3.12 Why perfect plans fail: Embracing imperfection in academic planning
25 November 2024
Links I refer to in this episode
Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. I often notice patterns when I'm coaching when many of my clients are coming up with similar issues at the same time and what I'm seeing a lot in my membership at the moment is this feeling that they're really bad at planning. They're bad at planning because they don't always make a plan, they are worried that they're not very good at judging how long anything's going to take, so their plan kind of goes wrong, and then they don't follow their plan, and then they beat themselves up for not following their plan, and so they then avoid making plans for a while.
Or when they do, they end up making unrealistic plans and the cycle starts over again. And if that feels like you, don't worry, you're in exactly the right place. I was like this for a really, really long time. And when I tell people that things are different now, they usually think that that means that now I make perfectly realistic plans and implement them exactly as I intended. And anyone who knows me knows that's a really long way from the truth, okay? And what I want to say in this episode today is I don't think that's even the goal.
Some of the most important coaches in my life who have really brought me to where I am today do emphasize that that's how you do it, right? That you only put things in your diary when you're sure you'll do them, and then you absolutely robotically do everything in your diary, and that as long as you do that, you'll be fine. And whilst I've learned a lot from these people in other areas, this is one that never landed with me, because I'm like, well, I don't see that's ever going to happen for me. And that made me feel like I didn't really have any options for to feel better than they did.
What I've realized instead, and what I work with the clients in my membership on much more, is how we can accept imperfect implementation of our plans, how we can not only accept it, but expect it, plan for it, and not make a massive drama out of it when it happens.
And you might think that that will make you really bad at planning. But actually, in this episode, I want to really convince you that planning for and accepting imperfect implementation will make you a way better planner than expecting perfect implementation and getting upset when that doesn't happen.
Now, before I get into that, I do want to say I'm recording this in November. It will be coming out to you on the 25th of November 2024. If you're listening to this live, you have got one week, one week till Saturday night to get into the membership if you want in before the end of this calendar year. The membership is going to be open until midnight UK time. GMT, American listeners, please notice. Midnight GMT, November the 30th. The membership is going to close until the end of january. It will reopen again and then next year it's only going to open in the final week of each month.
I'm introducing some new sessions which will take place at the beginning of the month, welcoming new members, teaching you the self coaching model, getting you up to speed with how all the membership stuff works, and because of that you're only going to be able to get in at certain times of the month.
So if you've been umming and erring about whether the membership is right for you or not, now's the time to join if you don't want to have that whole fear of missing out thing. If you're not sure what the membership's about, you can check out on my website, thephdlifecoach. com. If you click on the membership at the top, it will tell you all about it, but essentially, it gives you access to three sessions a week of online group coaching. Some of those are open coaching sessions where you can bring any topics. Others are around specific topics that are really relevant for PhD students. You get access to two workshops a month, on all sorts of things. Like this afternoon when I'm recording this, I'm doing one on what to do when you've got too much to do. Next month we've got one on how to manage your time and energy. We've got one on imposter syndrome. All sorts of really important topics.
It's a lovely community. Everybody really looks after each other. Get the support you need from me and from the other people around you. So definitely make sure you check that out if you're not a member already. You also actually get access to some online courses, one of which, Be Your Own Best Boss, covers a load of stuff about planning. Gives you some really specific tools that allow you to practice some of the stuff that we're talking about today. So check it out for the end of November. Perfect.
Now back to the topic, imperfect implementation. Well, let's start with what's the problem with expecting yourself to implement things perfectly. Now, the first thing that's a problem with that is that if we expect perfect implementation, then it makes us much more likely to make unrealistic plans. Because we're looking at going, well, okay, as long as I do all the things I said I'd do at exactly the times I said I'd do them in exactly the amount of time I said I'd do them, then all of this fits.
So having this kind of belief that you're going to be able to implement them perfectly and that you should be able to implement perfectly can tempt you not to leave any wiggle room in your planning. And I see this all the time. And the reason people don't want to put wiggle room into their diaries is because they think it means they have to accept that they're not good enough, you know, they should be implementing perfectly. So why would they plan to be less than perfect? It also means you have to make some difficult decisions, right? Because if you've realized that not everything fits into the time you've got, then you have to choose what things you're not going to do, who you're going to have to disappoint, whether you're going to have to disappoint yourself, what you're going to miss out on, because you can't do everything.
And so instead of making those difficult decisions, instead of accepting that we're not going to implement this perfectly and we can't fit it all in, what we do instead is kind of avoid those decisions, jam it all in anyway, expect perfect implementation and then don't implement perfectly.
The reasons we don't implement perfectly are partly stupid plans that don't allow for breaks, that don't allow for transitions, that don't allow for unexpected things to come up, that don't allow for us just not being on top form that day. But I think it's also driven in large part by the fact that although we told ourselves we should be able to implement this perfectly, we also told ourselves it probably wasn't reasonable to implement this perfectly. So it's almost like there's two different voices in our heads. I have to plan it like this because I should be able to do it, and this is the only way it all fits. And a voice that says, yeah, but you're probably not going to stick to it, are you? Because this looks exhausting, and you never know how long things take anyway. And then we're almost starting it with an expectation that we're not going to do it like that anyway. So we don't go at it a hundred percent because we think, you know what, this probably was never going to work, which makes it really hard to go at a hundred percent. And then when we do miss something, then I don't know about you, but me and my clients then often end up really beating ourselves up about it. We failed again. This plan was pointless. This plan didn't get implemented. It was useless. I'm useless. We're never going to finish. And then we have end up avoiding the entire plan, avoiding our tasks and then until we get so frustrated that we start saying, we'll try again, we're just off plan. And I think this will sound really, really familiar to lots of you. And that's okay. This is really, really common.
One thing that doesn't happen when we assume we're going to implement something perfectly is any strategizing about how to make this plan robust to non perfect implementation. Now what do I mean by that? When I used to do my GCSE revision back in the days when I was at school. I would make super perfectionist plans and they would be really unrealistic about what I would fit but they'd also be super specific so in this hour I would cover this topic and this topic and in that hour I'd cover this topic and that topic.
And it meant that if I ever missed an hour, I had to reshuffle the rest of the plan. The plan didn't work anymore. Suddenly I was trying to jam in extra hours, or I was having to move things down, and then I was spending more time reorganizing my plan than actually doing the work. And I hadn't thought anything about what would happen if I didn't do these things in those hours. Whereas if we know we're going to implement something imperfectly, then we're much more likely to say, I'm going to try my best to implement this as close to what I planned as possible, but on the basis it's probably not going to be bang on, how can I make this more robust to imperfect implementation?
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And that might be things like making sure you have a system for knowing what you have done and what you haven't done. Maybe it's things like prioritizing more clearly so that you know which things you would drop if you are then running out of time. It might be using a more role based approach rather than a task based approach.
And if you want to know more about that, I talk about it in my episode about role based time blocking. But essentially, instead of blocking in, in this time I am going to do this specific task. You instead say, I'll be in operations mode and you then look at the operations part of your to do list and choose the thing that's most urgent, or you'll be in writing mode and you'll then decide which bit of writing is most urgent or the highest priority and you do that rather than specifying the exact thing that you will write weeks in advance. I usually recommend picking maybe the day before or that morning so that you're not having to decide in the moment, but not deciding so far in advance that if you then miss a session, it messes everything up.
Everyone's built a Gantt chart, right? That you then get off track with, and then instead of adapting it, you just delete it or shove it in a drawer somewhere and never look at it. Again, that's what happens when we make plans that only work if we turn up as perfect humans, which we never do because we're humans.
So, what do we do instead? How do we make plans if we accept that we're going to implement them imperfectly? Well, the first thing we do is we think about the quantity of work that we're trying to do and we ask ourselves, does it still fit if I implement this imperfectly. If I only did 80 percent of the time that I said I was going to do, would this still work?
And if the answer's no, then we get to make some decisions about which bits of it we are going to do, which bits of it we need to do first, which bits are the highest priority, so that if it does slip, we know exactly what we need to change. And it makes it much more likely that we're going to start with a realistic plan in the first place.
What we're also going to do when we plan that we're going to be imperfect, or that we're likely to be imperfect, we also start to let go of the idea that anything less than perfect implementation is a fail. Plan is useful if it inspires action, not just if we follow it perfectly. If you make a plan and it gets you going on something that you really want to do, it was an effective plan, even if you didn't carry out every single thing that you intended to do within the time that you had available to you. Planning is at best guesswork. Even when we're really good at it, we're never quite sure exactly how long things will take. Obviously, we can adjust the quality to fit in the time we get it, but even within that, we don't always know or decide in a way that we're happy with.
So, sometimes, we do underestimate how long things take. I still do, even though I try to get it done in the time I said. Sometimes, that's just not possible. To be honest, I planned to record this this morning. I didn't record it this morning because it took me longer than anticipated to edit the last podcast that I was doing. You know, we all get it wrong sometimes. It doesn't have to mean that there was a fundamental flaw.
The joy is that by making a plan, It means that you've sat down and thought about what your intentions are for the week. What are the things that are most important to you this week? What's top of the agenda? What's got deadlines coming up? And even if you don't follow that through to perfection, you're still aware of those things in a way that you wouldn't have been if you hadn't made the plan.
So, I very rarely stick to my week plan perfectly, but if I don't stick to the plan but I have planned, then I'm at least aware of what things were important that I haven't done, and I'm aware of what I was doing that wasn't what I'd planned. And that gives me a whole bunch of information that you simply don't get if you don't plan.
My weeks that get away from me are the ones where I decide that I'm too busy to make a plan, I've just got to get on and do some of the things, and then I usually end up three quarters of the way through the week going, I don't even know what I've done this week and where I'm at. When we plan, we identify that framework and then how we deviate from the framework can be really, really informative.
It might start telling you that you're not allowing enough time for routine tasks, for example. It might tell you that there are things you're avoiding. If you notice that there are tasks you keep putting on your list each week and then not doing, we get to look at those and go, I wonder I wonder why I'm not doing that? It gives you a load of information that if you just do what comes top of mind all the time without planning, you never ever get to find out.
Making a plan and knowing that we'll stick to it imperfectly also helps us appreciate the things we do do. So I want you to think of the last time you made a plan and then didn't stick to it, especially if it was a time that you were beating yourself up a lot about that. What usually happens is as soon as we fall off that wagon, we now hate the plan. We now hate ourselves. And therefore we just go back to doing whatever comes into our inboxes, whatever people shout for loudest, right?
When in reality, if we have a plan and we know we're going to fall off it occasionally, we're not going to do it perfectly, as soon as we realize we have, we can nudge ourselves back to doing the plan, without judgment, without making a massive drama about the fact that we missed some stuff, and then we can recognize how much of the plan we did do.
Because if you sometimes fall off it, don't do exactly what you thought you were going to, but then you nudge yourself back onto it. By the end of the week, you might find you followed 40 percent of your plan or 60 percent of your plan. Now, if you hadn't got a plan, or if you'd got a plan that was only acceptable if you do all of it, you would never have recognized all that stuff that you got done.
Whereas if you can look at it and be like, look at me. I got 60 percent of my plan done this week, that's awesome. Check me out. Okay, we need to look at the bits I didn't do, why I didn't do them, how I can make them easier, all that stuff. We're going to strategize for that. But part of strategizing for that, for anything, is recognizing what we are already doing well.
And having a plan, knowing you're going to implement it imperfectly, and then recognizing the extent to which you implemented it, can really help recognize what you did do, as well as notice what you didn't do.
Now, none of this means that we're going to just let ourselves off the hook, make unrealistic plans, know we're not going to stick to them anyway, dick about, and then moan about it later. That's not what we're doing. Our goal. is to still stick to a plan. Our goal is to still design a plan that makes it as likely as possible that we can do it.
A plan that feels like it might be fun to try and do, that's kind of challenging but achievable. A plan that's designed to kind of structure our day in a way that feels nice and feels like we'd want to live it. And then during the week we want to look at that plan in a kind of slightly eager teacher's pet sort of way and be like, oh, I wonder if I can do this bit.
Oh, I think I can do that bit too. Oh, I missed a bit this afternoon but I reckon I could catch up and do this bit this afternoon and then I'd have done most of it. We want to channel that kind of eagerness to do our best to hit the plan by making it much less important if any of that goes wrong. Okay, so this isn't about just going, oh, I'm a little bit tired today.
I don't think I'll do it. It's about going, okay, I'm a bit tired today. Might not do all of this, but I said I was going to spend an hour and a half working on this piece of writing. How about we do 45 minutes and see how we go. And then at least I've stuck to 50 percent of my plan. If after that I'm feeling really rough and I'm not getting anywhere, we'll call it quits. But you know what? Better than nothing.
Rather than if we have this kind of black and white, yes or no, did or didn't approach to whether we completed our task or not, as soon as we know we're not doing 90 minutes that we'd planned, might as well not do it, right. Might as well just not bother. So by cultivating your kind of, eager to please, trying to do the bits that you set yourself, then we sort of scurry to catch all the bits we could do and just accept the bits we didn't get done, and we learned from those.
I think this episode actually even fits really nicely with last week, so if you haven't listened to last week's, do go back and listen to that after this. I was talking about using voice notes to capture ideas, because one of the things that my members have been talking about that derails their plans is when they suddenly think of or remember something else that they needed to do other than the thing they'd planned.
So they'd put aside 90 minutes for writing perhaps, and then they remembered that they needed to look something up, they remembered they needed to do something for their supervisor, and they're so worried that that thing's more urgent or that they'll forget that thing. The, they sort of go, Oh, I'll just do that now.
Now, sometimes that's true. Sometimes they're worried they're going to forget it. Sometimes we have to concede it's because that other thing is a lot easier than this difficult cognitive task that you're meant to be doing right now. But I think if you use this in combination with that voice notes episode from last week, that can really help.
So that if you're, you know, you're in your 90 minutes, you're working away. Do, do, do, I'm doing my writing. You think of something. You can grab your voice notes. Whatever system you're using and just say, need to remember to talk to my supervisor later, record it into, your voice notes, jot it down in the notebook, if that's the approach that you prefer, but do it more as a kind of memo, knowing that you're going to go back to that tomorrow.
You know, if you look at the system I talked about last week, knowing you are going to look at that tomorrow is much easier to kind of, okay, I'll dump it over here, back to this thing I planned. So that's another kind of approach when we know we're going to get distracted, we plan for us being imperfect, we then start to put structures in place.
It's like, it's okay, my brain is going to come up with some random stuff that either I'd rather do, or that feels more important, or that I'm worried I'll forget, that's okay, I can plan for that. I can have a system for that because I know it's going to happen because I'm not perfect. I'm planning for imperfect implementation.
I would love to hear from you what you think about this episode. How could it change things for you to plan for someone that you know is going to be imperfect? It kind of refers back to this whole notion of being your own best boss, right? If as a boss you give your employees a plan that only works if they're perfect, it's not a very good plan.
It's not a very motivating plan. Whereas when we remember, when we're being good bosses to ourselves, we're planning for the real and authentic version of ourselves. Not the version of ourselves that turns up at its very best, but the kind of normal day to day version of us. We're planning for that version.
We're making it as easy as possible for them. We're trying to make it as clear for them as possible. We're trying to make it so they want to try and implement this plan because it looks achievable and great fun. And like, it will take them all the places they want to go. Then we get to create this kind of motivating work environment, even when we're working on our own.
Let me know what you think. Let me know what things have helped you to implement imperfectly but better than you ever imagined. I have certainly found that since I've accepted that I am never going to implement this perfectly, I get way more done than I did when I was making unrealistic plans. I get more done. I feel better about it. And I make the difficult decisions about what I'm not going to do. And to be honest, I always feel really good about them. So let me know what you think. I really hope you found this useful. 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 liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach.com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time.
In the second of my April coaching series, we hear from Til and Alex who both experience pre-menstrual dysfunction that impacts their ability to work on their PhDs. We discuss how they’re affected (including how it exacerbates their ADHD) and coach around the tricky balance between achieving their goals and looking after their health. This is a must-listen for everyone, whether you have these symptoms yourself or you care about and/or work with someone who does. If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on doing a PhD with chronic illness. Transcript Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. And this is another in my little mini series of coaching sessions with current members of the PhD life coach membership. And this week we are talking about something that we've never taalked about on the podcast before, but which affects a good portion of the audience, and that is the range of premenstrual experiences that people can have and how it impacts their PhD lives and their productivity and motivation and emotions and all of those things. And we have just happened by chance also to have ended up with a couple of people coming on who have these challenges, but who also have A DHD so we will be thinking a bit about how those things interact with each other now. Vikki: As usual, you know that coaching is not about me giving advice about things, and this is one where I'm gonna put a big fact disclaimer out there that I am in no way an expert in this topic. I do experience premenstrual symptoms myself, although not to the same level that we're gonna be talking about today. So I have some lived experience. I'm not gonna be sitting here saying, oh, the best advice, the evidence-based whatever, is to do this. What we're gonna be doing instead is talking through how it affects these members and how they can make decisions based on their own lived experience as to how they want to manage these difficulties. Vikki: It's gonna give you a really good insight as usual into what it's like being in a coaching session in the membership. So we are going to talk with one, I'm gonna give them a second to introduce themselves in a second. We will talk with Alexandra first and then we will talk with Til afterwards and you'll get to hear how they learn from listening to the other person getting coached too. Vikki: So thank you both so much for coming on. Alexandra, do you wanna just introduce yourself first? Alex: Yes. Thank you for having me. So, my name is Alex. I am a second year PhD student from the uk. I am looking at the psychological and physiological effects of exercise in general, healthy, elderly and psychiatric elderly populations. Vikki: Perfect. And what stage of your PhD are you at? Remind me. Alex: So I am second year now. Vikki: Second year. So we are right in the midst. Perfect. Okay. And Til, Til: hi, I'm Til, I'm from Melbourne, Australia. I'm also in my second year, and I look at comedy and mental health. Vikki: Perfect. Okay. So what we're gonna do til we're gonna ask you to turn your camera off for a moment, and I am gonna speak with Alex first and then we will get you back on in a little while. So Alex, maybe let's start telling us just a little bit more about how this condition affects you and particularly in relation to your PhD work. Alex: Yes. So I have PMDD, so premenstrual dysphoric disorder and ADHD. And um, so I guess with the symptoms of PMDD, it's a severe response to normal hormonal fluctuation. So in the luteal phase of my cycle, so just after ovulation, so the late phase of my cycle, I experience extreme mood swings, low mood anxiety, panic attacks, extremely low motivation, insomnia, trouble concentrating, and severe ADHD symptoms and I guess sometimes it gets to the point where I really struggle to get out of bed. So that then kind of impacts my PhD because obviously, you know, when you had missed data collection and having to do like general PhD admin work. And also I'm a research assistant on another project. I still have to show up and turn up for those responsibilities. But it's really hard to do that when you can't even do normal daily tasks such as getting outta bed or even brushing your teeth. So it is a struggle for at least two weeks of the month, maybe sometimes more. Vikki: Yeah. And for anybody listening who's concerned, obviously Alex is well aware that today doesn't replace other psychiatric care and medical care and all of those things and everything who are dealing with the sort of the severity of some of these symptoms, we are gonna be focused really on what does this mean for you attempting to do your PhD and your work while experiencing these symptoms? So how do you do it at the moment? Til: Um, I honestly don't know. So I cannot attain treatment for PMDD due to other health issues. So that in itself is an issue. I've recently started titration on ADHD medication so I think I'm eight weeks in now, so that has slightly helped, although it doesn't help as much in the luteal phase. I guess at the minute I have a really supportive supervisor and she has told me to kind of take time off when I'm really struggling and to make the hours up, but that's been really hard to do at the minute due to, like, my cycle is really irregular at the minute for some unknown reason. Til: I dunno if I'm going into perimenopause. So it is a real struggle and I think at the detriment to my own kind of self-care, because sometimes it can be one extreme. Like I'll be trying to make up for the lack of work when I'm really struggling by working 15 hour days. And that in itself takes a toll on my mental health in other ways. Til: At the minute, I guess, i've just been setting checklists of like order of priority of the work that I need to do and just trying the best that I can. But it's a lot harder now in second year now that I'm trying to run two simultaneous data collections and a data analysis and my other part-time roles as well. So I'm kind of a bit clueless on how to make things better for myself to help like improve my overall wellbeing. Vikki: Yeah. And you mentioned making up time a bit there. Tell me a bit more what you mean by making up for it. Alex: So my supervisor suggested that instead of trying to push through when I'm struggling and my output not being as high and it being more detrimental to me, she suggested to take, you know, a few days off and then to work longer hours and we only had that discussion maybe a couple of months ago, so that's like two cycles ago. So I did try and implement that and I think the problem with ADHD is when you are very passionate about your subject, you are all or nothing. So I've had a few days off, felt very guilty about doing that even though my supervisor said it was fine. So then I've tried to compensate by working 15 hours a day, which then, you know, affects my sleep and I don't feel like I'm managing that very well 'cause it's one extreme to the other. And also the guilt surrounding that as well. Taking time off. Vikki: Tell me about that guilt. Alex: I think a lot of guilt for me is from feeling like I am not living up to what a standard PhD student would look like. So, typically what I would perceive a PhD student would be someone you know who works consistently. Like these are my old kind of like ideologies around what a PhD student should look like. And obviously I know that that is kind of rigid and wrong thinking. So then I start to feel guilty about, you know, I'm not living up to this expectation of what a PhD student should be. And then I think because I'm quite a high achiever in the sense of I like to push myself, I see having a day off as like detrimental to my PhD. And I feel like I'll be behind on my PhD work when in fact, no, it would actually benefit me in the long run. But it's really hard to escape that feeling of guilt. Vikki: Mm-hmm. And do you feel that guilt sort of all through your cycle as it, I know you're not having the time off in the other bits, but as in when you are in a phase of your cycle where you are not experiencing extreme symptoms, do you still feel like you shouldn't be having time off that it would make you feel guilty to have time off during your difficult times? Or is it when you're in the midst of that dysphoria that you feel guilty? Alex: Um, no. So I, I still feel guilty even in like my good phase, so to say. And I think that is just because of my own expectations of myself and my ideology of how I feel like I should be working. So it's, it's constant. It's just worse during that worse phase. Vikki: Yeah. And you mentioned, or you called it wrong thinking. I'm not sure we're gonna label any thinking as wrong, but what did you mean by that? Alex: To me, if another student had to take time off due to a certain health condition, I would not look at it like that. I would be really supportive of that, so I think it's more so the thinking around myself, and I know it's wrong because if another student was to do that, you know, I would think that that was a very good idea. But when it comes to myself, you know, there's that perception of I'm not doing good enough because I'm having time off. So I know it's wrong thinking as in the sense of well, if I feel like that's okay for other students and would actually be a good idea because it would benefit them mentally and physically, well then why not myself. But it's really hard to see it like as a good thing for myself. Vikki: Mm-hmm. Why do you think it feels different for you? Alex: Um, because I know that I place really unrealistic expectations on myself. And I feel like if I'm not working at a hundred miles per hour, then I am really hard on myself. 