very helpful for me at the time , but it is true, and I've seen this happen a lot, where people spread themselves too thin and then they don't get their, their actual research done. So my biggest piece of advice, is like the motivation to write comes from feeling like you have something important to say. And if you don't feel like you have something important to say, you're never gonna get that research finished ever. Ilana: It doesn't matter how many p Pomodoro writers, uh, timers you set and how early you wake up, like there's a lot of the technical skills that you really need in place, but you also fundamentally, and this is like an existential problem, you need to think that what you have to say is important. And so when you're thinking about like, well, how do I sort of do all these things while also maintaining my research? Ilana: Like, you need to think that your research is really important and all those other things are helping you, but you gotta stay focused on the research as well. Um, but I, there's also a point at which, like, if you spend several hours on your research a day, there's a point at which there's diminishing point of returns and it's better for you to do something else. Ilana: So like I remember, one of the best things I ever did was like, there was a happy hour happening when I was a grad student and I wasn't gonna go because I was like, I should sit in my office and fi, you know, it was five o'clock. I was like, I should sit and try to like bang out another hour of data analysis. Ilana: And then I was like, you know what? There's free food upstairs. I should just go. And, you know what happened at that meeting? I ended up meeting another faculty member who I had never met. There was no strategic intention there at all. It just was like happening. I happened to tell her about my research and I said I was on the job market and that I was having a hard time. It was like a very friendly conversation. And then about six months later, I, it was graduation and I didn't have a job. Like I had no job lined up when I was graduating. I had cobbled together because I'm a pretty entrepreneurial, a consulting gig and some other, and I finagled away to like, stay on Stanford's campus enrolled as a student, but I did not have like a postdoc or a faculty position. Ilana: And, after I, you know, did my walk across the stage and then it was like the, the CE celebration, she comes up to me, her name was Denise Pope, and she said, Hey, Ilana, she's like. Do I recall that you're still looking for a job? And I was like, yes. And she's like, oh. She's like, I think I just found you a postdoc on campus. Ilana: And I was like, you're kidding. And lo and behold, um, the Stanford Center on Longevity was looking for a postdoc of somebody who studied education and did work across the life course. And three days later, Vikki, I had a very amazing postdoc that basically like fell into my lap because I took that time to go to this happy hour to talk to other people. Ilana: And like in retrospect, thank God I didn't spend that extra hour doing my data analysis. So there are times when, and it's, again, it's hard to predict which things will have payoff and which ones won't. But you just like have to put yourself and your ideas and everything out into the world and see what happens. Vikki: I love that and what an amazing place to finish. I would say thank you so much for coming on, Ilana. I really appreciate it. I'm so inspired. I've got all my notes. There are various things that I want to look up to read that you reference and things in the book that, so I've got so much outta this book, so if people are interested, as I'm sure they will be, remind people of the name of the book, where they can find it, where they can find out more about you. Ilana: Absolutely. So the name of the book is The Entrepreneurial Scholar, and the subtitle is A New Mindset for Success in Academia and Beyond. It's intentional that this book is not just about people who are trying to stay in academia, but are recognizing the reality that most people, given the job market right now, aren't gonna stay in academia and it's published by Princeton University Press in their Skills for Scholars series. And this is a really great series. If your listeners don't know about it, this is a series of books that are really related to kind of like professional development. And they're very short. They're like 40 to 50,000 words. Ilana: You could read them in a couple of hours. And there's great books about creating a syllabus and writing a book proposal and leaving academia and sort of the hidden curriculum of graduate school. So I really encourage people to look at all those books in that series. Skills for Scholars. And if you wanna learn more about me, you can go to my website. Ilana: It's www.Ilanahorowitz.com. My last name has just one "O", so it's Ilana I-L-A-N-A-H-O-R-W-I-T z.com. Or you can just Google Ilana Horowitz Tulane. And I will share a coupon code with you for this book, um, so that your listeners can get, I think it's 30% off and feel free to reach out to me anytime. I love to hear from listeners. Vikki: Amazing. Thank you so much. And listeners, keep a ear out 'cause it is possible I might be interviewing some of the other authors from this series as well. I'm super excited. It's an amazing series. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. Thank you everyone for listening, and I will see you next week.

< If you are bored of being told “just do your best” and not knowing what that means, then this is the episode for you. We are gonna talk today about why you shouldn't be trying to do your best all the time, what the problems are if you do try and do your best all the time, and most importantly, what you should do instead. Links I refer to in this episode Why perfect plans fail Client Q&A – getting it done when you don’t feel like it Transcript If you have been told, don't worry. Just do your best. It'll be okay as long as you do your best and you feel like you have been absolutely trying to do your best, and it is absolutely not feeling like it's okay. Then you are in absolutely the right place. We are gonna talk today about why you shouldn't be trying to do your best all the time, what the problems are if you do try and do your best all the time, and most importantly, what you should do instead. Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. I'm Dr. Vikki Wright, your coach here for any PhD students or academics who want this all to feel a little bit easier and a little bit more fun. There's a real virtuousness around doing your best. You know, ever since we were kids, don't worry how you get on in the test. Just do your best. What does that mean? I don't know what that means, but if you did your best, then people will be kind to you. You can be kind to yourself, except somehow it just doesn't work like that, right? We end up with these weird definitions of what doing your best even means and means we get praised for getting high marks when we didn't try that hard or we get praised for working really hard and burning ourselves out in a way that's not particularly helpful. And I want us to question this. I want us to ban the phrase, just do your best. There's no, just about it. Just implies it's easy. Whereas our best should be like challenging. And if we don't know what it means, then it's a pointless thing to say. Delete it. Delete it from your brain. And today I'm gonna explain exactly why that is and what we're gonna think instead. The first thing, and probably the most important is it's completely undefinable. ,What do we even mean by doing your best? Is it do the best work you could ever do, given unlimited resources, unlimited time, all the support in the world? Is that best? How are we gonna be doing that all the time? Is it best within the constraints of this specific context? How do we know what that is? How are we even choosing what we mean by our best? What does our best mean if we're unwell? Are we using the same definition of best as we were when we were well? Or are we gonna define a new version of best? What if we're doing a new task that we haven't done before? What does our best look like? The first problem with doing our best as a goal, as a kind of reassurance is it's a completely moving target, and therefore we never know if we've done it, and we never know what we're aiming for. That leads to the second problem. The second problem is that if we never know what our best was, if we don't have a clear definition of that, then afterwards if we didn't get the result we wanted, let's say, you know, we submitted to a journal and it got paper got rejected, or something like that. How do I know we did our best? It leaves so much space to come back afterwards and be like, oh, maybe I didn't do my best. Maybe I should have pushed a bit harder. Maybe I should have started earlier. Maybe I should have spoken more to people. Maybe I could have done a bestier version of best because it's so vague, it's so ill-defined, we don't know if we've done it, and therefore it's impossible to reassure ourselves from that perspective. It reminds me a little bit of doing VO two max test. So if you're not a sports scientist like me, you might not know what that is, but they're these maximal tests where you get put on a bike or a treadmill or something and it gets incrementally harder and harder and you have to keep up with it until you physically can't anymore and they're measuring your oxygen uptake and all this kind of stuff. We do these in sports science degrees, they do them to test athletes and stuff. So we used to have to participate in them in the lab, and they always say, you just gotta go for as long as you can go. And afterwards, the awful thing with a VOT max test is it feels horrific. You feel like you're gonna vomit while you're doing it, and then within two minutes of recovering, you get your breath back, and you're like, oh, I reckon I could have done another 30 seconds every single time, even though you thought you were doing your best. When you come out of it, the other side, you're like, yeah, maybe I could have pushed a little harder. Maybe I could have just stretched out a little more at the end there. And the same is true with your task. If we don't have a clear definition of what our best even means, then afterwards we can still always beat ourselves up for not having done enough of our best. The third downside that I wanna raise with you is that always believing you need to do your best makes it really hard to experiment with things that you don't know. Okay? I'm gonna give you another sporting analogy. I used to do gymnastics, and I remember one girl, a lovely girl that I used to train with when I was at university. She would only do moves that she could do. Always, and she was already doing them beautifully. So it wasn't even like she was perfecting them. But she would only do moves that she could do. And it was because she felt stupid if she didn't moves that she couldn't do. And it's like fair play. You're an adult doing gymnastics. You can do whatever you wanna do. Right? But she didn't make anywhere near as much progress as everybody else because she wanted to be able to do her best in a move. And that for her meant doing the moves she's best at. Whereas I'm over there crashing out of everything, right, and learning all these new things, and none of them were as beautiful as hers, but I was throwing myself in enthusiastically and trying different things out because I wasn't worried about doing my best. I was there to learn to do cool stuff. When we tell ourselves we have to do our best, we avoid things that make us feel like we're not at our best while doing them. We don't take risks about how to do something in case it turns out that that wasn't the best way to do it. Always wanting to do your best is an incredibly conservative way of expressing yourself. It sounds dead ambitious, right? It sounds like, oh, I'm doing my best. I'm so good. But it often keeps you within your comfort zone so that you can always be comfortable that you are doing your best. And I, ironically, that means often we are not stretching ourselves into things that we can't yet do, but that we can learn. The fourth one is even worse. The fourth one is that trying to do our best can send us into paralyzing perfectionism where we don't do anything at all. All of us have had that issue where we've got a paper to write or a presentation to give, and we simply can't start it because we're so convinced it has to be really good. I will feel better tomorrow. I'll start when I've done more reading. I'll start when I know exactly what I'm doing. I'll start when I'm clear on my story. Telling yourself you have to your best on everything can take you to a place where you literally can't even start at all. The fifth one is that weirdly, sometimes telling yourself to do your best