'cause I think the problem with having ADHD and you know, PMDD or other health conditions in general, I feel like you have to work a little bit harder, you know, due to the symptoms that we have. And yeah, I just, I feel like if I'm not working at a hundred miles per hour when I am feeling okay, then I'll get behind. So I do place like really unrealistic expectations on myself, and I know, I know that I do. It's just how do you change that mindset? Vikki: And that is the a hundred million dollar question, isn't it? Right. How you, how you change mindset. And one of the things I think is really useful to start with is deciding what you want to feed your brain with. So we have these thoughts that pop up, right? I should be working harder, I shouldn't have to have this time off and all those things. And I believe it is actually pretty hard to stop those thoughts popping up. They come from a lot of places. They're reinforced by our histories, they're reinforced by our social conditions, the hierarchical institutions we work in and all these things. Vikki: It's really hard to stop those thoughts bubbling up. But I do believe we have a choice about which thoughts we continue to feed ourselves. So do you have other thoughts that you also believe that sometimes feel plausible, they might not be the first thought you go to or whatever, but that when you consciously choose them, they feel true to you? Alex: Oh, yes. Massively. So in PMDD, I can't explain it, but I have this way of thinking where I feel like, it doesn't matter what anyone else says, like if I'm stuck in my mindset, that's just how I feel. So during PMDD, I'm actually really quite horrible to myself with self-talk. So. It can be so many different things, but it can be such as like if I'm having a really bad day and I'm struggling, you know, I'll be quite horrible to myself in my thought process. Like, oh, you're just lazy. Why can't you just do this? Well, the main thing, the, the biggest thing for me, and this presents the whole month, but especially in PMDD, is you are not good enough. Vikki: Mm-hmm. Alex: And there's a lot of imposter syndrome there of you are not good enough for this PhD. You're not good enough in general. Like that's probably the biggest one. Vikki: Yeah. How do you respond to that? Alex: Um, so. Vikki: Not when you're in the midst of, when you're in the midst of dysphoria, I'm sure you respond to it just by believing it and diving straight. Yes. Yeah. And that's fine, that's absolutely understandable. But like when you are at your most kind of regulated, you're at your most thinking about it sort of intellectually almost, what's your response to those thoughts? Alex: So when I'm regulated, I kind of accept the thought and just kind of let it pass. Like be present with it, but let it pass without kind of influencing any emotion. And then depending on what it is, I'll kind of counteract that with like, what evidence do I have for that fault? And sometimes it'll just pass. And generally it's quite easy to kind of get out of that thought process when I am regulated, because I'll just look at the evidence against it. Vikki: The evidence that you are good enough? Alex: Yes. Vikki: Okay. And how much of the time does that feel accessible to you? Alex: Um, it is very much dependent on so many external factors. So generally, like when I'm regulated, things are going quite well, it's very easy, easily to kind of like remove that thought. But if I'm having a bad day, it's really hard to get out of that thought process. Especially when I kind of go on a downward spiral. Say if there's like multiple factors where things are going wrong, like I get very emotive with it and then it just sends me on this very negative thought process and then it just continues and spirals and gets bigger. Vikki: Yeah. I think sometimes one of the things I notice, and I wanna get back to this notion of guilt in a minute, 'cause I think that's really, really crucial here. But one of the things I've noticed a lot when people tell themselves they're not good enough is that the counteracting thought they go to is evidence that I am good enough. Vikki: And that feels really logical, right? If it feels painful for me to think that I'm not good enough, then I should reassure myself that there's lots of evidence that I am good enough and I just notice sometimes that that is quite a big jump though, from I don't believe I'm good enough to actually, maybe there is evidence that I'm good enough and I just wonder whether there's anything that sort of sits in between that might feel more accessible than actually maybe I am good enough. Alex: Yeah, I mean there must be because the fact that it doesn't particularly work when there's negative external variables going on. There must be what it is though I do not know. Vikki: So things I've seen is gonna sound strange. Thoughts that I found useful and I've seen people find useful are things around. I don't know if I'm good enough. Alex: Okay. Vikki: But I'm gonna do this bit next anyway. Alex: Yeah. Vikki: Because this notion that, I don't know if I'm good enough, derails us from doing things, relies on the fact that we have to believe that we are good enough in order to do those things. Alex: Yeah. Vikki: And that bit, I'm just not quite sure is true. I don't think it has to be true. And if we believe we can only do things to move our PhDs forward when we think we're good enough, then we have to work on making ourselves feel good enough all the time. And the problem is we're in this weird world where we're working right at the edges of our own knowledge, in the edges of other people's knowledge a lot of the time. Right. And so it's quite a big jump to whatever good enough even means. Because it's also pretty difficult to define in our, in our world. Alex: Yeah. Vikki: I just wonder whether there's a way of almost putting it to one side of, I have no idea. Might not be, who knows? What's the next thing I need to do? Alex: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. So I guess kind of, kind of flipping it a little bit and instead of just saying, yeah, that does make sense. So instead of trying to bridge that gap and trying to make myself feel like I am good enough, just saying, well, I dunno if I am, but I'll try and do my best anyway because I know ultimately with the support that I have from my supervisors, you know, I'll get to where I need to be. Alex: So instead of trying to overreach and use that evidence of why I'm good enough, because to be honest, you know, when you are a second year PhD student. You are still very much learning about the whole PhD process itself. So you know, there's gonna be things that you aren't good at anyway. So I do think that is a good way to reframe and approach it. Vikki: Because I mean, and I think you're totally right. Because what even does good enough mean for a second year PhD student? It definitely doesn't mean knows everything, right? Because you've still got a load of your PhD still to do. You've got your academic career if you're gonna choose one. So it's never gonna be knows everything. And I think it's really hard to define what good enough for a second year is 'cause apart from anything else where you are at in second year varies so much. You know, some, I mean, you talked about you're doing data collection and things like that. Some second years are coming to me saying, I'm not even collecting data yet. I'm still looking at literature. I don't have a clear research question. And they would think you were really ahead. And then other people are like analyzing and feeling like they're, very on top of thing. It varies hugely where you're at. And remember those, we have an international audience, so remember those of you in the US second year is about middle of a UK PhD. I wanna go back to this idea of guilt though. Because you said that that's there, even when you are not feeling the sort of dysphoria symptoms and things like that. Alex: Mm-hmm. Vikki: And I wonder whether there's a similar kind of place. Where on one hand we've got, I should be working more than this. I should be doing what a quote unquote normal PhD student would be doing all the way through to I guess the other extreme of that is I'm doing fine that this is what, you know, this is what it is. I'm just wondering whether there's a sort of middling place with these guilt feelings, these guilt thoughts as well. Alex: Um, there must be. I've just, I've never thought about it in that context. So I guess, I mean, from my most recent experience, so, my supervisor's very helpful and she's very good, especially when I'm kind of dysregulated. So recently I've just sent my first paper off for publication or to a journal to you know, and as I said, I'm just about to start two data collections and analysis. And I said to her like, I'm really struggling with kind of with all of that feeling like I'm not where I should be and then that's when the guilt comes in. And she just said to me, like, obviously as you said, students are gonna be at different points in their PhDs. It doesn't mean anything. But she said to me like, how can you not objectively see with the amount of work you've done you are kind of on the right path of where you should be. Alex: And even then, like with her words and she's very, very helpful. I still feel this guilt a lot and it's really hard to get out of that mind frame as well. Because I still really struggle with getting out of that. So I think the extreme of, before when we were saying like when I would use evidence against it, I can't even use that because I think guilt is a massive thing for me. Alex: So I guess the middle ground that you suggested would be really helpful because it would probably be more attainable. So I guess with your experience with coaching and working with a lot of people, like how would you address that? Vikki: Well, let's have a think about what the kind of, so at one end we are saying, I should be doing more than I am. And therefore kind of deserve to feel guilty about this because I should be able to perform the way a quote unquote normal student would. Alex: Mm-hmm. Vikki: And I guess the other extreme, it's what I'm an excellent PhD student who's doing all the things they should be, I guess is the, maybe the other extreme. So let's think about what might sit along that continuum between, I definitely should be doing more than this. Alex: Yeah. Vikki: And, but that comes before we get to, I'm doing a great job. Alex: Yeah. So, I don't know, just saying I'm ticking off the boxes that I need to in survive and count. Vikki: Mm-hmm. Alex: I guess, I guess that would be like the next one along for me would just be, you know, doing the main important things that I need to be doing and ticking those boxes while also having some semblance of work-life balance would be the next one for me, and I guess further from that, slightly would be being able to increase output whilst maintaining like mental health, self-care, but only when I feel able to. Vikki: Okay. Like, Alex: I guess, Vikki: so we've got a sort of I am prioritizing, Alex: yeah. Vikki: I'm ticking off the things I need to tick off. Alex: Yeah. Vikki: I'm doing my best to look after my health. Alex: Yeah. Vikki: Do those things feel true for you? Alex: They feel what they should be, but they feel what I'm not doing as in like, prioritizing my health. Vikki: Okay. And it, is it the guilt that makes it hard to do? Alex: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Vikki: Okay. What thoughts would help you prioritize that health, do you think? What would that look like? Alex: So being kinder to myself and speaking to myself how I would speak to other people because how I speak to myself, there's no way I would ever speak to someone else like that because I just know that it's not feasible. Alex: So yeah, I guess it's just trying to learn to be kinder to myself and speak to myself how I would speak to other people. Like if someone else come to me for advice and I'd say to them, you know, are you prioritizing your health? Um, and I guess it's like I'm a personal trainer as well, so, you know, it would be how I'd speak to like my PT clients and it's knowing how to apply that to myself without feeling guilty. Alex: So I guess in that respect, speaking to myself, like saying things like, you know, you have a health condition, give yourself some leeway. Your supervisor has told you you are doing fine. And has said to you like, take time off when you need to to make your health better. Alex: And she's also said to me like, explicitly, if you are not like at the most optimal health that you can be, then you're not gonna be able to put out optimally into your PhD. And that's something she keeps trying to reinforce that my health comes first, because then I can't be the best version of me for my PhD, but yet I'm still sacrificing my health thinking that it's going to help my PhD. Vikki: Hmm. Alex: When actually it probably not because I'm not at my best version because effectively I'm worsening my health. Vikki: Do you think you've accepted that this affects what you can do? Til: No. No. And you know, I've never actually thought, you've probably the first person who's ever asked me that. Um, you know, my ADHD diagnosis was only in December. I've had PMDD for quite a while, but I think because of like, you know, my own experiences with like medical misogyny and, you know, just, you know, societal expectations. I've always felt like, yeah, I, I haven't accepted, I definitely have not accepted that, you know, these conditions do impact me and therefore it is okay to make accommodations for myself. I haven't accepted it and I'm still trying to power through as someone who can function typically. So, yeah, that's actually kind of blew my mind. They've said that and I've had that kind of thought. Yeah. Vikki: Because it strikes me that guilt comes when you think you should be doing something different. Alex: Mm-hmm. Vikki: And that if you are somebody who hasn't accepted, and I think it's understandable, especially with, you know, relatively late diagnosis on the ADHD and as you say, all the perceptions there are out there in the world with the PMDD stuff. Vikki: That sort of guilt to me feels like it's got this premise of I should be able to do more than this. I should be able to be behaving the way that somebody without health conditions would be behaving. Alex: Yeah. I actually think you've fully hit the nail on the heads there. Like, I've never thought of it like that and I think I've got a lot of internalized, what's the word is, is the word able ableism? Alex: I've got a lot of internalized ableism about myself and yeah, I have definitely not accepted it in the slightest whatsoever and, you know, I'd speak openly about having these conditions, but I don't think I've actually accepted myself that I have them and that it does impact me because I am trying to operate and function as someone without health conditions. Alex: Literally, as you just kind of said. And that is probably just right now has been a very big revelation for myself. 'cause I've never thought of that before. So thank you. Vikki: Okay. And this is something we can continue to talk about in the membership sessions and things, right? Yeah. Because I think sometimes when you hit a moment like that, it's useful to take a breath and be able to kind of reflect on it yourself, maybe discuss it with loved ones or anything like that. And just take a minute with those thoughts. Because if we can start to recognize, oh, because you are not stupid, right? You know that if it was somebody else, like when Till comes on, there is no way, I know you are not gonna be sitting in the background going, well, she should just pull herself together and get on with it, shouldn't she? I know there's no way. So there has to be a reason you're not applying that to yourself. Alex: Yeah. Vikki: And so. Continue to have a ponder on this sort of acceptance thing, this piece that maybe you are still telling yourself that if you just find the right system and the right way of doing things and sufficient motivation, you can behave exactly the same as somebody who doesn't have health conditions. Vikki: And then we can revisit it. Obviously you can come to a live coaching again, or as you know, you've got your questions for Vicki channel as well. So if you want to put questions in there, then I'll do your voice note too. And we can continue to then go, okay, if that is the case, if this is about me not accepting it, where do I want to go from here? How might it feel different if I'm planning my workload from the perspective of somebody who actually is impaired a couple of weeks a month at least, and needs a plan that goes from there, what would that look like? Alex: Yeah, thank you. I, I actually feel like I could cry now 'cause um, yeah, I've never thought of that before, so that's really helpful. Thank you. Vikki: Okay. You take care. What I'm gonna do, I'm gonna ask Til to come on, and if you want, if you want to pop off and just have, you know, have a glass of water, um, have a moment then please do, do feel free. Thank you. Vikki: Hey. So how was that, how did you find watching somebody else getting coached on these issues? Til: Yeah, it was very interesting, very useful, very relatable. I don't know if Alex can still hear me, but, um, certainly with what you were just talking about in that sense of not accepting, your limitations or that you are living and experiencing things differently. I relate to that too. I don't know that I have fully accepted that. Til: And I think for me, part of that is not knowing what the alternative actually looks like. Before I did my PhD, I worked nine to five. I worked a nine to five all through my undergraduate degree. Before that I was in high school. So, you know, I've had a very nine to five life and a PhD and so thinking outside those boxes, um, and outside the externalized, requirements of office jobs and school and those sorts of structured environments in into a, you know, humanities PhD where my time is essentially my own, um, is really challenging and I still haven't worked out to the extent that I've accepted Til: this about myself with the ADHD or you perhaps around the the PMDD or PME as well? I still don't know what other options are, which is partly why I joined the membership. And then I think the other thing is as well that, that I was thinking about when Alex was talking is that, that like we do have this huge capacity for going at 150% and it's not sustainable, but you also, at least I find, I also know that I can go at 150%. And so like, why aren't, why aren't I doing the time or at least a hundred percent all the time, but why is it, why is the ADHD experience so inconsistent? and yeah, once you add in menstrual cycles and things like that, but yeah, a lot of what both you and Alex said really, really resonated there, I think. Vikki: Yeah absolutely. A couple of things out of that, I think in terms of the acceptance piece, I wanna make really clear. I know, but I think both of you know this, but for the listeners the solution here is now not going, oh, I just need to accept it. Right? Okay. I accept it. Problem solved. But what we do instead is kind of recognize, oh, the fact I don't accept it at the moment makes it really hard for me to plan for it. To allow for it. That might be where some of these high expectations are coming from. 'Cause sometimes you can just feel like you're being a little bit. I don't understand why I'm like this. 'cause I know I should be making allowances, but I can't and I just don't know why. Vikki: And even just having a little bit of a, oh, that might be why kind of moment. We don't have to necessarily switch immediately to, oh, okay, therefore I accept it and everything will be okay. But we get to go, okay, that's making this more difficult. Right? What could we do? And I think you are also completely right to flag I think this interaction with ADHD is fascinating because I think that ADHD has this somewhat unique feature of having sometimes the capacity to work at an incredible level to just smash it out and sit and that, and I get this done, I get that done and those moments, and I am not gonna be somebody who calls them a superpower or anything like that because I think as a whole, that's not a helpful notion. Vikki: But we have these moments where it does go like that. And it's really hard not to hold that as your benchmark as to that's what performance should look like. That's what I'm capable of. And it's this sort of expectation that that's what it should look like all the time. When in reality that is usually way above a standard person's productivity and focus and all of those things. Vikki: And I think recognizing that is, is really, really useful. So let's move on then to you Til. And Alex is gonna be watching this and we'll bring her on again at the end. So tell us a little bit more about your experience and how this is affecting you. Til: Yeah, sure. So, um, I don't have a formal diagnosis of PMDD but I relate to the symptom list, um, and I've possibly sit somewhere between PMDD and what I've seen referred to as, premenstrual exacerbation, which is basically all of your existing underlying chronic health conditions feel worse, in the lead up to your period, and then when you're on your period at the start, at least. So I get a bit dysphoric. I get a lot more emotionally sensitive, a lot more tired, a lot more irritable, a lot more overwhelmed. And it's much harder to concentrate. My ADHD medication doesn't work as well during this time so it makes it really hard to just like, sit down and do stuff, which is something that I struggle with already. But during that time it feels worse. And I think I have a bit of a tendency to, when I'm at a slightly lower point, raise my expectations for myself and be like, oh, if I am, you know, at 40%, I should be at 140%. But it, that, that pressure doesn't necessarily result in, in any, in any action. It often just results in avoidance and internal spiraling. So, yeah. Vikki: Absolutely. And you mentioned when we were talking before we started recording, that your cycle is somewhat predictable at the moment and so we thought we would think about kind of almost planning for these times. So with Alex, we talked a little more about what it's like in the midst of this time. But because yours are predictable, we'd focus on thinking about that. Til: Yeah. Vikki: So tell me how, if at all, you plan for this at the moment. Til: I dunno if this is an ADHD thing or just, you know, maybe it's not worth pathologizing, but, but it'll be a day or two out and I'll be like, I feel like shit. And then I look down at my pill packet and be like, oh, that's why I feel shit. Yeah. Okay. Like, whoops. Vikki: Everybody hates me. I don't understand why everybody hates me. Oh yes, absolutely. And then when you realize, right, you, you look down at your pill packet and you go, oh yeah, maybe it's that. Maybe everyone doesn't quite hate me. What happens then in terms of, 'cause obviously in the membership, especially this quarter, we've been thinking a lot about planning, about setting goals, about our sort of systems for deciding what we do when. And I wonder whether when you look down and go, oh, at your pill packet and realize that you are heading into that phase, whether that changes anything Til: at the moment it's not changing anything. I think it probably should be. I would say that I would expend more effort and energy than usual trying to keep myself on routine in life rather than in PhD work. So I would spend more effort trying to make sure that I make it to the gym and go to bed on time and make home cooked meals and those sorts of things. Which in some ways then leaves me with less energy to focus on maintaining any PhD routine. But yeah, I think that's where I try to focus. Vikki: Yeah. And do all of those feel helpful for you? Is expending more energy to do those things coming from a place where they actually help you during your, during your sort of premenstrual period time. Til: Yes. Yeah. Vikki: Okay, cool. Because one of the things that we want to make sure is that any of the things that we're kind of putting effort into making sure they still happen are things where that effort is worthwhile and useful for us. So the only one that my ear flagged up a little bit, and I just wondered whether this is a space for, this is outside of PhD stuff, but looking after us, mind and body is part of it, right was around the homecooked food. So I think the continuing to get yourself physical activity is somebody with ADHD continuing to get yourself physical activity even when you don't particularly feel like it physically, sounds great to me. Um, sleep great. Brilliant. Good food. Yes. What's the deal with this, the homecooked version of good food here? Til: Well, it's cheap and easy. Vikki: And do you find it easy to get yourself to do it and things, even when you're feeling dysphoric? Til: The process of actually cooking? Yes. All of the admin to get to that point. No. Hate going to the supermarket, I don't know if it's a COVID thing, just develop a aversion to it, trying to do it once a week maximum. But, so I think the planning component of cooking, okay. No, but I, but. Will expend mental energy thinking about that, um, feeling like, well, if I haven't already planned and made a choice about what I'm doing for dinner, yeah, I'll spend a lot of time throughout the day like, what, what all the supermarket do I need to go to? Do we have all those ingredients? Vikki: Okay, how could we, so one of the things we talk about in the membership a lot as you're aware, is being a good boss for yourself, right? Is thinking, okay, what would make this easier for me? What would make this feel better? And I think what can be really useful is if you were a nice about, you know, so Alex talked about having a lovely supervisor who's really helpful and think with all of this stuff is thinking, right? If I was a boss who had an employee who I knew was coming up to a period of time where they were gonna be experiencing mood difficulties, physical symptoms, all these things, and I wanted them to feel supported. What things would I put in place for them? Okay. And let's start with food and then we'll get onto PhD stuff in a second. If you were a boss, what things would you want to help this person put in place food wise to make it feel a little easier for them. Til: Regular meal breaks and like, just setting aside the time so that they know that it's there and they don't have to think about it. Vikki: Yes. Making it as yeah, easy as possible. Making it feel like they don't have to think. So what would that look like? What could you do for yourself in advance that would make it feel like you don't have to think? Til: So batch cooking and freezer meals. Vikki: Is that something you enjoy? Does that feel plausible? Does that feel like, yeah. Never. Great idea, but never gonna get around to it. Til: Plausible. It just, it just makes me feel sad eating freezer meals, like multiple days in for. Vikki: Why does that make you feel sad? Til: Because it's not freshly cooked. I get a fair amount of joy from the actual active cooking. Vikki: Okay. Til: And I don't have a microwave, so, it's harder to reheat freezer meals. They get soggy. It's not as nice. Vikki: So you don't necessarily wanna take away the act of having to cook. Til: Not necessarily, but I want to take away some of the mental load that comes with the, the lead up to the cooking. Vikki: Yeah. So how could you do that? Til: Make my partner do it. Vikki: Okay. Til: Ask really nicely and they would Vikki: Okay. Til: Is one option. But yeah, like sharing some of those things. And then pre-planning meals outside of work time. So like on a Sunday, that sort of thing. Not in a cooking sense, just in a, these are the sorts of ingredients that will be in the house and there will be enough vegetables in the crisper for the rest of the week, so don't need to go back to the supermarket. There will be enough milk for a cup of tea, those sorts of things. Vikki: Cause sometimes even just deciding, I'm just gonna eat the same things when I'm on my period. These are the five meals that I eat. So that there's minimum, it's like, okay, it's that time of the packet. We need to make sure we've got X, Y, and Z in the house. Because I'm having, and I'm not saying eat the same thing every night, but if you had like four or five meals that you eat during that time, I've tried to get in the habit and I've actually forgotten this time. So I need to remember that. I was trying to get in the habit of just always buying myself steak in the first couple of days of my period. Not because I necessarily believe it's the perfect sort of source of iron or anything like that, but it feels as fun a reason as any to buy myself nice food. Yeah. But anything that feels like that for you, right? Where it's like, you know what, I like this. I like making it, it's easy to make. It's stuff that maybe can be made with stuff that's in the cupboards rather than having to buy it the day I make it or whatever. Vikki: So we are thinking about where we are expending effort that doesn't feel good and saying, okay, how can we just smooth that? How can we make that feel simpler so that there aren't really decisions. That week we just grab a week's meal plan and we always do that meal plan the rest of the month we can be imaginative and try new recipes or whatever if we enjoy it. But that week we do those recipes 'cause we like them and they're nutritious and they're easy. Vikki: How does that feel is a sort of, Til: sounds good. Yeah. Vikki: So let's think about translating that then into PhD work. How could you change the way you plan your PhD work when you know you've got this kind of coming up? Til: Hmm. I mean, I think there are some things that fit the analogy better, like in terms of thinking about specific tasks that can just be, you know, like a meal plan for the PhD. Is some reading and then I write up my notes from the reading and summarize it, and then can look at certain types of data or do some archival research. 'Cause that involves, a bit less analytic thinking. Those sorts of things come to mind. In a super helpful counter thinking way then I immediately was thinking about, well, some of that then depends on what phase of the PhD I'm in, and trying not to borrow worries from the future too much and just bring it back to the phase I'm in. So, yeah, data collection summaries and archive analysis and a bit of reading. But not more than like an hour of reading at a time. Otherwise I'll just fall asleep while doing it. Vikki: So knowing what types of tasks tend to feel more accessible to you and feel more like things that it's like, okay, I can crack on with those bits. How about the quantity of work you expect from yourself? Til: Yeah. That could probably drop a little as well. If I still wanna feel like I'm doing a certain amount of hours a week or something, switching to tasks that are a lot less initial effort. So because I write about comedy, watching a comedy special is a legitimate form of research that I could definitely always do more of. So things like that, um, are probably quite helpful reminders as well in terms of kind of low, low physical energy tasks, that are still engaging. Til: I find it quite hard to assess how much I actually get done in a week and assessing what my actual capacity and capability is really difficult for me at this point in time. And part of that is linked to what Alex was saying about, you know, we, we are still students. This is, this is all a learning process, so there's still a fair bit of that for me. So I think that's the other, that's the other big unknown for me when I'm planning my weeks at the moment in general. Let alone then trying to assess, okay, well I know I'm, gonna be at reduced capacity this week. Vikki: Yeah. So it sounds as though the idea of deciding that you would work fewer hours feels like it Til: stresses me out. Vikki: Tell me more about that. Til: You saying that I'm like, well, but I already, I already feel like I'm not working enough hours Vikki: And then what happens if you end up not working the hours you intended to work because you're having the symptoms? Til: I feel bad about it. Similar feelings to what Alex was describing. Guilt, frustration. I think, I think I have a little bit more acceptance around some of it, but it's, it's a question of extent or degrees. I think like moving beyond, I'm either at 150% or I'm at 0%. Vikki: Yeah. Til: But I would like to have more kind of, you know, 60 to 80% days and create some sort of consistency. That's just one of my key goals at the moment, still being able to do some things when I'm feeling bad. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. So it's not a total kind of, um, self-flagellation exercise, uh, at this point in my life, but yeah, it's still frustrating. Vikki: Yeah, no, definitely. And I think it's so interesting that you are saying that you want to find more days where you are doing 60% or 80%, but that you are also still quite resistant to the idea of reducing the hours you're planning to work that day. Vikki: And I think that's really useful. And again, I think that's something for us to continue to work on in the membership because one of the things I notice a lot with members is that they'll tell themselves, I should be working normally. I've got this thing, but I don't have time to deal with that. Vikki: I should be working normally. And what they then end up doing is either doing all those hours, but finding them not productive and not getting, or not doing those hours because they then eventually convince themselves that it hurts too much or they're too distracted or they're too whatever and them feeling bad about the fact they didn't. Vikki: Rather than kind of deciding in advance, you know what, today's a three hour sort of a day and doing your three hours, and then being able to actually enjoy the remainder of the day, or at least look after yourself during the remainder of the day because you are intentionally not working. And sometimes you know the difference between doing three hours work on a day you intended to do eight hours work and how that feels versus doing three hours work on a day where you intended to do three hours work And how that feels. Vikki: They're just poles apart. They're exactly the same amount of work done. But they feel incredibly different. Now I'm gonna let you in a little secret 'cause I know you guys like to know how I'm a work in progress with all these things alongside you guys. I'm still quite bad at planning for this. Vikki: So I, at the stage, at the moment where I still have quite regular periods and I still plan a reasonably normal week because for some reason I always slightly believe that this month's gonna be different. Why At my age I think it's getting better. I don't know. But anyway, that's a whole other story. So I've still got work to do in terms of the actually planning for this week to be like that. So, like yesterday I ran my two sessions yesterday for you guys. I did not do a lot else. I have to say. And you know what? I am fine with that because it was definitely what I needed and I'm now shifting things around in the rest of the week to make sure the urgent things get done. Vikki: And there's no part of me that's telling me I should have done more yesterday. I'd love to get to the stage and I'm working on getting to a stage where I'm planning this in advance so I don't have to do the last minute shuffles of it, but I'm much, much better now at saying, you know what, that was what I needed. I needed that quiet time. I can do a few hours of this. I can do my face-to-face bits. I can do a few hours of these couple of bits of jobs, but I'm not expecting a full day of myself. I find that enormously easier now than I used to, and it feels so much better than telling yourself you just have to be normal. Til: Hmm. Vikki: Okay, so I want us to practice that kind of looking ahead and going, okay, even if it's just today, we're not looking that far ahead today. These are the symptoms I'm experiencing. Put my good boss hat on. What's actually reasonable today? And I think the fact you've used the kind of 60%, 80% language yourself without me bringing that up, asking yourself, what would 60% look like today? If this is not gonna be a nothing day, what is 60%? What might that look like? How could we speculate? How does that feel? Til: Yeah. Very reasonable and achievable it doesn't stress me out as much. Think we have to remember after having reframed it a bit. Pardon? It doesn't stress me out as much. Now that you've reframed it a little bit. Vikki: Yeah. Because often it is like, well I'm probably only gonna do 60% anyway, so I can either do 60% while pretending I'm trying to do a hundred percent and sitting at my desk hating myself. Or I can do 60% and then actually leave, or I can do 60% in manageable chunks and do other things in between. So some of it is, I think the acceptance that it's probably not gonna be a hundred percent day, even if I plan it as a hundred percent day and even if I sit here attempting to make it a hundred percent day, it's probably not going to be. So I think that can sometimes sort of help is reminding ourselves, I wish it was a hundred percent due, but it is not gonna be. So what are we gonna plan? Til: Okay. Vikki: Perfect. Because I think the more we can try and be intentional and meet ourselves where we're at. It makes it actually, ironically easier to do the little bits because I think there's something that rebels against. If you are going, oh, no, no, you need to work. Normally there's part of your brain that's like, but I don't wanna, everything hurts and I feel rubbish. That kind of fights back against it whereas if it's like, you know what? Let's just do two hours or three hours on this one thing. We'll take it slow, we'll work it through. Vikki: Then it's a little easier to kind of go, yeah. All right. That seems reasonable. Yeah, we can, we can do that bit. 'cause that does actually feel vaguely achievable and I won't be beating myself up afterwards. Okay. And we will talk in a future coaching session, more about keeping track of what you have done in a week. Vikki: I dunno if you're using our quarterly planning document and everything. But us practicing that recognition of what we are achieving is hugely important and something that we can continue working on in future sessions. Okay, perfect. Alex, are you in a position to come back on? Are you good? Fabulous. How was that? Watching Til getting coached? Til: Um, really good. So I just wanted to say I could relate to a lot of what Til said, so thank you because it actually made me feel less alone. Just having someone with like similar shared experiences, it definitely helps and I feel like a lot of your suggestions Vicki, were really helpful, but in true ADHD fashion, my brain has gone completely blank. I just feel like the last hour, 20 minutes I have kind of felt really relatable to everything that's said and there was a lot of really useful stuff, but my brain has just gone really blank. So I'm gonna have to go back and watch through this. Vikki: Yes, not a problem at all. Obviously in this case, 'cause we're recording for the podcast, you've got the perfect resource. You are gonna get an audio, video, and transcript version of this. Now, as you know in coaching sessions, normally we don't record them, mostly because of sort of privacy and things like that, but also because I know where you guys are like and you all want to watch all of them. And so I don't want you to end up with a huge backlog of coaching calls. Vikki: But yes. Something I a hundred percent recommend where I really encourage people during the coaching sessions to not just sort of passively watch the way you might watch sort of reality show, but to be thinking, right, what do I want to take from this? And jotting down those notes. And we often, as you know, will be chatting in the chat box as well. Vikki: So that's quite a nice way to be sharing. Oh, actually I wanna remember that is in the chat box is another good way to do that. And obviously you guys can find each other in the community as well, so if you want to carry on any of these conversations, you wanna have coworking sessions together, anything like that, you can find each other in the community too. Vikki: I just wanna finish by saying thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for discussing this and all the compassion that you've shown each other and the sort of understanding that you've opened up in yourselves as well. I really appreciate you coming on and I know lots of people will have felt very seen or have felt a new understanding for something that they've never experienced before too, which I think is, is equally important. So thank you both so much for coming on. Thank you everyone for listening, and I will see you next week.
This is the first in a series of live coaching episodes, where I work with students currently in The PhD Life Coach membership on issues that affect their academic lives. This week we’re starting with an old favourite - procrastination! Thoko and Deb are at different stages in their PhD journey but both struggle with procrastination and focus. We discuss why we often procrastinate planning, how we avoid working on tasks that involve accepting external critique, and why walking in the rain can be a great analogy to understand how to do tasks we’ve been putting off. If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on how to stop procrastinating. Transcript Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. And this is one of a series of episodes that I'm making at the moment where we do coaching with actual members of the PhD life coach membership. So they have kindly volunteered to come on to get coached about something that is challenging them at the moment. There's a whole series of these gonna happen, three or four different episodes and today we are really thinking about procrastination. So thank you so much Thoko and Deb for coming on. Why don't you guys go ahead and introduce yourself. Thoko: Hi, I'm Thoko. And I'm based in South Africa and I'm doing my PhD on austerity and fiscal policy. I'm really excited to be here and to go through the weeds of the procrastinating that I'm doing. Vikki: Perfect. And Deb. Deb: Hi, I am Debbie. I'm based in Wales, in the uk and I am doing my PhD in technology enhanced learning. So I'm looking at social support in social networking sites and wellbeing and things like that. Vikki: Perfect. And you are towards the end, aren't you, Deb? Deb: Uh, yeah, apparently so, yes. Vikki: Apparently so, and Thoko, remind me what stage you are at. Thoko: I'm right at the beginning finalizing my proposal. Vikki: I thought that was the case. So we've got different sort of ends of the PhD spectrum, but so quite similar issues. So what we're gonna do, we're gonna start out with, okay, so Deb, I'm gonna ask you to turn your camera off, but you will be watching in the background, same as you do in the coaching calls. So you're thinking about how this applies in your life as well. So we'll see you again in a minute. So Thoko, tell me a little bit more about something specific that you are procrastinating at the moment. Thoko: So the main thing that I've really noticed around my PhD work was the step between the writing the draft and then getting feedback and then working on the feedback that I received. Thoko: And the main thing was that I defended my proposal and I got feedback on the proposal that I just can't seem to get started going on and I can feel that there's a real block in being able to incorporate the comments and to produce what I want as a lovely, beautiful proposal that's ready to go. Vikki: Perfect. So tell me more about what that block feels like. Thoko: Pretty irritating actually, because it feels like it should be a fairly simple process. I think my supervisors, I have two wonderful, very supportive supervisors who I think expected this to be done in a week, incorporate the comments and resend it. Thoko: And it's been kind of three months, and I've only managed to sort of start on the revisions, on an airplane flight that I took for two hours where I was stuck in the airplane and I couldn't get up really easily and move around and move away from it. I almost say I have a picture of what I want the proposal to look like, but when I sit down to work on it, it doesn't look like the picture. Vikki: So tell me more about how this actually goes. So this is on your to-do list as something that needs doing. Do you not decide that you're going to do it today or do you decide you're gonna do it but not sit down to do it? Or do you sit down to do it, open it, stare at it? Where does it sort of break down? Thoko: So it lives on my rolling to-do list. I've even tried to incorporate, you know, from the membership learnings to make it more specific. So like, make the comment to-do list. 'cause this is not, it's verbal comments, not written comments. And so to make them written so that was one activity and I haven't even done that. So it rolls. And then I do everything else. So I'm like, oh, I'm uploading my data onto Atlas Ti. I am reading articles on my methodologies. I'm reading and I'm working quite hard on the PhD, but I'm not doing the very thing that needs to be done to enable me to continue this year in my second year, which is to just revise this proposal. Vikki: Okay, perfect. So you've narrowed it down to something quite specific. So it's not that you've got this respond to comments as a kind of notional thing but then whenever it comes to the decision making about what to do today, you are doing different tasks. Thoko: Mm-hmm. Vikki: How do you like justify that to yourself? What's the story you tell yourself? Thoko: For quite a bit of the time. So I would say from like January, February, a lot of my excuses was, no, no, I need to read more so that when I make the changes, I update all of, 'cause one of the main comments was quite a, it was a time range comments. So it means I needed to up update quite a bit of the content. Thoko: Which I started in December already, but I was like, oh no, I need to keep doing this, so that there was that, then there was, oh, I need to work a little bit more on my methodology section. And so I need to read more on the methodology. So I'm doing all the kind of easy stuff than the sit down. Thoko: And I think, you know, if I'm honest, and I feel quite self-conscious about it is that I just assume that my proposal would pass straight away. I didn't expect to have comments. So I had bought a bottle of champagne to be like, I've submitted my proposal and then I was like, told, no, no, you must make changes. Thoko: I was like, what? This is crazy. So there's a little bit of a, I'm also maybe a little bit mad about having to make the changes. And I'm also eager to get onto doing the actual PhD, so I justify the reading as well. This is also partly getting me on the road, so I spent most of my February doing my ethics clearance and all of that kind of stuff but not working on this substantive bit. And to be fair, I don't think I've really consciously put it on the table in the way that you have of asking the question of why am I not doing this today? Vikki: Yeah. Because when we have stuff that's generically on the to-do list for some point soon, but we never actually ask ourselves the question, is today the day? Then it can live there for ages without us quite noticing that we are never bringing it onto the table. I'm interested in these emotions that you've got around it though. So you say you didn't expect to have to make changes and that that's quite frustrating. Is it that you don't like the changes that they've suggested? Or is it that you just resent the fact there are changes being made and that you've gotta do more work on it? Thoko: No, I think it's more a case of I didn't do a good enough job and maybe I can't do this. Vikki: So you don't mind the first time round the things they're suggesting you change? Thoko: No, no, no. Vikki: It's not that you're like, but I don't wanna change that. I don't wanna do it like that. Okay, fine. So you're making it mean that you didn't do a good enough job. Thoko: Yeah. And so will my second version meet their expectations? Can I live up to what? Vikki: So sometimes when we have a thought that's holding us back like that, I didn't do a good enough job, we get to look at it and we get to say, is that true? And to ask answer whether that's true or not. I wanna ask you what you mean by what would a good enough job have been? Thoko: So I'm somebody who's used to getting distinctions. I don't get told correct your work. And I think that is the big adjustment from masters to PhD, I think, is that the PhD is about reworking, rewriting, reworking. And I think this is new terrain for me. And so essentially I felt like I failed. Like they basically gave me a, an F minus and I now need to resubmit. Yeah. It's, it sounds silly saying it, but that's kind of where I'm at. Vikki: Because why would it be a problem? Because the thing is, okay, they haven't graded it. So we know it's not a fail per se, but and I say this with love and respect, it wasn't good enough to just go through. Thoko: Yeah. Vikki: It needed changes. So to some extent, there's some facts there, right? Thoko: Yeah. Vikki: That maybe it was a good enough first attempt. Love that. I'm sure it was, but it wasn't good enough. It wasn't detailed enough, or it wasn't whatever was missing enough. To go through with no changes. Why is that a problem? What do you make that mean? Thoko: That I'm not good enough to do the PhD. Vikki: Yeah. And this is why it's so important to pick this apart. Yeah. And to notice that all procrastination problems are some sort of emotion thing going on. Thoko: Yeah. Vikki: Because the problem here isn't that it wasn't good enough because it needed changes, so it wasn't good enough as it was. Thoko: Yeah. Vikki: The problem is that you are then generalizing that to mean that you are not good enough. Thoko: Yeah. Vikki: What distinctions can you see between it's not good enough to get through with no changes versus I'm not good enough to do my PhD. Thoko: So the one is based in facts like you're saying, which I haven't. I actually felt that in my chest when you said it, I was like, Ooh, okay, that's true. I don't like it, but it's true. But I know at a head level, Of course I'm PhD material. They wouldn't have accepted me otherwise. I've met all the requirements for the program. Thoko: So the second part of that story is not based in fact and that I'm actually learning how to do a PhD. I think the, the double edge here is that I then think when I'm sitting down or I'm thinking about it, is like how if I wasn't good enough in the first place, do I now produce a good enough in the second place? Vikki: Yes. Yeah. And the answer you've come to that so far is I need to read more. Thoko: Yeah. And I need to not do it and like avoid it, that way I don't see it. Vikki: Yes. Perfect. And that's exactly what procrastination is, right? Is avoiding emotions that we don't like or trying to solve those emotions in ways that aren't actually helping. So you are either completely avoiding the task so you don't have to think about it, or you are solving, quote unquote, this idea that you are not good enough by going, okay, well if I read more then I'll be good enough. And at some stage I'll then be able to do this while avoiding these uncomfortable emotions 'cause they won't be there. 'cause I'll be good enough then because I'll have read enough. Thoko: Magically. Yeah. Vikki: Perfect. And I'm, I take it, that's not working at the moment. Thoko: No. Vikki: No. Perfect. Okay. So what we get to think about instead is what do I need to think in order to do some of those corrections, to do that first step? So, I love the fact you've already identified that the first job is to turn their verbal feedback into a list of, to-dos. What, in fact, I'm gonna ask it slightly differently. What emotions do you need to be willing to tolerate in order to do that? Thoko: The feeling of having failed. But knowing that, that, that's not the game I'm playing anymore. I'm doing a PhD, I'm not playing the grading game. That only happens right at the end. Right now, I'm in the, you know, iteration production, kind of thinking through the ideas. And essentially those comments were about making sure that the PhD can pass. Thoko: 'cause if you set up the proposal wrong, then you can end up with a PhD that that isn't possible, right? Because it's the guide. The proposal is the guidepost for the PhD. So really sitting with that, that feeling of, okay, so it wasn't good enough the first time around, but that doesn't mean you are not good enough, really pushing that. And it, yeah, it feels quite, quite, quite overwhelming knowing the distinction. But knowing I'm not taking the feeling away. Right. Vikki: Yeah. And that, okay. I'm gonna give you a strange analogy for this, but I think it might help. So whenever we're trying to do something that we've got big emotions about, what we wanna be doing is a kind of two-pronged approach. On one hand, we wanna be reminding ourselves of thoughts we believe, or actions that help, us to change the way we're thinking about it. Okay, so you've come up with some really good ones, reminding yourself they're doing this to help you. Reminding yourself that in a PhD, this isn't a sign that you failed, that this is about iterations and moving it forward, reminding yourself that you are capable of going through this list and writing it down. All those things, right? We get to do those things, but often people try to only do that, and if they don't make the negative emotions go away, they still don't do the task. But the double pronged part is also then accepting the, we are not gonna magic all those emotions away. We are gonna remind ourselves of thoughts that help, which is gonna minimize it. Vikki: But we are probably also gonna have to tolerate some of these emotions too. So the way, the analogy that came into my mind while you were talking is when you look out the window and the weather's terrible, and you know you need to go out and do something, and you're like, oh, I just don't want to, it looks awful out there. It's raining, it's windy, it's horrid, it's cold. And we take a two-pronged approach. We say, okay, I'm gonna put a raincoat on. I'm gonna put decent shoes on. I'm gonna put a hat on. I'm gonna put things around me so it doesn't feel quite so bad. And that is the thoughts that you have, that is the, I'm gonna put myself in, you know, you remember, put yourself in a coworking session so you're being supported by people around you we're doing things to make it not feel so bad. Vikki: But we're also saying, and I'm probably still gonna get soggy and a bit cold, but you know what, I can deal with being soggy and a bit cold for a couple of hours or whatever. Okay. And that's the bit that I think people forget is that we can try and make it feel better to some extent, but we also need to say to, and I'm willing to tolerate feeling a bit rubbish while I do this. Thoko: Right. Vikki: Okay. So let's just think about this very first part. So I presume you've got a recording or a transcript or something of the verbal. Excellent. So just thinking about translating that into a list, you've come up with a bunch of thoughts that might help. What emotions might you still have to tolerate, even though you're telling yourself this is important, you're telling yourself this is to help, this isn't a sign you're failing, what emotions are we still gonna tolerate? Thoko: I think the big one is the not feeling good enough. That's gonna be the main one. And believing that I can make the changes to the standard that they want. Vikki: Be careful what you're doing though, because we are thinking specifically only about the task of breaking the verbal feedback down into specific comments. Thoko: Mm. Vikki: And you are talking about whether you are capable of making the changes. Thoko: Yes. Vikki: Okay. One of the things with procrastination is we wanna pull it all in. It's a little bit like when you look at your messy house and say, you know, oh, I can't tidy all this up. Instead we say, okay, can I put the clothes away? Or whatever, right? So if you are saying, yeah, yeah, I can make all these changes, we don't need to reassure ourselves about that right now. 'cause that is not your job right now. Thoko: Right. Vikki: Your only task is getting that verbal feedback into a list of changes. Thoko: Right. Vikki: So one of the thoughts you can do when your brain goes, oh, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to make those changes. Then you go, my job is only to make what the changes are clear. I'm gonna worry later about whether I can answer them or not. That's not a today problem. Thoko: Yeah. Vikki: How would that feel to kind of separate that out a little bit? Thoko: I think that's extremely useful. 'cause I think I'm piling on the stories. And it's interesting because in my to-do list, I've had the write out the verbal comments and then right underneath I've got the, and make the changes. Vikki: Yeah. That shouldn't be on your to-do list yet. Thoko: Yeah. Vikki: And make changes. Not on the to-do list until you've got the changes. Thoko: Yeah. Yeah. Vikki: How long do you anticipate it to take to turn the verbal changes into a list? Thoko: Well, it's uh, probably like two hours max because I've got an hour of recording, so an hour taking notes. Stop, start if that, yeah. Vikki: Okay. Thoko: Yeah. Vikki: Are you willing to tolerate feeling overwhelmed, to tolerate feeling uncomfortable in a variety of ways for two hours in order to get that list turned into an actionable list? Thoko: Absolutely, because I've been feeling every day to-do list doom, which is worse. So the having it like hanging over my head is much worse than just two hours of what you're saying, like a rainy day of being out in the rain like that. I can do that. That feels doable. Yeah. Vikki: Perfect. And the rest of it comes later. The adding the next task in comes later. Because this is the downside of a really clever brain, right? Any of us who've got these big, clever brains who do all these clever things, we can see all the things. We can see all the steps. And so part of us thinks we should be able to believe we can do all of it. Vikki: We don't have to believe we can do all of it. We just need to believe we can do this next bit. And as you say, the problem with procrastination, the nightmare with procrastination is we're trying to avoid these emotions, but in doing so, we then have emotions about the fact we're procrastinating, and so one of the things I find quite useful to remind myself, and it sounds really depressing, but I promise it helps, is there's crap on both sides here, right? It feels awful to not do the thing and keep telling ourselves, I should be doing the thing. I'm not doing the thing I, it's been so long now, dah, dah, dah. And it feels awful to do the thing because I'm gonna have to face seeing exactly what it is that they want me to do, and writing it out in a list and whatever. So we get to say, okay, it feels crap on both sides of this. Thoko: Yeah. Vikki: Which version of this do I wanna experience? Thoko: Yeah. Vikki: Because our brains sort of think that by avoiding these tasks, we can avoid these emotions, but we just give ourselves these emotions for not having done it instead. Thoko: Yeah. Yeah. Vikki: Okay. Thoko: Yeah. Vikki: What can you say to yourself? So same as when we're out in the rain, if we're going, this is so depressing, I shouldn't be getting wet. This is awful. I hate England, blah blah, blah. All of that. What can you be saying to yourself during this two hours where we're gonna tolerate, we are gonna try and put our raincoats on. We're gonna try and say nice things to ourselves, but we're gonna tolerate that it might not be the best two hours of our lives. What are you gonna say to yourself during and after it so that you feel as good as you can? Thoko: That I'm actually a really good student and that I should remember that I'm learning that I'm a good student and I'm learning. This is all about learning. If I could do a PhD, then I wouldn't have to do a PhD. Vikki: Exactly. Thoko: Yeah. Vikki: Okay. How do you feel about in fact, have a look while, while I'm talking to Deb in a sec. You can have a look in your diary and decide when these two hours are gonna happen. Thoko: Yeah. Cool. Vikki: Okay. Thoko: Yeah. Vikki: Perfect. Thank you so much. Uh, Deb, do you wanna come on and up? If you put your camera back on for me, how was watching that for you? What did you take for yourself? Deb: Oh, I felt all of those things with you, Thoko. I wrote some stuff down, all the stuff that you were saying about things being on the to-do list and living there. They just live there and they don't necessarily need to be on there yet. I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, that's me. I thought Thoko was really perceptive about the stuff, you know, she, she seemed to have some real light bulb moments in that, which I thought was brilliant. . So many things resonated, like the whole avoid avoiding or trying to solve something. I'm definitely doing all of that. And your analogies were brilliant. I wrote down big messy house. Yeah, I have that. I have a big messy house actually in reality, but also in my PhD and definitely the today problems. The tomorrow problems. I think reflecting on the things you were saying, and we'll go onto this in a minute, but reflecting on the things you were saying, I was thinking Yeah. I think that's at the heart of, my problem at at the moment. Um, and I love the raincoat. Put wellies on. I love that. Vikki: perfect. I'm so glad. It's one of the reasons why I wanted to do these episodes is people often say, I don't quite understand how these group coaching sessions work. I don't understand why I'll get something out of seeing somebody else getting coached. But I think there's something about seeing somebody else say the thoughts that you are like, ah. I thought that too, and I thought I was the only one that thought that seeing somebody else, and then you also have that little bit of distance. It's much easier for you to see what Thoko should be, di should, should be doing. Yeah. Than it is to see it with yourself. And then it's like, oh, okay. I can see for you why that would be great. Maybe that would be great for me too. And you get to sort of translate it back in yourself. So thank you. Thank you for your reflections on that. So let's think about you. What's specifically challenging for you at the moment? Deb: Well, the whole specific thing is a problem for me at the moment because I'm definitely doing this thing that you just talked about, about, I'm looking at the whole mess, you know, and I know logically it's not a big mess. I know there are parts of it that are not a big mess, but that's how it feels because it does feel a bit of an overwhelming situation. So in terms of where I am right now, I feel like I've been doing this my entire life, and I'm just so over it and so ready to finish it that I just wanna get it done. Deb: But, I flip between thinking, yeah, I can do this. Yeah. This is, I've had a good day. I understand this. I can do this, I can finish this. And then I wake up the next morning, I think what I'm doing, and I literally go and I could go like that in an hour, let alone in days. So, I suspect that is from the, just feeling overwhelmed by it all. I actually will time out in, at the end of June this year, I've been doing it that long, get rid of me. So, I have to put in an extension request. So, that request came through like a couple of days ago and I'm just like, oh, another thing I've gotta do now. So I now, and I've put the form in and they've now come back and said, oh, we need more information. So they want me to give like a plan as to when I'm gonna do things. And I think that made me a bit like a rabbit in the headlights. 'cause that was a bit like, but if I write it down, then I've gotta get it done kind of thing. Deb: So I've got that as a bit of a problem. And then my other problem, I'm doing the procrastination definitely, but I'm jumping from one thing to another thing instead of getting that thing done. So at least I can tick something off. And I think the other thing as well is that while Thoko was talking, I was thinking about this is, it's obviously this massive imposter syndrome, which just sits on my shoulder all the time. And I kind of started this PhD thinking, well I'm gonna do a taught PhD. So I do like the first bit, so at least if it all goes wrong, I get a couple of modules under my belt. And I think subconsciously I kind of thought that that's what would happen. I thought I would never get to this stage, and weirdly I find myself here. Deb: So I think there's definitely a bit of that with the whole, you know, oh, am I actually capable of finishing this thing? And I, like Thoko was saying, I know logically, yes, I must be. But when it's happening to you. You just doubt yourself, don't you? So in terms of, I said, see, specificity is the problem for me. Deb: So I think it's, it's, I know I need to get this plan written out, so I know that, and that is the frightening thing for me. 'cause I'm gonna have to commit to that. So I know I need to do that, but then I also need a strategy, I suppose to do, do this thing that you were talking about the, I don't, I don't have to do all the things. I don't have to write all the things tomorrow. I just need a plan to get me there. Vikki: Okay. Deb: Does Deb: that help? Vikki: Yes. Deb: Sorry, does, that's very, Vikki: no, let's think about it in terms of the planning then. Deb: Yeah. Vikki: Okay. So you've got to write this plan. What length extension are you asking for? Deb: Well, I asked my supervisor what, what was the best approach? Was it to kind of say the shortest amount of time that I felt I needed or the longest amount of time. And she was like, no, I think you need to put in say, a year so what I've put in for is a year, but obviously now I need to plan that year. Vikki: And tell me more about why making that plan feels difficult, like you're putting off making that plan. Deb: Um, well I haven't, uh, in my defense, I haven't been putting an off for too long. 'Cause I've only had this for, I've only been sitting with it for a couple of days and I work full-time study part-time. I've had a really busy couple of weeks in work. So I feel like I haven't touched my PhD stuff for a few days, you know, and I think what it is deep down is that I know I'm gonna have to face all the stuff that I need to do. Vikki: Mm-hmm. Deb: And by making myself plan it out, that makes me face it. Whereas at the minute I can just push it into a big shape and say I have this stuff to do. Vikki: Yeah. Deb: Don't actually know what stuff is in it, but there's a big lot of stuff. I think that's what it is. Vikki: That sort of avoiding seeing it all. Deb: Yeah. Vikki: Because what are you worried you will see? Deb: I'm worried, I will see the sheer amount of time that it's gonna take, I suppose, Vikki: and what's wrong with the amount of time it's gonna take, Deb: That I already feel guilty for the amount of time it's already taken. And this is gonna be an extra bit of time. So because I don't, with the best will in the world, I don't think I would be in a position, I might be in a position to get a full draft done by the end of June. Possibly depending on how you term draft. But I wouldn't be in a position to finalize it. And obviously if I was gonna be in a position to finalize it, they were needing to look for examiners and things now, and I'm not with the best will in the world at that stage. Vikki: Okay. So, I'm intrigued by this notion that you're sort of partly arguing why you can't quite make it by June, but are also intimidated by making a year long plan from June. Deb: Yeah. Yeah. Vikki: That's a fun combo. Deb: Yeah, it is. Yeah. Vikki: Because if you think you can nearly probably get to first draft stage of everything by June. And the thing that's holding up really is examiners and things like that. Why does making a year long plan feel difficult? Deb: Yeah. Vikki: Because that's a year from June, right? Deb: Oh, that's a good point. I was thinking it would be a year from now. Yes. Vikki: I mean, I assume if you're asking for an extension, I mean, double check that. I assume if you're asking for an extension, it's a year from the end of your registration. Deb: Yeah, yeah. I mean, the other thing is when I say I could get a full draft. I mean, the stage I'm at is , I've got a draft of my chapter one, a draft of my introduction, draft of my theoretical framework. No, my methodology, my theoretical framework is a bit of a nightmare 'cause I need to revisit that. And i'm in the middle of trying to write my findings, so I'm, again, I'm from one to the other, to the other. That's the thing. I don't really, I wouldn't say I have anything tied up with a nice little bow that's done. And I guess all of these things are tabs in my brain that are open. Vikki: Okay. Perfect. What if a plan was a way to decide which tabs are open? Deb: Yeah. Yeah. That would, that would be helpful Vikki: because it strikes me at the moment that you are seeing a plan as a pressure that the plan then forces you to have stuff done by certain times, and that there will be judgment from yourself if no one else, if you don't hit those bits of the plan and things. And so it strikes me that this plan has become this thing we're avoiding because we don't want the pressure associated with it. We don't want the kind of reality of that in our face. Deb: Yes. Yeah. That's exactly it. Vikki: But it also strikes me that a lot of the things that are frustrating you at the moment, the jumping from thing to thing, not knowing what you need to focus on, trying to think about all of them at once, having too many tabs open, feeling like a headless chicken are the result of not having a plan. Deb: Yeah. Yeah. It's like my plan went out the window. That's the thing. And I think I just need, I mean. The procrastination element does come in there is that over the last however many years, I have loads of pretty Gantt charts. Just don't work for me. You know? And that's another thing as well, is that over the years, if I could go back to my, go back to when I started and give myself some advice, it was to be more organized. Because I feel like everything is everywhere. Vikki: You know? You know, that means that you know more now than you did when you started. Deb: Yeah. Yeah. And when we were talking earlier with Thoko, I was like, yeah, I remember being in that position where Thoko is now and then, 'cause you can't see ahead, right? You can't see it, but you could look back and it's like, yes, I do know more. I do know more. I am in a different position. Vikki: But we focus on the, we should have known it then rather than being proud that we've learned it now. Deb: Yeah. Yeah. Vikki: Okay. That's just a sign. If you look back and think, oh, I wish I'd done X, Y, Z, that means you know more now, which is a great thing. Vikki: Okay, so one of the things we can do with when we're procrastinating a task is change the way we are thinking about that task. And so here, if the making a plan is a way of justifying why you need an extension about it, it'll put pressure on you. It'll be something I have to commit to. I have to perform, I have to whatever, then yeah, absolutely. And I absolutely accept you haven't been, you're not procrastinating it per se. 'cause you've only just just had it. But it's this thing that you don't really want to get on with. I think if we can start thinking about that task as something that is gonna give you the brain space you need. Deb: Yeah, yeah. Vikki: That is gonna give you the clarity that you need. It's gonna give you something to go back to so that when your brain is going, I need to do this and I need to do this, and I need to do this, you look at that and you go, no, I need to do this thing. That's what's the, or that's what's on the plan at the moment. Deb: Yeah. Vikki: And that it's actually a supportive framework rather than a kind of punitive one. Deb: Yeah. Vikki: How does that feel? Does that feel plausible? Deb: Yeah. Vikki: That a plan could bring some clarity. Deb: It does. As you were saying it, I was thinking, I'm one of these people that I actually don't like to have commitments in my diary because I might not want to do that that day. This is obviously playing itself out, isn't it? Vikki: Yeah. And I mean, you get to decide, right? If you want to not make commitments do it when you feel like it and that works for you. Let's just do that, right, and stop telling yourself that you should have more of a structure. But I'm guessing at the moment from all the things you've said, that doing it when you feel like doing it isn't working that great for you at the moment? Deb: Yeah. Well it's doing when I feel like it, but doing, when I've got it's again, this thing about got the time to do it, you have to make the time to do it. And I know that. But then the kind of overwhelm turns itself into I'm at my desk, but I'm not necessarily doing the bit that I need to do. Vikki: Yeah. Deb: It like Thokos list. Vikki: Yeah, definitely. So one of the things that I want you to think about your plan as is a sort of series of boxes that you are gonna throw things into. I've done this for this year. There's so many things I want to do to develop the membership further. I've got another sneaky secret thing that members know about if you're in the community but the people on the podcast don't yet. I've got lots of things that I want to be doing this year and they're notionally thrown into Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, and so when in Q1, my brain's like, oh, I want to do whatever. It's like, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I know that's more exciting. 