can actually lead to mediocrity, because if you've got quite a fixed idea of what you are capable of and what your best looks like, then sometimes you won't push yourself past that because your goal is just to do your best and you think that this is your best. There are times when actually setting yourself a more specific goal. There's a bunch of research done about this in like factories and productivity and all that kind of jazz that if you give people a specific goal to aim for, they end up doing better than if you just tell them to do their best. So we kind of have different extremes here, right? That sometimes telling yourself to do your best, if you are a very perfectionist person, you're a very ambitious person, you have high expectations, can lead to burnout and paralyzing perfectionism. And other times telling yourself to do your best, if you're somebody that's doesn't necessarily think that you're brilliant at things, sometimes telling yourself to just do your best. Actually keeps you trapped at a level that you could exceed with a little bit of support and a more ambitious target. Number six is it's completely implausible to do your best all the time. Even top athletes. Think of the sports people that you admire the most. They are not at their best all the time. They train to peak at competitions. They do not expect to be running world record times or to be at the absolute top of their game all the time. They have off seasons. They have on seasons. Within their on seasons, there are some things they're doing to the best of their ability, and there are other things that they're not doing at all. It is completely implausible to expect yourself to be at your best all day, every day for your entire PhD and academic career. It's just not realistic. No one. Does it So you are holding yourself to something that is just completely unachievable. Even if you set yourself, this is gonna be the best year ever, which I also think it's slightly problematic if we don't define it better. But let's say you do best year ever, it still doesn't mean you have to be at your best every single day. Best is not meant to be a steady state. Best is meant to be something that happens intermittently when you need it. Quick interjection. If you are finding today's session useful, but you are driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me. After you've finished go's, my website, pH life coach.com, 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's 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 faces 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. My seventh reason is maybe controversial, but I stand by it and I think you should too, which is that not all tasks deserve your best. Okay. If you are somebody who is like eager to please, always worried that you're not quite good enough, that people are gonna realize you don't deserve to be there and all that kind of jazz. You might be trying to do your best at every single task you have. You might be trying to do your best research and doing your best writing, and being the best teacher, and being the best administrator, and being the most helpful colleague and being all these other things. And probably in your private life, you're also trying to be the best partner and the best parent and the best friend and the fittest person and the whatever else, right? Some tasks do not require you to be at your best. It is gonna be great for your health if sometimes you exercise when you are not going to be at your best, but you have a little walk anyway. There are other things that simply don't deserve your best. There are no prizes for fixing the fonts in a form that somebody has sent you. They don't deserve your best. They deserve to be filled in and returned. One thing that my members keep asking me for merchandise, they want t-shirts, they want stickers, they want all sorts of things. And one thing that I think we should get on a t-shirt is fit for purpose. You do not have to do your best at everything. You just have to do it in a way that is fit for purpose. Your PhD needs to be fit for purpose. Its purpose is to get you through the Viva and get you a qualification. It needs to be fit for purpose. If you can do other things too, where you get some publications, happy days, but it needs to be fit for purpose. Completing some pointless form about some course you went on or whatever needs to be fit for purpose, needs to be completed, needs to be handed in. That's all. It doesn't need to be beautiful. Doesn't need to be extensive. Certainly doesn't need the formatting. Fixed needs to be fit for purpose. Need to give a presentation needs to be fit for purpose. Not all tasks deserve your best. Not all tasks need your best. We get to save our best for the stuff that really matters. The eighth one is similar to that, but not all elements of any task deserve your best. So let's take that presentation example. It needs to be fit for purpose. So you need to decide, why am I doing this presentation? What's the point of it? Remember, there's different points, right? Sometimes presentation might be about sharing preliminary data to get feedback from people. Sometimes a presentation might be about sharing your final results with end users who might use it. Sometimes the presentation might be to get a job, okay? You need different things depending on what the purpose is. It needs to be fit for purpose, and within that different elements of it need your best, more or less. So if you are sharing preliminary results in order to get initial feedback, does it need to be your best analysis ever? No. It needs to be sufficient analysis to enable people to comment on it. Does it need to be the most beautiful slides ever? No. In fact, it's probably better if it's not the most beautiful slides ever. 