'cause Q1 is processes and like legal stuff and tax stuff is very boring. Vikki: And I'm like, I wanna do this. Nope. That's a Q2 job. It, that's a Q2 job. We're doing that later. We're in Q1, we're doing these tasks right now. And so we have them notionally thrown into things then whether it's something I'm excited to do or whether it's something I'm worried about doing, I can do the, no, no, that's a Q3 problem. We're worried that's, that will happen then. And it enables you to much easier choose between the things you're doing now. 'cause you're choosing between a much smaller array of things. Okay. So what would be, let's not think about the whole plan, but if you were saying between now and the end of our quarter, let's say we've got like five weeks left of the membership quarter, what's in this little bucket of time? Deb: Hmm. Deb: I think where I am at the moment, where I'm psychologically I want to feel further into my findings and I think that that will give me something to hang things on. 'cause in my plan, I am going back to thinking, oh, right, okay. I need a specific way of tackling things and writing that in my plan. And of course it's occurring to me now as we are talking, that actually, my plan starts now, which is I'm gonna carry on and I'm gonna finish this 'cause this is what I had in my head. I want to get to the end of this, my findings that I'm writing. So if I get to the end of that, then that gives it, I suppose it, it's like you say, isn't it? It's put a few bits of clothes away. So that's the, that's one of the bits that I can then take off my list. So that's what it would look like for me over the next five weeks. Vikki: Okay, perfect. So what we want with a plan, we want it to be increasingly granular the closer it gets to us. So what we wanna be thinking about, if we're making a plan over a year, the stuff that's happening in the next month or so, we want to be pretty detailed. Vikki: We want to know specifically what we're focusing on, specifically what we're doing, da da da. The other stuff, you know, I can't remember whether you came to my dealing with a to-do list webinar this week or not, but one of the things we talked about there was vague tasks. You can have vague tasks like write discussion in your Q3 plan, that's fine, but by the time it's Q3, we need to break that down. We don't need to break it down now. Deb: Yeah. Vikki: Okay. So, when you are thinking about making your plan, one of the big things that helps with procrastination and making plans not get overwhelming is the further ahead it is, the less detail you need. So we are dumping big chunks at this stage in those, and then we go, okay, the one or two big chunks that are in the quarter I'm in at the moment are these two. And they need breaking down into much more detail. Deb: Yeah. Vikki: Yeah. Because I'm, you said procrastination's part of the problem, but I'm also jumping between tasks. I'm gonna take the liberty of suggesting that jumping between tasks is procrastination. Deb: Yeah. Yeah. Vikki: Because you are jumping when that one becomes uncomfortable. Or when the thought of this other thing becomes uncomfortable enough that you want to jump across and Deb: Yeah. Vikki: Yeah. So if you are behaving in a way to avoid emotions, it's still procrastination. Procrastination is not just scrolling on your phone. Deb: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Vikki: And the more we can be clear, okay. Findings between now and the end, 'cause we've got Easter and stuff coming up as well, between now and the end of our quarter. My findings are my task. I need to make this plan. Get my Yeah. Get that done. Deb: Yeah. Vikki: And I'm finding plans and the findings. Deb: Findings, yeah. Vikki: And then when your brain says, oh, but I should be whatever we say, this is my task, this. And if it's uncomfortable, we think about things we talked about with Thoko, how can I say things to myself that make it feel a little bit less uncomfortable? How can I tolerate some of those emotions and be okay afterwards? But by having a clear focus that we're pulling ourselves back to Deb: Yeah. Vikki: Makes it so much easier. Deb: Yeah. Yeah. You're right. Vikki: Perfect. Thoko. Do you wanna come back on? How was that? How was watching Deb? Thoko: Oh, it was so lovely, Deb. Thank you so much for sharing. I think one of the things I really, um, took away from this is I'm exactly the same with plans and I think I've used them as a kind of stick. And so to start thinking about it as a supportive framework and also more detailed, closer dates and then less detail further out. It seems to be a little less daunting than trying to think of all the bits and pieces for the whole story. And I totally resonate with the jumping between tasks and that being procrastination and a little bit of imposter syndrome. And coming back to something that, Vikki said earlier is, the, um why are you avoiding decisions? Deb: Mm-hmm. Thoko: So why are you avoiding saying, I'm just gonna focus on this, you know, and that's quite a powerful tool actually to have in our toolbox now because, I've never thought of it as an avoiding a decision, but now I can be like, okay, you're sitting here reading another reading, printing another reading. What decision are you avoiding? You know? So I hear you. But it's so exciting that you're in the final stretch. That's very exciting. So I'm rooting for you. Deb: Thank you. Vikki: I love this. And this is what I love so much about our community is that no matter what stage you're at, what different countries you are in, what different topics you're studying, so much of this we have in common and we can support each other through. And I'd really encourage both of you to use the coworking space when you're trying to get on with these things and stuff, and so that you have the rest of that community around you. So thank you both so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Thank you everybody for listening. I'm sure you have got lots out of it and I will see you all next week.
One of the hardest things in academia is the lack of accountability for the most “important” work. We know we must write, but there’s rarely external deadlines and so many other things feel more urgent. One of the PhD Life Coach membership students asked how to get going on a task without external accountability and this is an extended version of my answer to her. I’ll discuss why external accountability helps, how we can put these frameworks in place for ourselves, and how to overcome common pitfalls. If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on what to do if you want more reassurance . Transcript [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast and this week I'm gonna be answering another question submitted by one of my members. So as most of you will know, I have the PhD life coach membership, which students can join quarter by quarter. And one of the things they get access to is the option of submitting questions, that they want some advice on, they want some what new ways of thinking about they submit them. And I record a short voice note. So this is one I did a few weeks back for one of our members, but it was a topic that comes up quite a lot and it was one that I had a little more to say about, So I decided that I would do it as a more extended episode and share it with all of you guys as well. And the question this member asked was about external accountability, but she specifically said, I'm struggling to get going without external accountability. Now, we all know that when you're doing a PhD or even in the more unstructured times of an [00:01:00] academic career, one of the things that can be really difficult is not having that kind of external structure that you often had through the earlier parts of your education. Where there were kind of real deadlines that meant something if you miss them and people sort of chasing you up and class schedules and all these things, and even quite a long way into your academic career, you may find you have external accountability for some things, you gotta turn up and teach your classes, right? But often there won't be much external accountability for the other stuff. So submitting papers, submitting grants, all those things. And this student particularly asked about struggling to get going on tasks when there wasn't any external accountability. And before we start getting into the what you can actually do about that stuff, and we are gonna do that, don't worry. Before we get into that , I just wanted to share why I was particularly impressed with this question. One of the things that we try and build in the membership is the sort of self-awareness that helps us [00:02:00] to ask really precise questions. That helps us to really understand why the things that we're struggling with feel so difficult. Why are we struggling with them? And this question, even though it was quite a short question, really pinpointed a couple of pieces of self-awareness that I was really impressed with. The first is recognizing that the problem appears, at least to be a lack of external accountability. Often when people are sort of earlier stages of their self development journeys, they're saying things like, I just can't get my work done and I dunno why, and things like that. And when we're in that stage, it can be really hard to plan any way forward at all. Because we're in this position where we are saying, you know, I wanna do the thing. I'm not doing the thing. I don't understand why I'm not doing the thing. So what do I do? And that's quite hard to answer, right? But this student had really pinned it down as being actually, when there's external accountability, I find it much easier. And when there's not, [00:03:00] I find it more challenging and then suddenly we're starting to get a problem that is more crystallized, more specific. You guys have all done this with research questions, right? When we have a research question that's nice and precise, it is much easier to figure out how we're gonna address it than when we have these big, loose, fluffy research questions and the same's true with self-development stuff. So this student had really pinpointed the role of external accountability, and the other thing that they had really pinpointed was that the problem was often getting started. And I thought that was really insightful because when we are unhappy with our kind of work practices, our kind of ability to be productive and things like that, again, we're often not very precise about what we mean. Often we say things like, oh, I'm just not getting enough done, or whatever, without really pinning down the problem. This student recognized that it was the getting going that was the problem. That sort of initiation energy that's needed to start a new [00:04:00] task rather than her ability to sustain focus on something once she got going. She also went on. In the voice notes that I do for the membership. I read out the actual question, I'm not gonna do that here, but she also went on to recognize that because she has problems getting started, She often then has problems stopping because she doesn't trust that she's gonna get started again. Her sort of lack of belief that she's capable of initiating a task means that once she gets going, she almost gets to the mustn't stop, mustn't stop. Mustn't stop stage. Overshoots how long she'd planned to work for. Ends up working later than she intended, then feels tired tomorrow and finds it difficult to get going again, but it's driven by this lack of faith that she'll be able to start again. And so I thought it was just a really good example of how when we have a much more precise understanding of the problem, it becomes something that's much, much easier [00:05:00] to address. Okay. Now those of you who get my newsletter, you will know that you get a summary of the podcast that gives you all the key take home points. If you're not on my newsletter, by the way, why not? You miss out on these summaries? You miss out on the reflective questions and you don't get to hear when they're exciting, free and paid opportunities for you to participate more. So if you haven't joined yet, make sure you go to the PhD life coach.com website and right on the front you'll see a button for joining the newsletter. Anyway, this stuff I'm talking about here, this isn't even in the newsletter. The stuff in the newsletter focuses entirely on the external accountability stuff, but as a little extra reflective prompt for you, I want you to think about any challenge you are having at the moment and ask yourself to describe it as precisely as you possibly can. So if you often tell yourself, I procrastinate too much, I lack motivation, I get overwhelmed and then don't get anything done. If [00:06:00] those are the big generic things that you're telling yourself, I want you to practice describing them as specifically and kind of in pedantic detail as you can. Try and narrow the focus, narrow the focus, narrow the focus until it sounds like something that describes specifically you. It's really, really good practice. I'm also gonna add, I'm gonna let you in a little secret here 'cause I don't think I've told you guys this yet. The next quarter of the membership, which starts at the beginning of May, it opens to new members at the end of April. Our focus is gonna be procrastination, motivation and overwhelm. So if you are resonating with this, if you are thinking, yep, those are exactly my problems, you really need to check out the membership. If you're an academic, if you are in the very early stages, you're not supervising other students, then you're still eligible. So if you're a postdoc, then you can still come on in. If you're a PhD student, you can absolutely come on in. If you are more senior than that, then [00:07:00] please do at least let your students know about the opportunity. You'll hear more about it over the next few weeks, and in fact, the podcast is going to focus over the next few weeks on sharing some coaching sessions with the actual members that we have at the moment, so keep an ear out for that. Anyway, have a practice. See if you can define your question as precisely as this member was able to. So what are we gonna do about it? Without external accountability, they are struggling to get going. The first thing we're gonna investigate even more deeply, what is it about external accountability for you that makes it easier to do these things? Because that differs, right? It's not inevitable that external accountability will make you do something. In fact, I'm the sort of person, and possibly it's something to do with my undiagnosed ADHD. Who knows. My mother would call it bloody mindedness. That external accountability can sometimes push me away from getting something done. If somebody's chasing me [00:08:00] up about something, I may be less likely to do it unless there's a badge or some sort of sticker, in which case I'm definitely doing it. But generally that might push me away. So what is it? Is it that you like pleasing other people? Is it that having external accountability put some time urgency on something and you need that time urgency to get started? Is it that when there's external accountability, it's usually much more clearly defined, more obvious exactly what it is you need to do by when, so it's simplifies some of that executive functioning. What is it about external accountability that makes it easier for you to get going on something than when you don't have that accountability? Sometimes it's simply about that sense that we allow ourselves to get away, quote unquote, with saying, oh, I'll do it later, I'll do it later, Whereas we wouldn't want to say those things to somebody else. So sometimes it's not so much about wanting praise, but about that kind [00:09:00] of self presentation to somebody else. We don't want somebody else to think that we're someone that makes excuses that we're someone that doesn't do the things we say we do, where we'll still do that to ourselves potentially. So have a think what it is for you. The reason that's so important is that if we can get clearer, there's a lot of story about clarity here today, isn't there? If we can get clearer about what it is that's helpful about external accountability, we can think more about how we can replicate that when there isn't that formal external accountability there. Now that doesn't mean putting in external accountability. I often get approached by people for coaching and when I ask them, what is it that you're looking for from coaching, they say, I want some external accountability. You know, my supervisor's not that present. I want somebody that I'm accountable to. And I almost always say no to those people. Or at least I certainly don't say yes. Without a [00:10:00] conversation about why I don't think me providing external accountability is the solution here, because if we just transfer external accountability to somewhere else, we still don't learn to be accountable to ourselves in any way. And when the external accountability is somewhat fake, ie I haven't got any control over the, you know, if, if you tell me you're gonna do something and then you don't do it, sure you've gotta rock up and tell me that, but you could just not come. Right? And so there's very little actual accountability there. So when we try and put fake accountability in place, it usually doesn't work. But what we get to do instead is what are we getting outta that external accountability and how could we create that for ourselves? So if it's about a sense of structure, how can we create our own sense of structure? A lot of my members, for example, use the member led coworking sessions where they can just log in. Do a zoom call. Tell somebody what they're working on and get [00:11:00] on with it. And that just provides enough structure, enough sense that they're in it with other people for them to get on. If it's about task clarity that when somebody else has asked you to do it, it's usually much more obvious, what you need to be doing. Then we get to ask ourselves, okay, how can I make this task that I'm not accountable to other people for? How can I make it feel much clearer, much better defined so that the route to getting it done feels much more obvious to me? Sometimes it's more about the way that the external accountability person supports you. So with nice external accountability, maybe they help you feel calm, they help you feel reassured, they remind you what you have achieved, and then we get to think, how can we do those things for ourselves. If reassurance is something that's really important from an external accountability partner, how could we give ourselves reassurance? And I have a whole episode on that, by the way. I'll link to it in the [00:12:00] newsletter. We get again, to think how can we represent these things for ourselves? So rather than wishing we have external accountability, we instead get to think, how can we create those qualities ourselves. Now the next thing we are gonna do is really think about the fact that it was the getting going that was the problem, and we can ask ourselves again what would help us to get going, specifically if we had external accountability. Maybe it's clear instructions, maybe it's achievable goals, maybe it's a sort of positive compass telling us what direction to move in and we again get to replicate those things. What we wanna be careful of though, is that the things we put in place to help us get going aren't the things that undermine us later. Now, one of the techniques that I've seen a lot of people use is this notion of, let's just do 15 minutes. We can [00:13:00] do 15 minutes. Let's just do 15 minutes. Right? And that can feel like a really good strategy because you're not having to think about, okay, I'm gonna sit down for four hours and do amazing work, or whatever. We're breaking it down gently, but when we promise ourselves that we'll do. Just 15 minutes and then after 15 minutes we tell ourselves to keep going, and then we somehow end up going on for ages, partly because we don't trust that we'll start again next time then that is actually often a big betrayal of your own trust, that you've sort of got yourself going on the promise that it'll only be a short work block and then you've kept going 'cause you've sort of got that momentum going and you feel like, you know, oh, let's keep going. Let's keep going. Well, I've got it might not start again, but the problem is that reinforces that it's hard to start next time because you start not believing yourself. It's like, okay, random analogy, alert. I once did a adventure race in Borneo, 'cause obviously who doesn't [00:14:00] randomly do a adventure race in Borneo anyway. And one of the gorgeous local helpers who was running the race forest, it was like a multi-day event thing. Um, whenever you went round a corner. He would say just a hundred meters. No matter where we were on the course. Right. It's just a hundred meters. It's just a hundred meters. And it gotta a stage where he just didn't believe a word he said because it was never just a hundred meters. It was usually a really long way. And it, it became a running joke, right? And I think he did it just to entertain us, but it meant we didn't believe him. We didn't trust the word he said. And this happens to ourselves when we say, oh, we'll just do a short work block, and then we end up working for way longer than we intended. And it's something that weirdly, we praise ourselves for, oh, I only intended to work for half an hour, but I ended up working four hours. Aren't I clever? Aren't I dedicated? I say, no, no, not really. You are making it so that you are somebody who you can't trust. You [00:15:00] are making it so that next time you start, you don't believe yourself when you say it's only gonna be half an hour, and so whilst you're saying it'll only be half an hour, you are knowing that really you're intending to do more, and that makes it even harder to start next time. So what I would really encourage you to do is to try and set in place tactics that help you to start that don't undermine that faith in yourself that you can develop. So things like reminding yourself why you want to do it, reminding yourself that you are capable of doing the next step, reminding yourself we are starting with 30 minutes and then we are gonna reassess. 'cause that's very different than saying I'm only gonna do 30 minutes. What it means though, is after 30 minutes, you need to genuinely reassess and genuinely decide whether you're gonna carry on at that stage or not. And you have to genuinely agree with yourself that if you choose not to carry on, that's still a [00:16:00] win. That's still 30 minutes done. Okay. We are trying to set in place motivations for all of this that are rooted in us having a choice about this, that are rooted in us feeling competent, feeling like we're capable of doing things, and feeling like this is something that's important and meaningful to us. The other practice that I want you to build alongside this, if you are practicing making it easier to get going, I want you to also practice stopping when you said you would as well. Okay. I don't want you to practice one without the other because if you could get better at getting yourself going, but you're still not good at getting yourself to stop and believing that you'll get going next time, that's when we build this culture of overwork that just doesn't really serve us, and that doesn't build this sense of faith in ourselves. So if you are trying to get better at getting yourself to start when you intended to start, I want you to also practice stopping when you intended to stop. Now the big tips for doing that are reminding yourself that you're practicing both things at [00:17:00] once. Reminding yourself that learning to stop is part of learning to start again, and then thinking to yourself, right, if I'm stopping now, how can I make it really easy for myself to start again tomorrow or just start again later on. Because often we think I won't have the motivation. I am on a roll. I know what I'm doing and I'll forget what I was gonna say. All these sorts of things, right? So those are the questions I need to answer for yourself. If you get to the end of a work block session and you are feeling like actually, You know, or I, I probably should just keep going. I want a bit of a role, I mean, to ask yourself, what would enable me to pick up this role tomorrow? What would remind me why it's interesting? What would make it easy for me to remember what the next step is? What would make it easy for me to remember exactly where I'm up to? One way to think about it is to think about it in terms of handover notes. So, any of you who have worked in a clinical [00:18:00] environment will know that when one shift of doctors or nurses or whoever come on, there is usually a period of time where they kind of go round together and hand over one shift to the next. So they update them on each of the cases. They let them know what's been done, they make sure their records are sorted so that the incoming shift know exactly where they're at. I want you to think about preparing for the next shift in the same way, even though you are the next shift, so that as you come towards the end of a block that you've been intending to work, you are thinking about how can I set this up so that it's easy for me to pick up next time I pick it up? Okay, so we're working on getting, going and finishing on time, at the same time, because one will feed the other. That sort of record keeping, that sort of handover documents can also help with this sense of accountability because if we haven't got accountability to others, if we're not [00:19:00] reporting to others. One thing that can be really useful is to keep a way of kind of reporting to ourselves so that we are much clearer whether we've done what we intended, where we're up to, what going our way, what we're gonna do about it, and all of the things that an external accountability person might help you navigate. If we've got our own records, if we can see what we've been doing, then again, it becomes much easier to provide that sort of accountability and support to ourselves. The final thing I'm gonna recommend today, and this is gonna sound a little strange, but it is massively helped me. Now I say it's helped me. You guys all know I'm a work in progress, right? I'm not perfect on the self-accountability things, by any extent, but I'm a lot better than I was as with a lot of things and the thing that has helped me more than any other is deciding that being accountable to myself is the point. And let me explain what I mean by that. I used to argue with [00:20:00] myself all the time, so I would make a plan. I would decide that I should do A and then B. And then when it was time to do A, I would convince myself as to why it's exactly not the time to do A, yeah, I should probably do B because that would be better and that makes more sense and it would better to do B than A. And I would have these arguments with myself and often in these arguments, I'd end up doing neither of them because I plan to do A, but I probably should do B and I can't really decide which. So I do neither. Genius. Love it. I'm sure some of you will empathize with that. And the thing I realized that snipped off the argument more than anything else was saying, I will do a, because it's what I said I would do. Not because it's the best answer, not because it's the most logical, not because it's the most efficient, no other reason other than it's what I said I'd do. And I kind of want to be somebody who does what they said they'd do. And now does that mean I never changed my mind and I never [00:21:00] don't, do what I said I'd do? No, obviously, but I stick to what I said I'd do inordinately more than I ever used to because I've made the accountability., The point. I'm going because I said I would. I'm doing that thing now because I said I would. I'm starting at this time because I said I would. And then what we get to do is we get to reinforce what a gorgeous thing it is when we do what we said we'd do. And for lots of you, the other thing they say, oh, but what happens? You end up like, you know, you don't start exactly when you said you would, and so then you're behind on your schedule and dah, dah, dah. I just go back into my schedule. Okay, what did I say I'd be doing at 11 o'clock? Okay, we're doing that then whether I did what I said I was gonna do between nine and 11. Who knows, but I said I was gonna be doing this at 11, so that's what I'm gonna crack on with right now. When we make being accountable to ourselves, the specific thing we're trying to [00:22:00] do over and above any of our actual individual goals, then suddenly we can kind of take away a lot of the self negotiation, take away a lot of that discussion, and do the thing we intended to do. Now where that all comes back to, and this is something we've been working on in the membership this quarter that's happening at the moment, is we then have to really be careful when we're making our plans that their plans we actually want to stick to. Because if you are somebody who struggles without external accountability, a big chunk of that is probably you make ludicrous plans at the moment because you don't hold yourself accountable to them anyway. So you just plan some stuff without really thinking about whether it's everything you need to do, without really thinking about whether it's achievable or not. And then because you're not being held accountable to it, you just don't do it and then we wonder why we are not doing the things we said we [00:23:00] would. When we are working on building the sense of accountability to ourselves in the absence of external accountability by replicating what we want from external accountability for ourselves, then part of that is making realistic plans that take into account the real human you, the real different responsibilities that you have, so that the initial plan is as close as possible to something you want to stick to. So that you can then use the, I'm doing this because it's what I said I'd do, and it was a reasonable plan, As your logic throughout, if you believe it's an unreasonable plan before you start, that's very hard to stick to. Just as if you are external accountability person, the person who's holding you to this, if you thought they were unreasonable, you thought they were unfair in what they were asked. You would probably be much less inclined to kind of scurry to meet what they're asking of you. But if that's [00:24:00] somebody who has set you realistic, understandable, fair goals and targets, we're much more likely to try and achieve it. We want to be replicating that for ourselves. So that was a sort of extended answer of the short voice note that I gave my member when she asked this. I hope that you found it useful. I know working without external accountability is one of the hardest things. It's one of the things that we need to develop all the way through our PhDs and our academic careers. I hope it's given you some food for thought. If you are on my newsletter, do reply to the emails. Let me know what you think and how this is applying in your life. Now, keep an eye on the podcast because over the next few weeks we are gonna have some coaching episodes. So I have asked my members for volunteers who would be willing to get coached for the podcast on a variety of different topics so it will give you a real insight into common issues that PhD students experience that you can learn from, apply for yourself, but it'll also give you some insight what it's [00:25:00] like to be in the membership and being able to hear other people getting coached on topics that are relevant to you. So make sure you tune in for those. Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next week.
Writing can feel like you’re banging your head against a wall sometimes. Trying to craft sentences, when you’re not entirely sure where you’re going, and then spending hours working and ending up with nothing to show for it. In this episode I unpick the self-talk that makes this more painful than it needs to be, I introduce the concept of “thinking writing” and give you some specific tasks to experiment with. I don’t promise to stop you feeling confused - but I will move you from “confused and that’s a problem” to “confused and that’s OK and I know exactly what to do next”. If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on how to use a do know, don’t know list. Transcript [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast, and this week is inspired by one of my members' questions. So in the PhD life coach membership, students are able to submit questions to me in our little private members community, and I will record short voice notes for them answering that specific question, and all the other members can hear the voice notes. And I do a bunch of these every week, and sometimes though I feel like they're such interesting questions and such, commonly experienced questions that I kind of steal them and bring them over here so I can share the answers with all of you guys and have a little bit more time to go into them in more detail. And that is what we're going to be doing today. So what was the question that piqued my interest? It was, how do I write when I'm confused? So this person said that they can only get on with their writing when they know what they're saying and that they find that it flows really well. This is not somebody who struggles with their writing. They said it flows really [00:01:00] well once they know what they're gonna say and they get on with it, but that if they write when they're not sure what to say, it ends up being messy and nonsensical and they don't get anywhere. And so they want to know, how do I write when I'm confused? So I'm actually gonna divide this answer into three sections in a vague attempt for this not just to be me rambling. Anyway, so I wanna think first of all about what, anybody, so this person who asked the question, but any of you guys too, what you are making it mean about yourself that you are experiencing this confusion. It's the first part. The second part is I wanna think more about our kind of perception of the writing process. What is it? What's it for? What means it's going well or going badly. And then finally, I wanna give you some really specific tips about how you can move ahead when you're confused, so that as soon as you stop listening to this [00:02:00] podcast, you can go and start writing something that you're currently feeling confused about. So. That's my plan. Okay. As usual, I might go off on a tangent partway through? Who knows what will come out of my brain, but we're going with it for now. So first of all, what are you making it mean that you are confused? This is one of the most common things that I hear from you listeners, and that I see in my members and other clients is people making it mean if I am confused, I must not be good at this. And that's totally understandable, right? As we go through school and other parts of life, if you don't understand something, it usually is because you are in some way not keeping up with the teacher. There's something that you are kind of struggling to get, and we very much see right or wrong, uh, that being like on us, that that's our fault. That seems to be very much on us, right? That that's a [00:03:00] flaw in us in some way, and that if we were good enough at this, we would not be confused. But the fact is, as you get further and further through academia, whether you're doing your PhD, whether you are now an academic, as you get further and further through and you start wrestling with more complex problems, being confused becomes not so much something about you and your capabilities, but more about the complexity of the thing that you are wrestling with. Because sure, sometimes confusion can be because we don't have the requisite skills and experience and understanding to understand this thing that we are looking at. That is sometimes the cause of the confusion, right? But often the cause of the confusion is because we are looking at something quite complex and we are seeing, oh, this person says this, but that person says [00:04:00] that and they can't both be true. So I am a bit confused what is it that I'm seeing here? What's going on here? What is there evidence for? When I look at the data, if it showed this, then it would say that, and if it showed this, then it would say that, but it's saying this other thing or it's saying this thing that we didn't expect it to say. So what does that mean? I'm confused. Or I'm trying to piece together this story, this argument for the first time. No one's ever articulated this before and I haven't yet decided what I think about it, I, I'm still confused as to exactly what's going on here, what this, you know, these artifacts, this data collection, whatever it is, what it means. That's about the task you're trying to do rather than about your abilities. It's also about the stage of the project you are at. In the [00:05:00] past when we were at school and things like that, usually the length of the tasks we were doing were not necessarily that long, and so you're kind of expected to get past that confused bit pretty quickly so that you could get on and get it done. But in a PhD or in an academic career, often we're in that confused part for really quite some time because figuring out what do we know, what do we need to know in order to decide how we're gonna present this or even decide what we actually think? Those periods of time can be quite protracted. That can be measured in weeks, months, even years. And so. What previously was a quick problem to be solved. Oh, I'm confused. Let's get some help. Okay. I am less confused so I can move on. Now can become rapidly something where we're actually, we're in a state of somewhat [00:06:00] confusion if we call it confusion, if we frame it as confusion, but certainly the state where we're like, I don't know exactly how I'm gonna do this, or exactly what I'm trying to argue, or exactly what this is gonna end up looking like. Yet we can be in that period for really quite a long period of time. Okay, and so we're in this situation where the confusion no longer usually means anything about us and our abilities. It means something about the complexity of the task we're trying to do and the stage of that task that we're at. But if in our heads we still think it means something about us and that if we were better at it, we wouldn't be confused. Then it becomes a really uncomfortable place to be because it's not just then that we are confused about the thing we are then also judging ourselves hard for not being able to do the thing. We're not being able to figure out what we're gonna do with this complex issue. And I heard this a little bit [00:07:00] in the question that came in from my member because they talked about how when they're feeling confused, their writing comes out messy and nonsensical. And I was like, well, yeah, of course it does, but that doesn't mean you are messy and nonsensical. That doesn't mean you're not gonna figure this out. That's a version of the thinking process, and we're gonna talk about that more in a minute. That's the place you are at at the moment, and that doesn't mean anything about you and your abilities. It doesn't mean anything about your prospects. It doesn't mean anything about where you are gonna get next. It just means you're in this messy bit where you are trying nonsensical ideas. Sometimes they won't turn out to be nonsensical. They'll start as nonsensical and then you'll realize there's actually more sense in them than you realized. And other times they'll be nonsensical, but you'll realize that and it will open up a door to something else that makes more sense. Okay. We have to be careful about making it mean something [00:08:00] about ourselves. 'cause when we make it mean something about ourselves and our own prospects, then we bring the judgment in, then we bring the criticism, then we bring the, I should be moving faster. I should be making sense. I should have figured this out by now. And then we don't enjoy the academic process. 'cause actually that grappling with complex ideas is the academic process. And I know I've talked about that a few times on the podcast over the last few months, but I think it's really worth reiterating that is the academic process. And so this part of being confused, usually confusion is a sign that you are thinking about something interesting. Something that it's like, oh, it's actually not clear what this is or how to present it or how to move forward. So I'd love for you to practice if your brain is going, oh yeah, I'm pretty confused about that going, yeah, of course. We're confused. It's complicated. We're gonna figure this out. And almost [00:09:00] embracing that confusion, seeing it as a sign that you are grappling with something that doesn't have a straightforward answer. Because frankly, if it had a straightforward answer and we knew exactly what we were gonna say immediately, it might not be worth reading. It might not be worth us writing it. If it's obvious to everybody, oh yes, this is the way forward, it might not actually even be that useful? The fact that we're grappling with something confusing means we're grappling with something interesting where it needs a perspective, where it needs a kind of filter and interpretation and a viewpoint, and that's what's interesting. So confusion is a sign that you are doing something interesting. The second thing is thinking about what we mean by writing. Because an awful lot of people only count it as writing if it is something that will end up in the end product. Either, you know, people know you've gotta do drafts, right? So I'm not saying that you guys think that you're gonna [00:10:00] write something and then off it goes straight into your article or straight into your chapter or whatever. But usually we think that writing is an attempt towards that, that it's working out a version of what could be in the final piece of text that we are then going to edit, improve, expand, reduce, even remove, but that is written with the intention of being the first sort of attempt at that final version, and that's great, right? Those things are important. Outlining what's gonna be in your final chapter, drafting your article, editing your article, all these things we know these are the important steps of writing. But what people often underestimate is the extent to which writing isn't only about producing an end product. Writing is also about understanding what's happening in your head 'cause the problem with thoughts is that we can't see [00:11:00] them. And when we can't see them, and especially with gorgeous intelligent brains like all of you guys have, is those thoughts can whiz in 47 directions inside our head, and they're very hard to grasp hold of, and they're very hard to play with and to see and to make decisions about and all of those things. Writing is a way of making thinking visible. Writing is a way of getting it outta your head onto a piece of paper so that you can make decisions about it, and that doesn't even just mean brainstorms. I'm gonna talk to you in a minute about some specific techniques for all of this stuff. This doesn't just mean brainstorms. But what we're essentially trying to do here is recognize that writing can solely be a thinking process. I would love for you to prioritize writing that is never, ever going to go in your thesis or a published article. And you might say, [00:12:00] Vic, I barely have the time to do the real writing. I definitely don't have time to do the writing for fun. I definitely don't have time to write stuff that's never gonna get used, and I would argue I've been there. Okay, before I argue anything I'm gonna say I get that I massive and I still argue against that part of my brain. Okay. I have the coach part of my brain that says all these sensible things. You lot get to listen to my podcast once a week. I hear these things in my head all the time. You think that would be useful? But it's only part of my brain 'cause the other part of my brain is still going. Yeah. Yeah. But we haven't got that much time, so should we just get on with the bit that needs writing? Should we just get, get on with what's gonna go in the podcast rather than what could, or whatever. Okay. So if you are going, I don't have time for that, Vikki, because I don't have time for the actual writing I need to do, let alone other writing, I am talking specifically to you. If that was your thought, tune on in, 'cause this is specifically for you. If you think you don't have time [00:13:00] to do the thinking writing bit because you haven't got time to do the actual writing, writing bit. You need it more. Not less. So it's the same that I sometimes get members contacting me saying, you know, love the membership, find it so useful. But I'm struggling to fit in coaching sessions. Um, I just don't really have time. If you don't have time for coaching, you need a coach. You a hundred percent need a coach because coaching makes everything else go faster. And writing as thinking makes every other step of the writing process go better. So if you are finding yourself, criticizing yourself, saying, when I'm confused and I'm writing it doesn't make any sense, I can't use it. Then we get to say no because that's not its job. Its purpose is not to end up in the thesis. The writing I do when confused is not with that end product in [00:14:00] mind directly. Where this is gonna translate into that, it's about understanding and untying that confusion. The writing is the tool, not the end product. And that's again why I think we get so judgmental when we are confused about our writing, 'cause we're expecting it to look like an end product when it is a tool. So then I hear you ask the third thing, what do I actually do then, Vic, if I'm using the writing as a tool to understand my confusion and to decide what I wanna do going forward. What does that actually look like? Because in most of my members and the people I've worked with, their writing looks like drafting. So when you say write stuff that will never be in their thesis, never be in a grant, never be in their article. They don't know what to write, and that's okay. 'cause we don't really practice this stuff. Right. You get so much practice at sort of, um, focused writing towards an end goal, like an essay or whatever as we come through. But we very rarely get asked to do or [00:15:00] get. Sort of experience and practice at doing this sort of thinking writing. So what do we do? First thing we do is we make it feel different than target focused writing, than writing as an end product. Because our, our love little brains, they might be super clever, but if it feels the same. We're sat in front of a computer typing same as we would. If we're producing an end product, then our brains get really confused and start judging ourselves against that criteria, and we don't wanna do that. So let's make it feel different. Now, there's a number of ways you can do this. I love paper and pen. I particularly love big paper and bright colored pens. And by the way, A DHD is, stay with me. Stay with me. 'cause I know where you're going. You don't have to run off to Amazon, you don't need new pens. Please don't go and find some color coded system that's gonna work. And those of you who don't have a DHD, we like, well now, of course not. I'm listening to a, to a podcast. Why would I do that? Everybody else I know you. Okay. My members do this in workshops and I have to say, stay [00:16:00] here. So when I say bright colored pens, I don't mean you need new felt tips. I mean, you grab whatever you've got in your house, just ridiculous pens. Whether it's those little short stubby ones that you get in like Ikea or whatever, or whether it's crayons that your kids use, or whether it's that Sharpie that you bought once for something or other. I don't care. Just make it some random ass pen. Okay? Write in pencil. Who writes in pencil these days? Let's write pencil. Grab a pencil. Happy days, whatever. Do not go and buy more pens. This is not the point. I'm on a bit of a low buy mission at the moment, and I'm trying to bring you guys along with me. That's a tangent, but it's a short one. So we're coming back. So grab some other pen, pencil and try writing using that. Writing in somewhere different than usually right? Writing, standing up rather than sitting down writing by shouting into a voice note machine and getting the transcription cleverness to do its thing. If you do feel that you want to be on your computer and that you feel you can separate it. One of my gorgeous [00:17:00] ex-member, used to write in Pink Comic Sands for this part of it. So we are trying to write in a way that is specifically and intentionally not good academic writing. So that's thinking about changing the materials to make that obvious. The other way you can do it is writing in not an academic voice at all. So writing how it comes out your head. Writing in a way that is explicitly not academic. Writing in the way you'd explain it to your children. Writing in a way that just feels conversational. And again, we are not trying to produce something we are gonna use, but we're sort of talking through our thoughts. And you can do that in a, it's called metacognition. When you're thinking about thinking, you can do it in a metacognitive way where you are writing about what you're thinking. So you're saying, um, you know, the data showed x, Y, ZI think this could possibly mean blah, blah, [00:18:00] blah, blah. And if I was gonna argue it that way, I would say, da. But it could also mean this. And if it was that, then I'd say, and you can actually write down, I'm finding it quite hard to choose between these. 'cause this one has strong arguments of X, Y, Z. Write, write, write, write, write. Um uh, but that one has strong arguments of A, B, C. Write, write, write, write, write. So we're writing all this down. Right. But we're writing like what we are thinking, not some like early draft of a mini textbook thing. So we're writing using unusual materials or in unusual places. We're writing in an unusual style, IE how it comes out of our heads rather than into academic thinking. We can even set ourselves little unusual challenges. So you could, if you are looking at it going, oh, I just dunno what this means. If you can get to a stage where you can say, or it could mean this, or it could mean that, then you could say, okay. I'm gonna write for 15 minutes [00:19:00] as though I really strongly believe it means this, and I'm gonna find all the evidence I can. I'm gonna make the most compelling argument I can, and I'm going all in on that. I'm gonna be a tyrant who only believes that, and then set yourself for 15 minutes i'm gonna write the other way. I'm gonna write as though I strongly believe that version that it could mean this. And then we do 15 minutes where we're like, okay, I'm gonna be the best diplomat ever. Who finds the place in between who avoids all or nothing thinking, who thinks something in between the two who maybe avoids the controversy or addresses it indirectly or something and I'm gonna write like them for 15 minutes? And you might say, well, I'm on a minute, Vic, I've, that means I've been writing for 45 minutes and I haven't produced anything useful. But what you've produced is progression in your thinking. And if you are confused, that is what we are looking for. We're not looking for end product producing now. We are looking for progression and increasing clarity in our thinking, because I promise if [00:20:00] you try to argue something from both perspectives, as you go through, as you start looking for evidence, as you work on it, you will find that there are some bits that feel more compelling than others. There's some where you're like, okay, yeah, actually this is quite convincing. And others you're like, I feel quite awkward arguing it this way. And you will start to notice how you feel when you write it. You'll start to notice where you've got more evidence. You'll start to notice which version of this feels true and authentic to you. And that's how you start progressing your thinking. And then, I mean, this person's already told me that once they've got a clear idea, they're pretty good at just smashing it out. I know that's not true for all of you. We've got other podcasts to help you with that. But once you've got to a stage where your thoughts are much clearer, then it is so much easier. 'cause now we can start to make an outline. Now we can start drafting around that outline. We can start editing around that outline. We've got something to [00:21:00] refer back to because we're saying, okay, this article needs to present that viewpoint because I've decided, and if you're watching on YouTube, I'm kind of doing the little inverted comma speech marky things "decided", and I'll tell you why in a second. We've decided what our viewpoint is. Suddenly it's actually easier to draft 'cause you've got a viewpoint you're trying to convey rather than waffling around being unsure what your viewpoint is. Now I said I put inverted commas around decided, and that's because these don't have to be final decisions, right? These don't have to be okay. Once I've done my thinking, writing, I dive on irreversibly into my drafting process, and from then I'm stuck with what my viewpoint and I've just gotta make it work. No. Obviously not. We're dynamic people. If once you've sort of started writing it in a more outlined and drafty way in more academic tone and things like that, you're like, I don't think this is as compelling as I thought it was, or actually, I like my viewpoint, but here's an extra nuance I want to add, or extra evidence I want to add, then of course we [00:22:00] change it then. Right? We're still thinking when we're doing all of that stuff, but it's a lot easier. If we've made at least some of that confusion, less confusing by going through the thinking writing process. I hope that is helpful. I want you all to have a ponder. What is one thing that you are feeling too confused to write about at the moment, and how could you try out one or two of the tasks that I've just shared with you to see if you can make your thinking visible, play with your thinking. Feel free to like cut stuff up and move it around. Do different ideas in different colors. Let's be a bit creative about this stuff. Have a go. And if you're not on my newsletter, jump on my newsletter. Just go to my website, the PhD life coach.com, and you can sign up right there on the front page, and then reply to my newsletter. Let me know what you're trying and how it is helping you straighten out your confusion. Thank you so much for [00:23:00] listening, everybody. I hope that was useful and I will see you next week.