'cause that's not the purpose of what you're doing. You are pulling together something that you can clearly share data with others so that they can comment on it. It doesn't need color coding, it doesn't need Google images, it doesn't need animations. It needs to be fit for purpose. You know, we, going back to forms. If you've got like progress review forms to fill in or something, some elements of that deserve whatever best efforts might mean, but deserve effort, right? Actually sharing what you've been doing, making a good case for why you've made sufficient progress. Great. Let's put our efforts into that. Does it matter if this is the most elegant language ever? Does it matter if you repeat the same word three times in a paragraph? Does it matter if the bullet points are all the same? No. Those things don't matter. So even within tasks where the overall task matters, some of the details don't matter. They don't deserve your best. Number nine is we have to remember that some bests are mutually exclusive. Let's take the example if you're interdisciplinary . I was right at the intersection between psychology, neuroendocrinology, and immunology, right? And so I knew stuff across all of those disciplines. Was I giving my best to psychology the way if I was a psychologist, oh, was I giving my best to immunology the way if I was an immunologist? No, the things were mutually exclusive. There was only so much time I had, so much effort I had and expecting to be able to give my best to all of these elements was just not realistic. If you've got responsibilities at home, then some fixed definition of what doing your best as a researcher means may be in contradiction to what your best as being a parent is. Expecting yourself to do your best in all domains of your life, in all tasks within a domain is completely unrealistic because sometimes these things are in direct contradiction to each other. You can't do your best at being the most focused academic there ever is and be the most available academic there ever was. The 10th reason is it's not even necessary to do your best at every element of it. To have an academic career, to succeed in an academic career. I've never met anybody who can do their best in all elements of their career. And most of the time, and I've talked about this on the podcast before, most of the time, your seniors, the people that wanna promote you, the people that wanna support you, will be encouraging you to focus a little more. If you are someone who tries to do your best across the board and burns yourself out because of it, you'll almost always receive the advice to focus more, to accept which things you're doing less well so that you can excel in some of them. And I found that really hard. I really wanted to be a balanced academic, as I called it, and I think you can do that to some extent, but it doesn't look like doing your best at absolutely everything. So what does it look like? What does it look like to be somebody who wants to succeed, who wants to show up as a version of themselves that they like, but who accepts that maybe this narrative of do your best, do your best is not helpful. Well. The most important element for me is to define what we actually mean by doing our best? What are the constraints we've got around that at the moment, and how much is this particular task worth? If we can get super specific about what doing our best looks like, it's a lot easier goal to actually aim for and hit, and it's much easier to know afterwards that you actually did do what you had defined as your best. So one way that I like to think about this is doing my best is putting in the amount of effort that this task is worth within the constraints of my other priorities. Okay, I'm gonna say that again. It's putting in the amount of effort that I think this task is worth within the constraints of my other priorities. That is very different than expecting a hundred percent from yourself across the board. If I don't think the task's important, then the amount of effort I'm gonna put into it is gonna be less, and I'm not gonna tell myself that I didn't do my best because my best was the amount of effort that task is worth, and I gave it as much as it's worth. Within the constraints of other priorities, I will put in my best to my business, for example, but not at the expense of my sleep, not at the expense of time with my family, not at the expense of not exercising. So I get to decide and you get to decide what are the constraints and what's the amount of effort that this thing is worth. And interestingly, this can also really help you to progress tasks because actually if you are telling yourself I have to do my best, I have to do my best. It's really easy to procrastinate 'cause if you feel like you're not on perfect form right now and you are not gonna do your best, then it's easy to convince yourself that what you should do is come back later. Right? When I can do this at my best. 'cause it's really important I do my best. Whereas if you have defined doing my best at this project as I'm gonna do 10 hours work on this over the next two weeks, and it's gonna have to get done. That's how much time it's worth. That's how much time I'm willing to give it. Then suddenly that becomes much more focused and instead of, I just need to do my best on it, you need to figure out, no, what am I gonna spend these 10 hours doing? What is the best way to spend those 10 hours? How can I get it from here to there within those 10 hours? Not how long will it take, but how am I gonna progress it as far as I can within the time I'm willing to give it? Suddenly you approach it much differently. You don't need to be at your best now. You need to do the work that you said it needed in order to be done, that you said it deserved, that you said you were willing to give it, given your other priorities and constraints. And that, my friends, is how we do our best at life as a whole, rather than telling ourselves we have to be our best all the time. We give tasks the amount of effort that they're worth within the constraints that we have, so that overall things aggregate out as the best version of the life we can have within the constraints we have at the moment. We have done our best on average. We have done our best, given our circumstances, we have done our best within the context of what we are willing to give and what these tasks need and deserve. Lemme know what you think. What do you get caught up on when you tell yourself you've gotta do your best? Where does it maybe help you? Where does it not help you? Let me know what you think of today's episode. If you are not already on my newsletter, please do join. That's how you get to message me. Join the newsletter. You can reply to any of my messages, um, and tell me what you think. Tell me how you are gonna implement these ideas in your life. Thank you all for listening, and I will see you next week. Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like 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 the PhD life coach com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics time.