One of the most annoying phrases I hear is “my supervisor only gives feedback on polished drafts”. This is usually accompanied by stories of wasting weeks stressing about whether the work is polished enough, only for the supervisor to later declare it “missing the point” or other such criticisms. In this episode I discuss (ok, I rant about) why waiting for a polished draft is a fundamentally flawed policy and what we should do instead. I give advice for supervisors who think that this is the easiest/best way (I know you’re not doing it to be unhelpful!) and for students whose supervisors still do this. Check it out if you’re in this position, or if you just want to hear me get a bit feisty! If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on how to edit your work without hating yourself. Transcript [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. Now, I'm not gonna lie, I've been procrastinating recording this. I'd got a plan for what I was gonna do and for various reasons I wasn't able to do it this week, and I've not been in a great mood. I'm not sure why. Sun shining mostly. Not sure why the grumps have hit, but the grumps have hit a little bit. And one of the things that I'm really working on is being able to still do the things I need to do, even when I don't particularly feel like it. And that is something that I do struggle with. And so yesterday I was meant to record this podcast. I didn't. But today it's like, right, I'm gonna record this podcast. And so I thought, what would I say to my members if they had a task that they didn't really feel like doing, but that they wanted to get done? And I decided to try and practice what I preach. So what would we talk about? We would talk about why we want to do the thing, whether we're willing to do the thing, that we don't necessarily have to be motivated to do it. [00:01:00] We just have to be willing to do it. And one of the things we've been talking about more recently is using your strengths, meeting yourself where you are at and moving forward from there. So I thought, right, what would using my strengths and meeting myself where I'm at, look like, and I realized that the one thing that was is I have a lot of opinions and I'm feeling a little grumpy. So I thought, why not? You're gonna get one of my opinions today. Uh, so let's go. This is partly aimed at supervisors. If you are a supervisor who does the thing I'm about to get grumpy about, then I'm gonna spend the next 20 minutes or so trying to convince you as to why you shouldn't. If your student who supervisor does the thing that I'm getting grumpy about, then I am going to help you build your logic when you ask for them to do it differently. And I'll give you some kind [00:02:00] of coping strategies if they refuse to change. So that's what we're gonna do today. I'm gonna channel my grumpy and have a little rant. Let's go. So what's the thing? The thing, and it comes up in my membership. It comes up in my one-to-one coaching, and frankly, it comes up when I do supervisor training and people defend it. And that is not giving feedback until you have a polished draft. Whew. Deep breath, Vikki. This winds me up more than pretty much anything else in the supervisory world because I think it wastes everybody's time. I understand where it comes from and I will talk with you where I think it comes from, but it is such a time waster in practical ways, in emotional ways, and it's a time waster for both supervisor and student. So first of all, where does it come from? Well, what I hear from a surprising number of [00:03:00] students is that their supervisors won't give feedback on any writing until it's polished. And by polished they mean sounding like it's actually a piece of academic writing. So it's in the correct sort of academic tone, whatever that means in your discipline that it doesn't have spelling errors and typos and grammatical mistakes and repetitive, you know, it's elegantly written and I get it. Supervisors, if you're listening, I know you are tight for time. I've been there. I massively get how tight of time you are and when we read something that we were expecting to be polished, that is then really scruffy. It's really easy to get cross about that because it's really easy to then think that you have to spend lots of time correcting it. So making it mean something about how much time and effort you need to put into it. It's really easy to make it mean [00:04:00] something about. That person's work, it's really easy to read it and be like, oh, this is so scruffy. They've clearly not put any effort in, and it's so, it's really easy to then end up making assumptions about the people who've submitted it to you or whether they're taking it seriously and whether they're capable and all these sorts of things. And so I understand the frustration of unexpectedly receiving a scruffy draft when you're expecting something else. I can then also kind of see the logic. It's like, okay, well if I then tell them to make sure that it's polished, then that won't happen. Okay. So it's one of those situations where there's a very valid problem, but we've jumped to the wrong solution because we think the solution is asking them to submit polished drafts. But there are so many problems associated with waiting until students submit polish drafts. One of the things I teach in my [00:05:00] membership is that writing is actually made up of a whole series of different types of tasks. From writing just about the things you're reading, writing about the things that you are thinking, and none of that writing goes into your final writing. This is more kind of writing as processing and decision making. There's outlining, there's rough drafts, there's macro editing where we are really thinking about the content, whether it covers everything, whether the proportions are about right, and all those sorts of things. Micro editing where we make sure that it accurate and that it's, you know, appropriate for our discipline and things like that. And then there's kind of a proofreading element and so on, and we don't move through those in a linear way. We move through them quite iteratively. But they're all different tasks, right? And the problem with asking for a piece of polished writing before you give feedback is that somebody is therefore moving between all of those steps without feedback at [00:06:00] any point until they get to the last bit, and then you give them feedback on that bit. And then what happens is you are like, oh, I don't think you should include any of this stuff, but you should have included this stuff that you omitted. And suddenly they've polished paragraphs that you are now telling them to take out they've not written things entirely that you think should be included, and so all of a sudden you are giving them really demoralizing feedback because something that they've spent ages toiling over to make it sound good, is being removed entirely, and they've realized they've entirely missed other things. Requesting polished drafts also completely shifts the focus of what you are asking for when you're getting feedback. Because if you tell somebody it has to be polished before it comes to me, you're saying it needs to be good. Okay. It needs to not only cover the stuff, I think it should [00:07:00] cover in the ways I think it should, but it should sound the way it should. It should be correct and accurate and proofed read and all those things. And so what the student's brain is then saying is, is it good enough? Is it good enough? Is it good enough? Is it polished enough? Okay. That's the question they're asking themselves. And the problem when a student is going, do I think it's good enough? Do I think it's do it good enough? Is that the vast majority of PhD students don't often think their work is good enough, or at least don't have a good, um, kind of yard stick to measure what good enough really is. What that really means. And so what then happens is we end up having huge amounts of time between rounds of feedback because they've got to do the entire drafting and outlining process. And they've got to edit it and they've got to polish it and they've got to proofread it and they're probably then gonna procrastinate sending it to you 'cause they're worried it's not good enough. And so keep fiddling with the [00:08:00] text and keep checking things and moving things around a little bit and stuff until eventually they either panic enough that they submit it or they eventually think that it might just be good enough and they're not sure what else they'll do anyway and so they submit it. It means we take a huge amount of time in between setting the piece of work and getting anything to look at, and there's so many places that they can go wrong in that process. I did mention I was grumpy, didn't I? I told you this again, ranty. Anyway and so we waste so much time. We waste so much effort and we don't teach the principles of good feedback. Now the usual pushback, and I've had this in supervisor training sessions that I've run, i've had this as a pushback. The usual pushback against looking at earlier drafts is I can't focus on the content if there are mistakes. And I have two responses to that. [00:09:00] The first one is if it's clear what the person is asking for feedback on, and we're gonna talk about that in a second, exactly what I mean. If it's clear what the person is asking for feedback about, you absolutely should be able to, because if the question is, is it good enough? It's hard to answer that when there's lots of mistakes. But if the question is, does my broad argument make compelling sense, you can absolutely answer that, even if there's typos and mistakes in it. Okay. So that's my first one is if we are really clear what the feedback is about, why we're asking for feedback at this time point, then absolutely the mistakes don't make any difference in it, whether it's in elegantly written, whether there's typos and things doesn't make any difference. The other is if it is just that typos annoy you and you feel the need to correct them, I am gonna say this with love 'cause I do have a lot of supervisors that listen to [00:10:00] this. That's a you problem. That is a you problem. You get to learn to regulate your own emotions about the fact that typos annoy you. Perhaps delve a little bit into why they bother you so much and what perfectionist standards you maybe need to work through so that you can look at something and give feedback without it being perfectly polished. An analogy that often helps people see this is I want you to imagine you're a commissioned artist. Okay, so you're an artist who paints paintings that other people request. So it's not that you just make them and sell them to people, that people come to you and say, I want you to do a painting of my house, or a painting of my dog, or whatever. And you then paint it to demand. Now the client could say, oh, I won't know if I love it until I see the finished picture. So do the whole thing all the way through. Do the composition, do the drafting, [00:11:00] do the choosing of the colors of the paint. Do finalize the actual painting. Make it all beautiful. Varnish it, frame it. And then I'll tell you whether I like it or not. Ludicrous, no commissioned artist would ever do that. Okay. What would happen instead is that you would have discussions where you're like, I'm thinking about doing it like this. You might show a series of sketches that you've done go, do you like the dog laying like this, or do you want it sitting up ? Do you prefer this or that? I'm thinking of these sorts of paint swatches. What do you think? Are these the colors you enjoy? You do all of that stuff. It's the same for you to an interior designer. You wouldn't say, I want you to make a polished version. Do my whole house. And then I'll tell you whether I like it and whether you need to change it or not. No, they make mood boards. They do all the different, you know, they do the designs, they'd show examples you know, little bits of this is what a final bit might look like, but not all of it.[00:12:00] And we would absolutely expect that. And the reason we'd expect that is because if we give feedback regularly on specific things, then we are so much more likely to be working together in the same direction. And that's what we want, right? We want supervisor and students to feel like they're working together in the same direction with the same common aim. So what we want is not to be waiting for polished drafts. We want to be able to have feedback that's appropriate for the stage at every stage of the feedback process. Does that mean that as a supervisor, you should be reading every scruffy draft that they produce? No, because a scruffy draft is not necessarily the best way of getting feedback on the specific thing that you need feedback on at any one time. And so instead of thinking that our option is, oh, I either have to read lots of scruffy drafts, or I have to wait for polished drafts, and that will just be how it is. [00:13:00] We get to ask ourselves, what do I actually want to give feedback on at this stage, and what is the best way for them to present that to me such that I'm able to do it? Okay. Really, really important question. So, if you think about it at the beginning of a writing process, what things do you wanna get feedback on? Then you wanna make sure that the broad argument is clear, that the research question is well established and justified that the scope of the data collection or whatever version you do in your discipline. Is about right. Does it matter whether everything's spelled correctly? Of course it doesn't. Absolutely doesn't, and it's not what we're gonna give feedback on, but we are gonna give feedback about are those broad things. This is the academic equivalent of a sketch. Are the main things in the right places. Does it look like this will build towards a compelling argument? Are they making it compellingly yet? [00:14:00] No. But does it look like the right pieces are there to build towards a compelling argument? And so then you ask, right, if that's what I need to do at the early stages of a draft, what's the best format for me to get that? Is that a annotated bibliography? Is that a detailed outline so I can see what order they're planning to do it in? Is it, and this is something people very rarely use, but I'm a big fan of, is it a polished summary? So if you only want to read polished text, I would massively encourage you to get your students to write a polished summary. So like 500 words or 800 words or something like that, that tells the whole story in beautiful, elegant writing so that you don't have a meltdown when you see a typo, um, but polished. And then you can see does this actually make sense in this order? Are there sections we don't need? Are there sections that are missing?[00:15:00] Are there sections that are repetitive and that will take so much less time than doing a polished draft of 4,000 words or whatever. So ask yourself, what's the piece that they need in order to move forward? What specific thing do I need to get feedback on? And what's the best format for us to do that? Sometimes it could be a presentation. Right. It could be. Talk me through the argument here. Talk me through how you are presenting this. It could be if you are in a sort of quantitative, numerically kind of a field, it could be, give me the research question, give me the principle graph and give me 10 lines of explanation of that graph, for example. What do I need in order to be able to actually give meaningful feedback for the stage that it's at. If you're at a stage where actually their ability to write in an academic way, whatever that means in your [00:16:00] discipline and your opinion is your biggest concern. It doesn't have to be the full thing. Ask 'em to give you a paragraph. You can give decent feedback on academic writing and style from a paragraph. Why have they got to polish the whole thing? Ask them to submit a piece of writing, a short piece, paragraph, two paragraphs, something like that. Give them feedback on that specific feedback. Not completely rewording, but like specific feedback. And then ask them, I want you to write two more paragraphs and I want you to apply the feedback I gave you on these paragraphs to everything else. Or even better get them to submit a couple of paragraphs of writing. Then you go through with them, actually sat next to them or on a screen together, go through and go, oh, I would move this to here. See how if we rephrase that, that would be clearer. See how you've got repetition here and here. Actually take them through, editing real life with them, and then say, I want you to take the [00:17:00] principles of what we've done to that paragraph and apply it to the rest of the work before you give it to me. Because that's the other thing, right, is if you get them to polish an entire thing, if there's one problem with the way they write or one misunderstanding, it's gonna be infused through that whole thing, and you are either gonna have to correct it a hundred times, or you are not gonna give feedback on the whole thing, in which case it was pointless to them giving you the whole thing. It is much better to pick up these issues or short pieces of text and then to give them the opportunity to go away and apply the feedback that you've taught them and to see whether it now comes back better next time. And the joy of this is if you are more specific in your feedback, if you are much clearer exactly which element we're giving feedback on right now, you can do it so much faster. 'cause some people are going, Vikki, I don't have time for many, many iterations of feedback. My view, you [00:18:00] don't have time not to have many iterations of feedback. Because if your student works for three months to send you something polished and then you realize there's fundamental flaws with it, you got another three months before, yes, you might have spent an hour, two hours reading it or whatever, but you've now got another three months to wait until they send you the next polished draft. We want to build to a stage where we can get to quick and dirty feedback. Where actually to give them the bit of information, the bit of opinion, the bit of insight that they need to move forward doesn't take you very long 'cause you're keeping it really specific. So it's a, here's something quick. Okay, think about this, think about that. Okay, go away. Here's the next bit. Okay, let's go. So it keeps the ball moving. It makes it much less likely that you are getting off track makes it much more likely that overall the efficiency of it will work so much better. And finally, what do you do if you're a student whose supervisor [00:19:00] insists on this and is unlikely to listen to my little podcast rants? Well, I think the first thing is to get really clear yourself on your purpose for asking feedback because if you can get clear on your purpose for asking for feedback at this stage, you can then get creative about what you could offer to share with them, to enable them to give feedback on that, that doesn't involve them reading a full scruffy draft. So we've talked about a bunch of options here. You could suggest those not saying, I don't want you to wait for a polished draft anymore, so please could you do it differently, but instead saying it will be useful if at this time, juncture, I could get feedback on this specific thing. Would it be okay if I talk it through with you or give you a polished summary or do a quick presentation or something, one of the ideas that I just gave you? You can actually suggest those as an alternative approach. The second thing that you can do, and this doesn't always work, but I still think it's quite a useful practice, [00:20:00] is you can indicate where you know it's not as polished as it could be. Part of the thing that supervisors worry about is if they read something and it's not very good, is whether or not you think it's good. Because if it's not very good and you don't think it's good, then we're not too bad. We're just earlier in the stages. But if they don't think it's good and you do think it's good, then we've got more of a kind of taste gap going on. We've got a more of a lack of understanding happening. And so what you can do if you are encouraging them to look at something that is an earlier draft than they would normally want to, is indicate places that have not yet been proofread, or places where you know that it needs shortening, for example, okay? So that they can spend less time feeding back on the things that you already know. The final thing is I would really encourage you to figure out a fast way to get it to polished enough, because what we're doing here is not getting it [00:21:00] to the stage where we think it is good enough and as good as we can possibly get it, we're getting it to a stage where it's polished enough that they won't be crossed about it. So what might that look like? That might look like not spending ages and ages, really, sort of battling with yourself as to whether to say the sentence like this or like that. But instead simply going through it and making sure there's no errors in it, making sure that you've checked for spelling mistakes, you've checked for typos, things like that. So it may not be your best piece of work ever, but you've done a quick sweep through to give it a sort of a veneer of polish, okay? So that it's not overtly messy. that way you can still ask for more specific types of feedback on particular issues that you're concerned about at the moment, but you've kind of scrubbed off the top those obvious mistakes that are gonna flag it as being not a polished version. And the irony is [00:22:00] for many of you that might be just what your supervisor means. That your supervisor doesn't mean this has to be the absolute best that you could possibly achieve in three months, but they mean please just check there's not overt mistakes in it. And if that's the case clarifying that might straighten this whole thing out. Anyway, it may just be that you've got mixed messages as to what a polished draft even means to your supervisor, so hopefully there's some little workarounds for you if your supervisors aren't open to looking at rougher versions or different formats. So that's my little rant. And you might be going, but Vikki, no one would be asked for polished drafts. I always look at early drafts if, if that's you. I love you. You are great. Make sure you stay focused in what you're asking for so that you're not exhausting yourself, giving full feedback on every element at every stage. Because that's the other flip side is if you are one of these lovely [00:23:00] supervisors who says, show me it whenever you are ready but doesn't say what to show you and doesn't say specifically what you're looking at, then you are simultaneously feeding back on clarity and compellingness. And, detail and accuracy and spelling, style, punctuation, grammar. If you are feeding back on all of those, every time you are doing too much work, you are at the other end of my problems here. Okay? I love you dearly and you don't have time to do that. You are not serving your students by trying to do that. So if you are at the other end, you're like, oh, but I always read it, then we need to think much more clearly about how can you ask them to give you something that allows you to assess the one thing that you're assessing in this round of feedback and get it back to them rapido so they can get on and do the next thing. And you can get on and do the rest of everything else. If you are also thinking, but I don't know anyone who'd asked for polished drafts. You'd be [00:24:00] surprised. Unfortunately, you would be surprised. Every group of students I've ever worked with, at least some of them have supervisors who say they will only read polished drafts, and that's why it winds me up quite this much. And that's why this felt like a fun topic to talk about in a week where I was feeling a little bit grumpy anyway, and I actually felt better for talking about it. I hope it is useful. I am actually, and I just decided this spontaneously, so I'll like make it work. I am going to create a little landing page where you can come and get a feedback request form proforma that I have designed and recommend using. It enables students to be much more specific about what they're asking for from you. Students, even if your supervisors don't ask for it, you could use it as a kind of template for an email or something like that just to really clarify your thoughts about what you're asking for. Supervisors, I'd really encourage you to use it with your students. I'll create a little landing page. I'll put it [00:25:00] in the show notes. So whenever you go to my website, PhD life coach.com, if you click on podcast, you'll be able to see all of the show notes from all the different episodes, and I will make sure that there's a link in there where you can download, this particular PDF and I hope you find it useful. Thank you so much. I hope I wasn't too ranty, but I kind of enjoyed it. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you next week.
Lots of people struggle to get work done because they feel like they’re always interrupted, whether that’s by colleagues, friends or family. In this episode I discuss how we can explore this with curiosity, and give some tangible tips about how to reduce the likelihood of interruptions as well as reducing the impact on your work. There’s some hard truths in here too, so be ready to get called out (in a loving and compassionate way as usual!) If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on how to spot, and stop, all or nothing thinking . Transcript [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast, and this week we are thinking about interruptions. So this is something members talk about all the time, the fact that they're kind of getting into their work, they finally feel focused. And then they get interrupted. And for some of you it's gonna be things like you're working from home and you are interrupted by your housemates, your family, your kids, others of you, you'll be working in the actual like work environment and you'll be interrupted by students perhaps, or you'll be interrupted by colleagues, sometimes colleagues just wanting to chat, sometimes asking your advice, something urgent needs doing all these different things. Now, I have to confess with you that when I was still working in the office in my old academic job, I was probably the source of least as many interruptions as I was the victim. I used to get bored of what I was doing and wander the corridors looking for somebody who might be [00:01:00] distractible knocking on people's doors. And so part of this might be about me advising you on how to manage people who do what I used to do. So partly because of that history, but also just 'cause we're all about compassion around here, we are gonna try and come at this from the point of view that the interrupter isn't necessarily doing anything wrong and is almost certainly not trying to disturb you and interrupt you and jeopardize your work in some way. And we're gonna come at it from the perspective that you are not just problematically distractible. Now, some of you might feel problematically distractible. There are definitely days where I'm problematically distractible, but we're gonna come at it from the point of view that this is just a kind of logistic challenge. There are people who want to do the thing that interrupt us and we want to do the thing that we had intended to do. We'll say sometimes [00:02:00] secretly like being interrupted, but we'll come back to that in a second. Um, and we'll try and look at it rather than in a kind of goodies and baddies kind of way, look at it as a little challenge not to solve, but a little challenge to minimize the impact of, and I have six suggestions for you today of things you can do to either minimize the interruptions themselves or to minimize the impact that those interruptions have on what you were trying to do. So let's go. So the first one is that rather than just moan about interactions, we are going to analyze them. I want you to grab a piece of paper and a pen if you can, or do this in your brain if not, have a think about the last few times that you were interrupted, and I want you to describe that context yourself as much as possible. Where were you? Who interrupted you? [00:03:00] Why did they interrupt you on face value? Why? And then also, why did they really interrupt you? Is there other reasons that they interrupted you? You know, what did they interrupt you about? Were they like me just coming for a chat? Were they seeking help? Did they not know how to do something? What was their reason for interrupting you? And I want you to analyze what happened when you were interrupted. So how did you initially respond? How did you respond as the kind of interruption went on? And then how did that transition back to work go if indeed you did transition back to work? Sometimes we don't. Okay. So I want you to really think through and I want you to come up with three to five examples of recent times when you were interrupted and be able to describe all of what went on. The reason this is so important is when we conceptualize this as a [00:04:00] general, I keep getting interrupted problem. It's really hard to fix because that's very generic. It doesn't really have any insights as to what's going on. And that makes it very hard to figure out our next steps forward. Whereas if we can really dig into it, ask ourselves curious questions about exactly what happens when we get interrupted, then we're much better able to start spotting patterns. And once we start spotting patterns, we can action plan. So as an example. Why are you getting interrupted? So if you are finding, as one of my members did, so I originally did a version of this as a voice note for one of my members. She noticed that people were asking her for help in the lab. So she's part-time lab work, part-time PhD, and often she would be interrupted for technical support. And so it wasn't just a generic interruptions, it wasn't a mixture of different reasons. It was mostly help [00:05:00] in the laboratory, and that means by narrowing it down like that, we were much better able to then decide ways forward. And I'm gonna talk, the other five things are gonna be potential ways forward that you could consider using. So I'm not gonna go through those now, but it's gonna be much easier to choose which ones are right for you, if you are more aware of who you get interrupted by, when you get interrupted, and for what reasons. So the second thing, and this is the first of the, what you can actually do about it things is really thinking about intentional time blocks. Now in the , at the moment, I'm teaching my role-based time blocking system, and this is really about choosing intentionally when you're in what mode in your life. Now this can help us in a couple of different ways with interruptions. The first and the one that people always think about is trying to identify what times of day you are really, really not interruptable and why. So just [00:06:00] as if you were in a meeting with somebody, really important, people wouldn't just come bursting in unless it was an emergency. We wanna think about how much of your day, or what is a short block of your day that you could set aside as being uninterruptible. And we'll talk in a second about how you manage the people around you and whether they respect that or not. But the first step is you identifying it because if you always intend to be uninterruptible and you always are interruptible, then that's where things are starting to go wrong because we are planning as though we won't be interrupted and then we're always allowing ourselves to be interrupted. And so it's very, very hard to follow our intentional plans. And then we get to the end of the day, end of the week, wondering why we didn't do all the things that we said we would. So I want there to be some differentiation in your time blocks where some of the time blocks are absolute do not disturb me [00:07:00] unless someone's bleeding type time blocks. Or others are, I've got stuff to do, but I'm interruptible. And we'll think more about how we can request stuff from other people. We can think more about other ways to make these easier to adhere to. But it starts from having that actual intention. We can't adhere to things, We can't make other people adhere to things if we're not actually clear about what it is. So one of the things I see, particularly with people who have responsibility for others. So say you are somebody who can give advice in the laboratory, or somebody who has students or any of these things. Often the reason we get interrupted is because there isn't any intentional time in which you can be contacted. In fact, one of the things my members end up doing is knocking on their supervisor's doors or grabbing them when they see them in the department because they can't get email answers from their supervisors because there isn't a [00:08:00] specific time where it's okay to interrupt that person and so the only way to get their time and attention is to interrupt them. So I want you to check in with yourself. Is there actually designated time where the people that need you can see? You can ask these things. Similarly, those of you who work at home, if you have other family members or other flatmates at home, do you differentiate between times that you don't want to be interrupted and times where you could be interrupted and times where actually you are there for them? Because if people feel like it's all kind of, you are off limits, but they need something, they're gonna come whenever they need it. Whereas if they know that they need something and that their time with you is at 12 or whatever, then it's much easier to go. Yeah, yeah, I'll ask her about that then 'cause then she'll have brain space. So we wanna be as intentional as possible. Not expecting this gold standard of never being [00:09:00] interrupted because that's never gonna happen. But having that gradation of how okay it is to interrupt you at any one time so that at least you know what the plan is, even if others don't necessarily stick to it. What we can then do, if we know that, is we can then decide which things we do in which time blocks. So you can then allocate types of jobs to your uninterruptible slots and different types of jobs to your interruptible slots. So maybe stuff where you have to really immerse yourself in it, where having to come up to answer a question would really throw you off. We do those in our uninterruptible blocks. But then we do other stuff where we're, you know, we could dip in and out a little bit. We do that during our more interruptable blocks and then during the blocks where we're actually like intended to be interrupted. We are not allocating other things to that time. Because many [00:10:00] of you will sort of go into your place of work a couple of times a week, let's say. And if you plan your days when you are in work to be productive on your own stuff for eight hours and then go home again, we are setting ourselves up for fail because people are gonna see you. People are gonna wanna say hi, people are gonna wanna ask you a question. They go, oh, while you're here, could I just, all those things. We need to plan our days where it actually allows time for that to happen. The next thing you can do with third tip to help you sort of reinforce that is think about how you can modify your environment in order to make that clearer. So this can be down to if my door's shut, please don't knock. If my door's open, you can come on in. Those sorts of things. It can be going somewhere else so that it's physically harder to interrupt you, during those periods where you are interrupt It could be physically going somewhere different during those periods where you want to be interruptable so that you are [00:11:00] away from the laboratory. You are away so the students don't know where you are, where your colleagues don't know where you are. I used to have various places I hid on my old university campus. So that sort of geographic, boundaries can just make it a little bit easier. We then do also have to reinforce our own tendencies to distract ourselves and interrupt ourselves by also going, you know what, and I'm gonna turn the wifi off, or, and I'm gonna block my emails for a while, or whatever it might be. Now some of you might be saying, oh, I wish I had an office with a door. I'm in a shared office. But even in those things, you can think about what are environmental signals that you can use. Now, we've all seen probably on like Instagram or whatever these videos of people who've got a sign on their back of the chair saying, please don't interrupt me. I mean, that's a pretty extreme version, but you can even do that. But even things like, if you've got your headphones on, please don't talk to me. That's a signal that I'm focusing, for example. Okay, so thinking about how can you make it [00:12:00] clearer to other people? How can you make it more differentiated for yourself so that it's less likely that you'll get the interruptions and that it's easier to stick to what you intentionally said you would do? Now building on that, the fourth thing is that this involves other people, right? And other people always make things more complicated. And you hear people throw around the word boundaries. You need to have boundaries. Have boundaries, and people throw them around without really defining what they mean by boundaries. And I'm not gonna pretend to give you some like universal definition of boundaries, but I'm gonna tell you what I mean when I talk about boundaries and how I differentiate it from what I call requests. And this is because I'm afraid to tell you, and it annoys me too, but other people won't necessarily do what we ask them to do, and that is the human right. Oh, fabulous. But seriously, it is the truth, right? We can ask people not to do things, and that's what I call a request. We can say to somebody, please could you not [00:13:00] interrupt me between eight and 10:00 AM. Or please, could you not interrupt me when my office door shut unless X, Y, and Z has happened? Please, could you not interrupt me when I got my headphones on? These sorts of things, these are requests. These are not boundaries. These are requests, and we get to look inwards and say to ourselves, do I think this is a reasonable request? Now, if we are saying to our 4-year-old, please do not interrupt Mommy, who's the only adult in the house for eight hours. Probably not reasonable. We're not gonna do that. If we're asking our PhD students not to come and ask us a question before 10:00 AM because we're working on our own work, probably reasonable in our minds, okay? Whether they agree or not another matter. But we get to look inwards and we get to say, do I think that this is a reasonable request? Does making this request help me show up as the person that I want to be? Is this in line with my values and things? And then we also ask ourselves, is this something [00:14:00] that the person is capable of adhering to? So same as with a 4-year-old, right? They're not capable of understanding, it's not something they're gonna stick to. But thinking is the person we're requesting this of actually capable of doing the thing we're asking. So if you've got somebody new working in your laboratory, or you've got a student who's just started, who doesn't know what they're doing or whatever. Is it reasonable? Are they capable of waiting till Tuesdays to ask you questions? Maybe not. They might need more than that, right? So we get to ask, is this in line with my values? Is this something that they are likely to be capable of? And if the answer to both of those things are yes, then we get to make our request. Requests always go best, where we make it clear that it's just a request, it's not an order or any of those things, but where we also explain how it would help us and we explain how we are mitigating the impact on them. So we are not only asking them not to do it, we're also making it clear when they [00:15:00] can ask for things and why this will help them as well as us and all that. We then, and this is the bit I struggle with, this is the bit everybody struggles with unfortunately, we then have to allow them and their grown up human brains to decide whether they're going to adhere to this or not. Now, if you are parenting, it's slightly different because we get a level of leeway of telling people how they can behave when we're parenting. But in any other situation with your students and your colleagues and all those things, if they're grown ass adults, they can do what they like regardless of what we've requested but we get to make our request in a way we feel is appropriate and hope that they adhere to it. What boundaries are? Boundaries are about what you do. So what do you do if somebody doesn't adhere to your request? If somebody behaves in a way that's not how you've asked 'em to behave, so they, let's say they come to you and interrupt you during a time period where you've asked them not to. The boundaries are around how you respond. And again, you get to [00:16:00] decide, right? You get to decide what boundaries you have and how strictly you adhere to them. But the important thing is not about they shouldn't ask. The thing with a boundary is what are you gonna do if they do? So, as an example, you might set a boundary that if somebody interrupts me between 8:00 AM and 10:00 AM I'm gonna ask them to come back at 10. And if then you think, well, what if they say No? No, it'll only take a minute. It'll only take a minute. You then decide what is your boundary Then is just a minute okay. Or do you want to reinforce? No. Unless somebody needs an ambulance, please come back at 10 o'clock. I know it will be easier for you to interrupt me right now. I know it might hold you up. You're gonna need to do other things, but this is my boundary. Come back at 10 o'clock. Okay. You get to decide where that boundary is. Now for some of you, you might say, oh, well they've interrupted me now. I might as well help them 'cause my brain's already out of my work. But we have to think about this. Not in a patronizing way, but we have to [00:17:00] think about this a little bit like parenting. 'cause if you ask them not to interrupt you, but when they interrupt you, you help them. Why would they not? Why would they not interrupt you? If you go for the, oh, well, you've interrupted me now, I might as well help that in no way encourages them to solve their own problems. It in no way encourages them not to interrupt you in future. In fact, it reinforces why you are interruptable, so you get to decide where those boundaries sit. Now just to be clear, that doesn't have to be an absolute, I will not boundary. It could be, for example, that if somebody knocks on your door during a time when you've asked not to be interrupted, you will not say, come in, you will walk to your door. Open your door if you want to have a conversation to quickly answer a question on the doorstep, as it were, you can, and then you shut the door and you go back to your desk. We used to have a thing when I was an academic and I tended to be one of the people that students like came to if they had issues and things like [00:18:00] that. We used to have a thing that if, if you were in the middle of something, unless they were crying, don't let them sit down. Because once somebody sat down in your office, way harder to get rid of them, way harder to get back to work. So it was always stand at the door, don't let them sit down. They can't settle in. If they've sat down, they've settled in. So it doesn't have to be an absolute, I will just ignore you or not answer your question, but it can be other boundaries around how kind of settled you will allow them to get. So that's the difference between requests and boundaries. I want you to be really, really clear at any time which you're working with. Have a think now about what requests you might want to make of the people around you. See if you can identify one thing that you would like to request of one person. Think about how it fits your values. Think about why it might be achievable for them, how it might even be useful for them, and think about how you feel about having that conversation. Also have a think what's one boundary you might wanna put in place, perhaps related to that [00:19:00] request as a kind of, if that request isn't followed, then I will do this. Have an idea of what that might be. The fifth thing I want you to think about is being really cautious of all or nothing thinking. Now we talk about all or nothing thinking quite a bit. In fact, I'm gonna refer to you in the show notes 'cause I did a whole episode about all or nothing thinking and I don't think I've referred to it recently and it's one you might not have found. So I'm gonna make sure I link that in for you in the show notes. By the way, the show notes were always on my website, but if you're like, I'll never go and look at that, babe. Uh, make sure you're on my newsletter. If you're not on my newsletter already, why not? Uh, go to the PhD life coach.com. You'll see a sign up for the newsletter button right on the front page there. You'll get an email from me once a week where I tell you what's going on in the podcast. Um, I'll give you a summary of the podcast and some reflective questions and an action to take and things like that. And the link to related episodes. So it's a really good way to make sure that you're not just listening to the podcast and then forgetting it ever exists, but instead you're kind of taking the stuff that we talk about and applying it [00:20:00] into your life. If you are struggling, if you've been here a little minute and you've been on the newsletter, and you're trying to apply stuff in your life, but you still find yourself not able to do it, that usually means you need a bit more support. The PhD Life Coach membership does exactly that for PhD students, and we do allow early postdocs to sneak in so be aware. But that's exactly what I do. I in that is a more structured support if you struggle to apply things for yourself or if you just prefer to learn and develop in community. We open again at the end of April, so in about eight weeks. So if you're on the newsletter, you'll be the first to hear about it all. Make sure you keep an ear out. We do have free workshops in between. We just did the February one, March one is 25th, I'm gonna say of March dates on my website, you can double check and that's about smashing your to-do list. So do make sure that you check that out and sign up if you are interested. Anyway, all or nothing thinking. That's what I [00:21:00] was talking about. So I think there's two different ways that all or nothing thinking show up here. I haven't explained what all or nothing thinking is. Should we do that first? We'll do that first. All or nothing thinking is where we have kind of extremes of expectations. You know, I must exercise four times a week or it's not worth it. That's all or nothing thinking. Everyone is doing better than me in my PhD. No one else has been overlooked for promotion as many times as me. These sorts of superlative things that see either extreme of a situation without sort of recognizing the nuance, recognizing the options in between. That's the sort of all or nothing thinking that we're thinking about here. And I see this show up with interruptions in two different ways. The first way is the notion that I can't get on with my work unless I know I won't be interrupted. Often people have very [00:22:00] rigid beliefs about what the ideal working conditions are and a belief that they're the only working conditions. So any of you, and this is usually part-time students or people that are doing their academic work alongside an academic job, for example, say your PhD or other research, this notion that you need, I, I couldn't, unless I've got three or four hours, I can't get started, that's all or nothing thinking, okay, it might have some grounding, you might find it easier with big blocks of time, but that's an example if I, I just couldn't, it is all or nothing thinking. So here, if you find yourself thinking, I can't get started because I might get interrupted and I can't work if I know I might be interrupted. I want you just to really poke that thought a little bit. When we see these extreme thoughts, it's really useful just to test it a little bit. Is that [00:23:00] actually true? Is there nothing useful I could do? If there's a risk, I'm gonna be interrupted. Is there bits maybe that I could do sometimes before I get interrupted? At least not assuming that I will be interrupted. Really poking at that and working out what? You know, is that really extremely true? And for most of you it won't be. And if it is true, I want you to ask yourself why is that true? Because usually if that actually is true, that if you think there's any possibility of getting interrupted, you can't start. I'm going to very lovingly and gently suggest that that's a you problem rather than a them problem. Usually that's something about us getting our emotions up, getting frustration and things like that up at the thought [00:24:00] that they are stopping us working, they shouldn't interrupt us. It's because of them, I can't do this. If you've heard me talk about the drama triangle, it's getting into that kind of villain blamey mode. This is, I'm the victim. You are the villain. You keep interrupting me. It's because of you that I can't work. The problem there is not the interruptions, the problem's, this belief that it's other people that are impacting your ability to do things and that you have no control over that. Some of it is low self-efficacy around your ability to manage interruptions. So it's not so much that you are angry at other people interrupting, it's that you don't trust that you are able to get yourself on track. You don't trust that you're able to say no and move them away from you, prevent them from interrupting you or minimize that interruption. If that's the case, it's okay. Right? All of these things, it's okay. It's just useful to know because then [00:25:00] again, the problem is not them interrupting you. The problem is that you don't have a strategy to deal with it, and today I am teaching you some strategies. So you do. So we have all or nothing thinking about whether we can even work when we might get interrupted. The other place that I see a lot of all or nothing thinking is around this idea that if I get interrupted, that's my work block over. Ugh, you've interrupted me now. That sort of vibe, and so off you go. And again, let's poke that. Is that really true? Is it true that because somebody has come in, you now can't use the rest of the session? Is it true that because that person has asked for five minutes, that you have to give them five minutes? Is it true that if you give them five minutes, you might as well sack off the rest of your workout? This is like saying, I don't have time to go to the gym for an hour, so I won't go. Rather than seeing, actually, I could get something useful done in 30 minutes, for example. So double check. If you're telling yourself, Ugh, I've been [00:26:00] interrupted. Now, I might as well just go and help double check that and double check that assumption, because actually with some of these boundaries, with some of these requests, with some of these techniques that I'm teaching you. It may well be possible. It should be possible for you to be interrupted, manage it, manage our own thoughts and emotions about it, and nudge ourselves back to our task again. So that when we get interrupted, it doesn't have to necessarily mean that we can't continue to work. And that leads me to my sixth one and this one. I have to be careful how I explain it. 'Cause sometimes people interpret it wrong. I am gonna tell you what it is and then I'll tell you how people misinterpret it. The sixth one is that sometimes I think people like getting interrupted. I know. I know. Especially the people that moan about getting interrupted. I'm really sorry if I'm calling you out, [00:27:00] but the thing with interruptions is often interruptions are a really good excuse to stop doing something that felt difficult or boring, or that you felt guilty 'cause you hadn't done before, or that you just didn't feel very motivated by. You felt bored by, or whatever. They were really good reason to go away. I want you to imagine that you are at an event that you've paid lots of money for. You've been looking forward to ages, you know, whatever your equivalent of the Taylor Swift Eras tour was, you are there and somebody says, oh, can I just pick your brain about this piece of lab equipment or whatever. You are either gonna not answer your phone or you are gonna give them the shortest. Yep, yep, yep. Okay. Yep. No worries. Thanks. Bye. And get back to the concert. ASAP. It's gonna be very unusual circumstances in [00:28:00] which you will actually go, oh, well I've been interrupted now. No point going back. Yeah, and translate Taylor Swift might not be your vibe. I don't know. Choose your vibe. So sometimes the problem is not so much that we're getting interrupted, the problem is that you kind of like it. Because we can blame somebody else for why we're not doing the thing. It's not our fault. We were interrupted and we can go and do a thing. And I talk about this in my eight ways, you're secretly procrastinating episode that I often mention. Helping somebody else is way easier 'cause you get credit for it, you get some social interaction. They're very grateful. You feel like a good person. It's usually pretty clearly defined. It's usually easier. You haven't got a big emotional baggage about it. Way easier to go and do that than do the thing that you intended to be doing. If you're trying to do complex analysis or write something or whatever, way easier to go and do the interruption. So just be really careful and I'm calling you out as usual, with [00:29:00] love and compassion. I do this too. Okay? If you realize, oh gosh, that is me. Yeah, I do do that. This is not a sign that you are like. Fundamentally flawed or anything like that. It's just really useful to notice. Sometimes we tell ourselves that, you know, good people are helpful, good people are willing to go and do help other people. And so, and it's true, right? We like people, we wanna be collaborative, we wanna make time to help other people. But it can't be the time that you've put aside to do your specific stuff because at some point you won't be helpful anymore 'cause you won't have enough of your own expertise. If you don't put aside time to develop and hone and further extend your expertise, you will become less and less helpful over time. Helping other people all the time is not the route to being the best person to being the most helpful person. Part of helping other people is [00:30:00] having your own expertise so that you're actually useful and we have to allow time for that. So if you are somebody who really values being collaborative, helping other people being, you know, engaged in other people's work and stuff, great time block it. Time block time for that. Allow it to happen when you are doing less cognitively demanding work for sure, but you need to have time for your own expertise development in order to be helpful, and that's even aside from you. You just deserve to have that time for yourself, I believe. But some people don't believe that necessarily, but even if you think your top, top priority is helping other people, developing your own expertise is part of that. Protecting your time to progress your work is the best way of doing that. You wanna help more people, get big grants in, employ other people, support other students. Develop a reputation, so they want to come and work with you, build collaborations by [00:31:00] producing high quality work. All of the collaborative things, all of the helpful things need you to actually do your own work too. There is nothing selfish about making the time to do your own work. So if you've been listening to this part going, oh yeah, I think I do that. Yeah. I think I allow myself to be interrupted because it's easier. That's okay. Let's just notice. We notice, we do the things that I've said so far, so we notice what we're interrupted by and why we think if there are ways that we can prevent it. So if there's things that you are routinely asked about, how can you make it clearer how to do them. If somebody always asks you about a particular lab technique, make [00:32:00] a standard operating procedure. Put labels on the thing, showing where things go, if you're always asked where something goes, see how you can make it easier for other people to not have to interrupt you. Intentionally time block so that you know when are your kind of non-negotiable, non interruptable times. When are your, you could interrupt me, but I am doing things time and when is your No, no come find me 'cause I'm literally here for you times, differentiate those out. Try really intentionally to stick to them. Use environmental reinforcements. Consider going somewhere else, changing your environment in some sort of visible way so that people understand what context you are in. Think about who you need to make those requests of what requests you might make. Check in that they feel good to you regardless of how they respond. Think about what boundaries you want to put in place. Notice where you are using all or nothing thinking and just poke it a little bit. See if there's ways that it's not quite true. See if there's ways that you could work, even though [00:33:00] you might get interrupted. See if there's ways that you believe that if you are interrupted, you could get back to work and then double check whether this is kind of a bit of procrastination. Are you being interrupted because it's easier than doing the thing that you're intended to do. And I'm actually gonna throw in a bonus seventh one, which is practice restarting. Practice restarting after an interruption. So in when I teach about procrastination, I use the analogy of a tightrope walker that beginner tight ropers wobble a lot and they don't notice their wobbling until they've really wobbled, and then they tend to either overcorrect or correct too late. And so they wobble and fall off and most beginner tight ropers. Think that tight ropers don't wobble. Tight ropers do wobble. They're just really good at noticing a tiny wobble and proportionately responding [00:34:00] to it to correct themselves back. So they absolutely do wobble. Just in a much more sort of nuanced and subtle way 'cause they're better at spotting when it happens and they're better at nudging themselves back to balance. And when I talk about procrastination, that's the example that I use, that people who are big procrastinators don't notice their procrastinating for ages, and then they either massively overcorrect or don't correct at all. They just go, oh, I've wasted time now that sucks. Try again tomorrow. Whereas people who can stay focused, it's not that they're just focused all the time, it's that they quickly notice they've lost focus. They quickly and un dramatically bring themselves back to focus. And so like a tight roper to all extents and purposes, it doesn't look like they lost focus, but they did. They did. They're human beings. We all lose focus. And the same is true with interruptions. If you can practice not being massively wppd [00:35:00] when you have an interruption that we keep it to a minimum, we deal with it. We get either ask them to come back another time, deal with it quickly, deal with a little bit of it, and ask 'em to come back another time to deal with the rest or whatever it might be, and that we then nudge ourselves back to balance, nudge ourselves back to working again as quickly as possible so that rather than sitting there going, oh, I've been interrupted now, I might as well go and help or I've been interrupted. Now they've ruined it. There's no point trying to get back into it. I never could. I'm just gonna do my emails. We get to go. Okay, I got interrupted. Back to this, where was I? Except it's gonna take a little minute to pull yourself back in and work out where you were and carry on. But practice that coming back because just as tightrope walkers develop over time to wobble less, you can develop over time, then an interruption doesn't not knock you as far or for as long and get better at pulling yourself back to exactly where you were. All of these things are about developing the skills to [00:36:00] navigate these situations, to developing the self-efficacy to believe that we can at least learn how to do that, even if you don't believe you can manage it at the moment, believing that we can learn how to do these things and then practicing doing it just as we're tight rope walking. We have to practice. We have to expect we won't be perfect at first. We have to accept that we will fall, we will get interrupted, we'll wander off. It's all good. We bring ourselves back. We practice, and over time we develop our skills to manage interruptions. I really hope that is useful for you all today. Thank you all so much for listening, and I will see you next week.
It’s easy to feel like our academic work has taken up permanent residence in our brains! Recently a member told me they woke up thinking about their PhD, went to bed thinking about it, and were fed up of not thinking about anything else. In the episode, I help you work out whether it’s a problem that you’re thinking about your work and, if you think it is, you’ll get some concrete advice about how to nudge your brain away from the topic. If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on how to use role-based time-blocking . Transcript [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast and the episode this week is inspired by another one of the questions that my members asked in their own private podcast. As I think I've mentioned before in the PhD life Coach membership, the students are able to submit questions, that they have that are specific to their challenges at the moment, and I record them a little mini podcast voice note answer for them. And there's been so many really good questions come up that I'm gonna try and feature them in the podcast from time to time and give a more extended answer. So this question was around how do I stop thinking about my PhD? And they recognized that this might sound like a strange question, but they felt like they were waking up in the morning thinking about their work. They were thinking about it. No matter what they were doing, they were thinking about it when they were trying to get to sleep. If they woke up in the night, they were thinking about their PhD. They were generally finding this exhausting and [00:01:00] really wanted to identify how they could think about it. less. Now the downside with these voice notes is that I don't get to ask lots of questions. So when I'm coaching, so the students also have access to live coaching, when I'm coaching, I will very much start from seeking to understand, really trying to better figure out why is this a problem? How is it impacting you? And all of those things in these voice notes, When I just get a simple question like this, I'm not able to probe into it in so much detail, and so what I try and do is give some reflective questions for people to think about, and that's what we're going to do today. I'm gonna give you some reflective questions to think about, and then depending on what your answers to those are, I'll give you some different hints and suggestions about how you could manage this. That way, it's really tailored to your challenges and your difficulties rather than just being generic advice. So my first reflective question for you [00:02:00] is, why is it a problem that you are thinking about it a lot. Because the answer to that will be different depending on how you are thinking about it. So what sorts of thoughts you are thinking and also what impact that's having on you or the rest of your life. So take a few moments to think, why is it problematic for me that I'm thinking about my PhD a lot? Is it because I feel like I shouldn't be, that this is wrong in some way and that it shouldn't be like this. Is that the main issue? Is the issue that because you are thinking about your PhD all the time, you are struggling to be present in other situations. Is it because you're thinking about your PhD all the time, you are getting bored and tired of your PhD? Is it because the thoughts that you are having are not [00:03:00] really about the content of your PhD, but are more anxious thoughts about what if I can't do it? What if I'm not good enough? What if my supervisor thinks I'm not good enough, and things like that. So the problem is not so much thinking about the academic questions in your PhD, but more your thoughts and feelings about doing the PhD. Take a few moments to think, which, if any, it may be other ones, it may be more than one. Which of those resonates most with you? Now, let's start out with a relatively easy one. If the only issue is that you feel like you shouldn't be thinking about it as much as you are, but you enjoy thinking about it, you're not having any adverse consequences at the moment from thinking about it this much, and you don't anticipate having adverse consequences from thinking about it this much. It's just a sense that you feel like you shouldn't, then I'd encourage you to ponder a little bit about where that I shouldn't [00:04:00] be comes from in case it is sort of flagging some other issue but if it genuinely is just, uh, I feel like I shouldn't be, then, you can just decide it's okay. I know that sounds really basic advice, but often when we are telling ourselves that we should or shouldn't do something, we forget that we can decide that we are gonna do that thing or we're not gonna do that thing regardless of the shoulds. So if you are having no adverse consequences from thinking about it this much, you just have a vague feeling you shouldn't be. We could go towards a kind of acceptance where it's like, you know what? I'm really into my PhD. I think about it a lot. I enjoy it. It's not adversely affecting me at the moment. And actually focus instead on not judging ourselves for thinking about it as much as we do. A tip here, and this is true for any of these things where you have a feeling you shouldn't do it, [00:05:00] is also put in place some sort of warning system whereby you'll notice if it's starting to become a problem, okay? Because sometimes an underlying sense that you shouldn't be could be because you're kind of getting this little gut feeling that this might not be good for you in the long run. And in that case, it's really useful to put in place just a little bit of a kind of protective mechanism where it's like at the moment I'm going for acceptance, but if I notice that I am turning down all social engagements in order to think about this, or if I notice that it's starting to affect my sleep or it's starting to affect my family life, or whatever it might be. And this is how I'll know, you know, you decide for you, what's the little kind of trigger that will help you spot that. Then you can feel safer in the acceptance because you also know that you have a little plan for spotting if it starts to go too far. [00:06:00] Now if you are finding No, no, it's not that. I don't wanna just accept this. It is actually having some negative effects on me, and it's mostly because I'm thinking about the discipline itself, kind of wrestling with the intellectual challenges that I'm doing, trying to decide how to fix that analysis, trying to figure out what my materials mean. Then we have a few different tools and I'm not gonna have time to go into all of them today. I will send you out to some various podcast episodes where I've talked about some of these before. My members, if you are listening, we are working this through in this quarter anyway. The first is this notion of role-based time blocking, which is where we allocate blocks of time for particular types of activities, not for a single task. Traditional time time blocking is usually saying, I'll do this in this time block and this in that time block, and there are lots of challenges with that, but role base is thinking about, I'll do this type of work in this time block and this type of thing in that time block. And one of the things that we've been talking [00:07:00] about a lot in the membership recently is if you're doing role-based time blocking well, in fact any sort of time blocking to be fair, if you are doing it well, then that should include putting lots of fun stuff in there too. We should be time blocking that this block of time is for time on my own to spend on my hobbies. This block of time is time to spend with my friends. This block of time is time to spend with my family. The reason that's so important is 'cause we tend to only time block the productive stuff, and then when we don't get it done, we've got these kind of empty spaces that we flop into with our work without really recognizing what we are therefore choosing not to do. It's also important, because I know lots of you struggle with feelings of guilt that you should be doing more than you are, and that can really overtake so-called fun activities because if you are trying to do a a CrossFit class. I just started CrossFit. My legs still hurt. If you are trying to do a CrossFit class, but your brain's going, oh, I [00:08:00] really should be finishing that chapter, then you're not finishing the chapter, but you're also probably not enjoying the CrossFit class either. So when we're able to time block the fun stuff and the stuff that's good for us as well as the work stuff, then it can be a little bit easier to be intentional in that moment. Now, you might say, yeah, Vic, but the thoughts still come up, right? And I'm like, yes, of course. The thoughts absolutely still come up. But when we've got intention about what role we are in at the moment, we can decide what we do with those thoughts that come up. Because if you are still at a stage where thoughts come up and you are just sort of held hostage by those thoughts that, oh, they're here now. I'll have to think about them, then we need to talk. Because that's exhausting to just go with whatever thoughts come up in your head is absolutely exhausting. So if we can be more intentional about whether we're in a block where thinking about this stuff is appropriate or whether we're in a block where we wanna be spending time with our [00:09:00] kids or whatever, then we can choose what we do when these thoughts come up. So if we're in a block where we are meant to be spending time with family or doing hobbies or whatever, and these thoughts are coming up, I'm gonna give you two suggestions. The first suggestion is having some sort of dumping ground with you at all times. Now, for most of us, the thing that we have with us at all times is our phone. If you are a bit more of an analog person, having a notebook with you also works too. But having somewhere that instead of just going, no, no, you shouldn't be thinking about that, vic shouldn't be thinking about that. Focus in you're meant to be thinking about your family. Don't think about that. Don't think about that. But then our brain's going, yeah, but you're gonna forget it. All these, we need somewhere to put it. Okay. So create something, a dumping ground of some description where if these thoughts come up, you can dump them down quickly. And then when your thought brain is trying to still work on them, that's where we get to do gentle nudging. So this is not judgmental. Oh, you are always thinking about work. Stop thinking about work brain. What are you doing? This is [00:10:00] going Uhuh. I know we wrote that down. Yep. Nope. Got it. Nice. Yes, great idea. Thank you, brain. Appreciate you offering it. But we've noted it down, but we're doing this right now and we nudge ourselves back to focus. I can't remember whether I said this in a podcast recently or whether I said it in a class, so if I'm repeating myself, just go with me. But it's a bit, a little bit like I used to, individually exams as part of my job and. Just giving people a little bit of a look and then sort of use your fingers like two eyes to point down at the page. Just sort of going, uhuh, focus back on your page, back on your, when you see their eyes wandering around the room. Right. Just like. Point your little fingers, point down at your page. Just remind them, no, no, back to their paper. Back to the paper. That's the kind of gentle, non-judgmental nudging we want to do. We're not making it a big deal. We're not telling ourselves off for having got distracted, but we are gently nudging ourselves back to, no, no, this was time you put aside for your hobby or whatever. So we're gonna be intentional with how we plan our time. Um. [00:11:00] Okay. That's a big thing to say in a sentence, isn't it? We're gonna be intentional. We're going to try to be more intentional than we are at the moment about how we're deciding what we're doing in any one block, and then when we notice our brain wander, we are jotting it down in some sort of dumping ground, and then we are nudging ourselves back to the thing that we said we were gonna do. Now some of you, are not necessarily very good at resting or not very good at fitting in things that are not the shoulds in your life. I have an awful lot of members who have stopped doing things that they enjoy because they feel like they've got so much to do on their PhD, so much to do in their academic life that they don't have time for those other things. The problem with that, I kind of, you know. Okay. I, I understand the, the intention here. You're trying to simplify your life. You're trying to make space for the things you need to do. I kind of, [00:12:00] I understand all of that stuff and I, to some extent agree with it, but when we take out all the stuff that's interesting or engaging or just for us, then our brains don't have much to think about other than what we need to do for other people and what we need to do for our PhD or our work. And so sometimes by clearing more time to be able to do all this huge to-do list that you've got, what we actually do is starve our brain of interesting things. So if you are finding that it's not so much that thinking of your PhD is interrupting other stuff, but more that it's just getting really boring or tiring thinking about your academic work all the time, we need to think of other things to think about. Sometimes time spent doing hobbies, doing interesting things is actually time that feeds [00:13:00] your academic work because it gives your brain something else interesting to think about, which gives it that proper respite from work. So I feel for you, right? If you are somebody who has felt so overloaded that you feel like you have put all of your own interests to one side, I, I absolutely send you my love 'cause that is a really, really challenging position to be in, and I know it's particularly true for those of you who are doing full-time academic jobs and trying to do research on the side or trying to do your PhDs on the side, or you've got some other work, or you're holding down a family. I've got a lot of single parents in the membership, things like that. I feel for you that is a lot to be carrying, but even in those situations that I'm gonna even go so far as to, particularly in those situations, it is absolutely crucial to have things that feed you as a person, not stuff you should be doing, not four more steps in your skincare routine, if you [00:14:00] don't enjoy doing skincare, not three morning pages if you don't enjoy journaling, not this stuff we're told we should be doing something that's just fun for you. One of my members just took me off. I'm a hobby girl. Okay. I have too many hobbies. I am the other extreme. To any of you who feel like you don't have any hobbies at the moment. I have too many, but I love it. One of the ones that I've talked about that I do when I'm feeling particularly brain dead is, um, well posh people call collage, but that I call cutting and sticking. And one of my members started doing this and was like, I absolutely loved it. I got so engaged. I, you know, I really enjoyed what I was doing. I wasn't thinking about other things. Finding things like that, they don't have to be worthy, they don't have to be exercise, they don't have to be a side hustle. They don't have to have any other purpose other than it's quite fun to do it. Whilst it might feel like one more thing you're trying to fit in, giving your brain something else to be thinking about can be a really [00:15:00] useful way to not only be thinking about academia all the time. On that if you do, and I know this can be a harder ask, depending on your responsibilities, if there are things you can do with other people who have nothing to do with academia, that can help massively as well. One of the things I think that kept me most sane through my academic career, that whilst I have glorious best friends who work in academia, I also have glorious best friends who have nothing to do with academia at all and with whom I just don't really have those conversations, either besties or even just kind of my, my good friends that I met through my various hobbies and things like that. Having people who don't really understand what you're doing and you can talk about other things too, super, super useful. Back in the day, there was nothing more useful than finishing a day of academia, going to my aerial silks class and discussing a routine or a move and not talking about students or research at all. Now, the one thing I would add to this [00:16:00] though is if you want to be not thinking about your work while you are doing other things, you need to give yourself time to think about your work. And again, it's one of these things that doesn't feel quite productive necessarily. It doesn't feel like something that we can put on our to do list. Oh, think about this. That's tricky to put in. But when we fill our brains, we've gotta do this, gotta do this, gotta do this, gotta to do this. And we plan our time like that. And then we say, and then I mustn't think about it when I'm with my family or when I'm doing my hobbies or whatever, our brains are a little bit like, yeah, but when do we think about it? So also think to yourself, how can I give myself time- if I want to not be thinking about it at times when I'm doing other things? How do I give myself some time where I can think about it? I find it useful to structure that in some way. I can't really imagine what just sitting thinking about something would be. Some of you might, I don't know, not the way I [00:17:00] work. Um, for me, I love going for a walk or doing something like that where it's sort of physical enough to be engaging, but where I haven't got a podcast, I haven't got headphones or any of those things, and I like to actually set myself something specific to think about. Okay. So I sort of set myself some kind of reflective question or plan that I want to think about, and then I send myself somewhere where I can't distract myself. I actually did my whole strategic plan for the year in a spa doing this exact thing. I had a notebook in the changing rooms, and so I would set myself some questions. I'd go and sit in the different spa bits, because I have no attention span. I went to one of these spas that's got like 50 different rooms. It was amazing. Anyway, then when I ran, I had so many ideas in my head. I'd go to the change room, get or go to the little chill out zone scribble in my notebook, and then I would set myself another question and go back to the hot tub this time, or whatever it was wonderful. Highly recommend. Anyway, so setting yourself time where you can actually think, where you are, [00:18:00] not gonna fill your brain with other things, where you're not gonna require productivity of yourself. Sometimes that can be being alone in a room with big bits of paper and color pencils or whatever. Okay. Lots and lots of different things that you can, do to give yourself space for that thinking. So that's some tips for if these thoughts are mostly about the kinda intellectual wrestling with your academic content. So they're not inherently negative, there's just too many of them, or they're coming up when you don't want them to. Some strategies around that. Now in a second I'm gonna talk about what if the thoughts are much more anxiety type thoughts. So much more thoughts about what if I'm not good enough? What if this doesn't work? What if it gets rejected? What if my supervisor hates me? What if my boss thinks I'm an idiot? All those sorts of thoughts. Okay. But before I talk about that, I wanna talk about one principle, which I think actually crosses both, and this is the idea of [00:19:00] uncertainty tolerance. So one of the things that I've noticed with people just generally, but I think particularly with clever people like you lot, is that we really don't like being unsure about something. I think one of the ups and downsides of being quite clever is that often we are quite sure of things. We understand stuff. We know stuff. We are not used to not being clear on things, and then all of a sudden we get hit with a bunch of uncertainty. And the reason I'm talking about this kind of in the middle is because I think that uncertainty can be uncertainty on an intellectual side. I'm not sure how to analyze this data. I'm not sure exactly what argument to make based on these documents, that sort of uncertainty. Or it can be the uncertainty of not knowing whether your work is good enough, not knowing what you'll do next, not knowing whether you'll get promoted, all those things. But thinking about how can I feel safe while uncertain is a really useful [00:20:00] exercise because often the reason we keep thinking about something is because we believe that if we'll resolve it, if we can just be less uncertain, then we'll feel better and we can stop thinking about it. The problem is, as we all know, that once, one thing that wasn't certain becomes more certain, we think of other things too. This is the downside of a clever brain, right? There's a lot of good things, but this is the downside of a clever brain. So trying to fix the uncomfortableness of feeling uncertain by making yourself certain is a really understandable but really shortsighted strategy. I still do it. I still have to talk myself down from this. I find uncertainty tolerance quite challenging in a bunch of situations. What I want you to therefore think about is how can I feel [00:21:00] safe while being uncertain? What can I say to myself that reassures me within that uncertainty? I like things around. I trust that I'll figure it out. Some of you might go for the kind of what will be, will be type strategy, anything that helps you feel as though it's okay that you don't yet know. And that you will figure it out and that the time will come and you'll make a decision, and then we will know, and then we'll make it work from there. That kind of pragmatic vibe is what we are going for. Sometimes it's about reminding ourselves of what things it is not our business to know. So our supervisor's, true perception of us is probably not quite our business to know really or it might be things that we will know at some point, but that we [00:22:00] can't know now. So whether this grant's gonna get accepted, whether we're gonna get promoted, whether we're gonna get our PhD or these sorts of things. And our brain desperately wants to be sure that it's true, but at the moment it can't be because we're not there yet. Whichever it is we get to help ourselves feel safe in this uncertainty and to decide what the next steps that we want to take are. We ask ourselves, how do I want to show up in the face of this uncertainty? Rather than, how can I be more certain? How can I decide what the argument I'm going to make is? What options have I got? How will I choose between them? How will I decide what analysis to use, what options are there? How will I choose between them? So rather than trying to be certain right now and feeling uncomfortable, we're not certain right now. We get to figure out what's the route towards making these decisions. What's the route towards supporting ourselves during this period of time where we don't actually know the [00:23:00] answer and then finally for some of you, the thoughts will be more these things that you can't stop thinking about your PhD, about your academic life. They will be more to do with, I'm not sure I'm good enough. I dunno whether this is the right thing to do, and so on. So those more anxious thoughts. Now, as you all know, this podcast is definitely not a replacement for appropriate psychological care if you struggle with anxious thoughts, but at an kind of non-clinical level, have a few suggestions. The first is remembering that feeling anxious thought is not necessarily something that has to be terrifying. That has to be this awful thing that we have to make go away. There are many things in our lives where we are doing things that feel quite high stakes, that we've never done before, that we're not certain how they'll go. It's quite appropriate to feel a bit anxious about it. What we get to do is we get to double check a couple of things. We get to double check are we looking after our bodies? So this can be in terms of are we feeding ourselves, are we giving ourselves water? Are [00:24:00] we allowing ourselves to sleep? All of those sorts of things. But it can also be in terms of when we're in the midst of feeling a bit anxious, a bit panicky, and things like that. Are we giving ourselves the things that we need right then? The sort of slow breathing, grounding exercises, all those sorts of things. So are we looking after the physical sensations that we are getting because of our anxious thoughts? And then the other side of it is just double checking that we are not feeding ourselves thoughts that are making the anxiety worse. Because there are some bits of it. I'm not sure how this goes, and I'm worried about that. Okay, fine. Fair enough. That seems reasonable. Okay. Those anxious thoughts are kind of encouraging you to take action, to be more ready, to figure out whether there's anything you wanna change in your life. All of these sorts of things. But if those thoughts are also spiraling to, and I don't deserve to be here, and everyone will think I'm an idiot, and these sorts of thoughts, then we get to remind ourselves [00:25:00] that we don't have to repeatedly tell ourselves those thoughts. Now we can't stop them coming up. They're probably gonna come up, but we can choose how we respond to them and we can choose how much we reinforce them to ourselves. And one really useful way to do this, I find, is instead of telling ourselves I need to stop doing that, is tell ourselves I want to do this more often. So choosing intentional thoughts, choosing things that feel true to you, I can figure out how to do this. Whatever happens, I will be okay and I'll figure out a plan. Thoughts like that. So not just telling yourself it's gonna be fine, but telling yourself that if it is not fine, then we'll figure that bit out too. So choosing those intentional thoughts, choosing intentional activities, so when you feel these sorts of anxious thoughts, having things that you know, always help you in trying to encourage yourself to do those too. So those can be things that you can do during the day, whether music helps you, whether walking helps you, whether splashing your [00:26:00] face with water helps you, any of those sorts of things. But also if you are somebody who has these thoughts a lot at night thinking, what are the actions I can take at night? What are the activities I can do in my head that will centre me and ground me again, what are the breathing activities that I can do if I'm thinking a lot in the night. Do I want to have a notebook where I can always jot things down if they come up during the night? So thinking through what are the intentional thoughts that I want to kind of preload remind myself to think in the moment? What are the intentional activities that always help me? So those are my tips for today. The question started out as, how do I stop thinking about my PhD? I think by the end, the kind of take home here is not so much how to stop thinking about it, but how to have more control over when you think about it, the ways you think about it and what you tell yourself. Because actually if we can be intentional about that, it gives us the opportunity to kind of [00:27:00] ponder our academic work in that sort of intellectual way that lots of us will have dreamed about being part of being an academic. We get to ponder these topics that we care about, that we are interested in and so on. But we also create space to be thinking about the other things in our lives because we are human beings as well as academics, and that is just as important. We create space to be thinking about all of those things as well, and we learn and develop strategies to manage the thoughts that feel more uncomfortable. I hope that helps. Do let me know what you think, whether this is something that you struggle with, whether any of these tips particularly resonate with you. If you're not on my newsletter, make sure you sign up. Go to my website, the PhD life ph.com. You can sign up right on the front page there. Let me know what you think. Thank you all for listening, and I'll see you next week.
Lots of PhD students and academics feel unable to make decisions about their time management because of a series of beliefs that feel very true. They simultaneously tell themselves “I can’t fit in writing during the day because I have other commitments” AND “I can’t write more in the evenings and weekends because I’m tired” AND “I can’t reduce my commitments during the day because they’re fixed” AND “I have to (and should be able to) find more time for my writing”. In today’s episode, I discuss how believing those four statements trap you in a box, and what you can do to find a way out. If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on what to do when you have too much to do. Transcript [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. Now, this episode came about because some members were very honest with me and actually pushed back on something I was suggesting. We were running a workshop about the shape of your week. So thinking about roughly a template for what you want your week to look like week to week. Now, for some people it was kind of revolutionary that you could even pick that, but the idea behind that workshop is that essentially if we know or decide that we try to do these sorts of things on those sorts of days or these sorts of times of days, then when we start a week, we are not just starting from a kind of haphazard blank slate. We're kind of starting from a notional how we'd like it all to shape out. And I know it doesn't always work out like that, right? I'm assuming as everybody else, it doesn't always work out the way you intend. But if we can start with that sort of approximate aim, then when we [00:01:00] can fit to that, that we are much more likely to end up with a week that feels intentional and feels like it's playing to our strengths and giving us what we need. Anyway, so that was the workshop, right? And I have my gorgeous members there, and so many people are coming to the workshops. It's very exciting. My membership is bigger than it's ever been at the moment, and getting really, really good turnout. People are really enjoying the process that we are going through, loving it, and we use the chat, right? Any of you have been to my free sessions, and if you haven't, I've got one on Wednesday. By the way, if you're listening to this live, it is Monday, the 23rd of February. There is a free workshop for all of you on Wednesday the 25th of February. Check on my website for how to sign up. Or if you're on my newsletter, you'll have been sent it anyway. Anyway, so in my workshops I'm like sharing how to do things, what approaches you can take, and everyone's in the chat giving their suggestions, answering my questions, you know, asking their own questions, all that sort of thing. And I realized, you know, I'm pretty engaged in that chat. I'm sort of responding to what people say and things, [00:02:00] and I realized there were a lot of people that said, I can't do this. It was in the chat saying, Nope. I can't, I can't come up with a shape of my week because I've got all this stuff. This was a lot of my part-time students, not gonna lie. If you're a part-time student, this will really resonate. Also, if you are an academic who is balancing teaching and leadership and research, I think it will really resonate with you too, and anybody who's pinning down any other commitments so if you are doing a PhD or doing academia while parenting or anything like that, okay. It might still resonate if you're a full-time student without other commitments. So do keep listening. I'll be interested to hear your perspectives on it too, but I think particularly for those people who are trying to wedge an awful lot into their weeks, it really, really resonated. And they were saying, I can't do this, Vikki. It doesn't fit. And my response to that is [00:03:00] always, well, it's really useful to know it doesn't fit. It's really useful to have that realization. It might feel like you therefore can't do planning, but actually if the first step of your planning process is realizing that all the things that you have to do and I'm using have to do kind of carefully there, if all the things you have to do, don't fit in a way that you can plan your week, then that's a really good realization. And as we talked... So this started out being just me responding to one person in the chat, more people came up. It doesn't fit for me either, Vikki. It doesn't work. And so I was asking tell, talk, talk me through it. Okay? Tell me what doesn't fit, why it doesn't fit. And the common pattern that came out was is what I call trapping yourself in a box. And this is when we have a [00:04:00] series of beliefs that we absolutely think each of them is true, yet they're contradictory of each other. And often we kind of avoid thinking about the fact they're contradictory of each other. So let me give you an example of the trapped in a box that I saw with many of these members. It was simultaneously holding the belief I can't fit in writing during the day because I have other commitments. So for some of them it was other part-time or full-time work, for some of them, their academics who are doing a PhD alongside. I can't fit in writing during the day because I have other commitments with a little by the way, side order of, and I need a big block of time in order to be able to get on with my academic tasks. So I can't fit it in because I'm too busy during the day and because I need big blocks of time in order to get on with this sort of work, and therefore I need to fit it into the [00:05:00] evenings and weekends, but I don't want to sacrifice my social life, and I'm always too tired when it comes to evenings and weekends, so it doesn't end up happening then. And I can't change the commitments I've got during the day because I have to do these things for my job. It's compulsory. They have to be done. And I definitely have to find time to write my academic work and I should be able to find that time. And you can see how you sort of bang between these different things. These of you watching on YouTube, you'll see me sort of doing a square with my hand in the air showing you sort of banging around that box now. That's just slight tangent. One of my one-to-one clients who I've worked with for like two years, literally. Okay. She's been here like one of the longest of any of you said. It wasn't until you talked about what I'd see on YouTube that I realized you have a YouTube channel. I [00:06:00] have a YouTube channel, people. If you are somebody who likes not only listening to me when you are driving somewhere or whatever. But would like to actually be able to take notes and things like that, everything I put on this podcast is also there on YouTube. It's not a fancy like edited Mr. Beast type joby. It's literally this, except you can see my big face while I'm talking. So there's nothing fancy about it, but it's a video version of this if you haven't found them. There are also study with me videos on there too. There's two different ones. There's one for doing a 15 minute email smash if you're feeling completely outta control. And there's one for a 45 minute, um, kind of like study with me focused session. My members use them a lot as a way to kind of kickstart themselves onto doing things. So go check out my YouTube channel, tell your friends and students and whatnot. Anyway, that's what we were saying. Trapped in this box. I'm now moving my hand again in the square on YouTube. Um, and we sort of banging between, I [00:07:00] can't do it then. 'cause I don't have time. I can't change the things that are taking up my time. I can't do it at other times 'cause either I'm too tired or there's not sufficient time, but I must find time. And if that feels resonant with you, if that feels like I'm looking into your brain, this is what my members were like. They're like, Vikki, can you see inside my head say, yeah, because I know you guys, I've been you guys, I know what this is like. If that feels like you, I want you just to pause and breathe with me for a second, okay? Because that is an exhausting place to keep yourself. To be telling yourself that you should be able to do it. You must do it in order to achieve your goals, and that those goals are possible, right? Because all this is predicated on the fact that you believe you have time on some level to do your PhD or do your academic writing or whatever. Yet, nothing can shift. There isn't time. And so months go by [00:08:00] and months don't go by in a kind of, oh, well, you know, didn't do it, drift through. Months go by where you're beating yourself up for the fact that you are somehow not finding a version of this that works. That's exhausting. If you are feeling exhausted, if you are listening to that, this going, oh my goodness, that's me and I am exhausted. Let's just take a second. Okay. Let's just take a second. You are not on your own. This is not something that shows that you are broken. This is not something that shows you're doing something wrong. It's that all of these separate beliefs you have generated over time. People have told you the kind of society and sector and all that stuff tell you that all these things are true, that that work is non-negotiable, that you should be able to do it all, that it doesn't fit, that you need quality time, that you should be looking after your self-care as well, so you shouldn't work when you're tired. It tells you all these [00:09:00] things, but it never brings them into the same place. Okay, another tangent for you. I'm in tangent mode. Um, another tangent for you. This is the same in my opinion as universities that tell themselves they need to be world-leading research institutions, that they need to be world leading student recruitment and student delivery organizations, and they need to be impacting like the real stuff out there in the world. And they need to have good staff wellbeing and they need to come in under budget and they need to do all these things. And all the people, the vice chancellor of this and the vice chancellor of that and the vice chancellor of something else, never actually get in one place and go, okay, well how much of us is there to go around? And how much of our staff is there to go around and how do we actually do all of these things? 'Cause these things all sound great and you know, we believe them, right? They're true. They feel true. But they can't all be true. We can't have good staff wellbeing and have healthy budgets and do all of the [00:10:00] things. We can't. And we get angry with our universities for not realizing this. We get mad at them for not seeing, there's only so much of you to go around, yet we do it to ourself. We don't sit and recognize there's only so much of us to go around and that something here has to give. Now you might be slightly surprised by the options I give you in a minute. So stay with me 'cause this is not gonna be your standard. You just need to learn to say, no. This is not, it's not. I mean that there, there is some of that, right? We do need to learn to say no, but this is not just about that. This is way broader than that. So what we need to, we pause, we breathe. We recognize that holding these contradictory beliefs is completely exhausting. And then we just try to open ourselves up to the possibility that some of these beliefs might not be true [00:11:00] or not completely true or not as true as we are telling ourselves that they are. And that indeed they, they can't be 'cause they contradict each other. Because if it absolutely is true that you can't do academic writing during the day and you can't do academic writing on evenings and weekends, then you don't have time to do academic writing and we need to stop telling you that you do. It means you don't have time. Now, I don't believe that necessarily 'cause I think there's other things that give, but if all those things are true, then you don't have time. Therefore we need to stop telling ourselves that we should be able to. Alternatively, we have to stop telling ourselves that every part of our other commitments are equally important and equally non-negotiable. We need to stop telling ourselves that we can't work in short blocks, and this one's a difficult one, and I know some [00:12:00] of you'll come at me for it. We also need to stop telling ourselves that we can't write when we're tired. Okay? Now, those of you who know me, I am a big believer in work life balance. Not necessarily work rest balance, but certainly work fun balance. I'm a big proponent of that. But if you are somebody who has a very busy academic job or who has chosen to do a PhD part-time on the side of a full-time job. We might have to accept that you need to write when you're tired, and that might sound like a recipe for burnout, but it's actually, I don't think it is, because I think there is a huge difference when you accept that you have to write when you're tired, then we stop telling ourselves that we shouldn't be tired. We stop telling ourselves that we need to work out how to have more energy. We stop telling ourselves, oh, well, I'll just leave it [00:13:00] for tonight. I'm feeling too tired to do it. And instead we start asking ourselves much more important questions, which is, how can I be kind to myself while doing this tired? How can I make this feel achievable by doing this tired? How do I set myself up to be able to do this in a way that's realistic? So one of my members is doing a PhD alongside a full-time job, and she talked about getting up early to do hers as probably her only plausible option, and we explored a bunch of other options and I asked her a bunch of questions to sort of challenge her assumptions, but we kind of got to a place where it was like, yeah, I think this might be. You know, in the long term there might be other adjustments to make to your work commitments and things like that, but as things stand right now, it sounds like this might be your best option. So then we started talking about how do we then make that feel gorgeous? How do we make that feel like it's your little pocket of time where you are doing this thing [00:14:00] that you love in a way that feels lovely and gorgeous for you? Rather than waking up early and sort of going, oh, I shouldn't be having to do this right now. I'm so tired. I'm just gonna be absolutely exhausted all day now. I really shouldn't have to do this, and it has to be a better way than this. No one else has to do this, da, da, da. If we layer in all that, it's suddenly so much worse than if we say, you know what? With what I've taken on and the commitments I have, this is kind of how it's gonna work, and I can make that gorgeous. And then we also spent some time thinking about what happens at the other end of the day in order to make that possible. Were there changes she could make in how her evenings went that would make those early mornings feel more positive for her and more achievable and more sustainable in the long term? So if you find yourself in this box, we pause and we start to sort of pull apart some of the assumptions. Is it really [00:15:00] true that everything you spend time on during the day absolutely has to be done? Another member said that, absolutely, it all has to be done. And I asked, is there a research component in your job? This is an academic who's doing a PhD. Is there a research component in your job? And she said, yes. And I said, but we're not doing that. Then she says, no, I don't have time. And I said, but why is it that bit that goes, why do we have to say yes to every single administrative ask to every single student query, to every teaching piece, to every preparation piece? Why do we have to say yes to all of those? Because we couldn't possibly say no because it's part of our job, but we are saying no to this other bit of our job that's doing research. Now some of you'll be going, yeah. Yeah. But the thing is, if I've got a class of students in front of me, I've gotta be able to teach them. I can't just not be prepared for it. And you are absolutely right and that's why we are not thinking in kind of black and white. [00:16:00] I'm just not gonna do any of that stuff. But I also know for a fact because I've been where you are, I've been my colleagues, I've worked with hundreds of people in this situation. I almost guarantee there are things that you are spending more time on than you need to in the rest of your commitments, that there are times where you are like, oh, well I don't have time to start writing anyway. I might as well just perfect these PowerPoint slides a little bit more. I might as well just do a bit more of this. I have an episode. If you haven't listened to it already, it's called eight Ways you're Secretly Procrastinating and Doing stuff you have to do for your job or for other people is a way of procrastinating sometimes, because it's actually a lot easier than the academic writing that you need to do. I know I sound like I'm being really mean to you here, but it's true. Okay. And I say it with love. Um. It is a form of procrastination. Other people see it. Other people are grateful for it. We feel capable of it. We feel [00:17:00] resourced to do it. Of course, we're gonna do that before this big amorphous get started on introduction that you've got written on your to-do list. Okay? And if you still have things like that written on your to-do list, you have to keep an eye out for, I think it's next month's free coaching because I'm gonna do a session about to-do lists and how we all have to get much, much better. But often what we're telling ourselves about what we have to do for work isn't entirely true. It could have some little cracks that we can just get our fingers into and pull apart and go, you know what? There is this bit that I could probably do a bit less, or I could do a bit slower or a bit less often. I could give my apologies to this meeting every third time or whatever. Okay. Also if one of the beliefs you're telling yourself is that you can't work in short chunks of time, we have to figure out a way [00:18:00] to make that not true. Because if you are somebody who is working full time trying to manage household, potentially a family, a social life, hobbies, et cetera, then we're probably gonna be waiting quite a long time for these big chunks of time. And when they come, we're then gonna be overwhelmed and we're gonna feel like it's gonna take us four hours to get back into the head space and then the days disappeared and we beat ourselves up for not having used it enough. So we need to dig into that little belief. Is it really true that you can't do things in small chunks of time or could boss you, the version of you that plans the version of you that makes decisions and strategizes could boss you plan things that could be done in a small chunk of time. That planning piece maybe needs a little bit more headspace. The really difficult conceptual work that needs to happen maybe needs a little bit more headspace, but sometimes one of the best ways to get Headspace is be in it little and often in [00:19:00] amongst other things, so that it's percolating in your brain. All of these beliefs, I can't fit in 'cause my other commitments, can they change? Probably I can't work in small bunk chunks of time. You probably can learn to and to be fair, and again, I mean this with love, you're probably gonna have to. Same as people. And like I say, I didn't do the whole baby thing myself. I've inherited stepchildren when they are very capable. But those of you who have done the baby making thing yourself, know that you find pockets of time that you never realized were there. If you are trying to fit things in between, keeping a tiny human alive, okay, you are gonna have to figure out how to do some of these things in small amounts of time. And some of this might be accepting that there might be chunks of your time when the thought I have to, and should be able to find time for my writing might actually not be true. If you've listened to this whole episode and you've gone, yeah, Vic, but you don't know [00:20:00] my situation. In my situation, i've got this and I've got that and I've got this and I've got that, and this is non-negotiable and my health's non-negotiable, and that's non-negotiable. And nothing you've said changes. No, there are no small gaps. There is no way. Then the thought that you need to challenge is the thought that you have to be doing this. That you should be doing it. Because if it's genuinely true that none of the other things can give, then maybe we need to think about delaying, deferring, reducing the expectations in terms of the writing or the PhD, and that can be really hard to accept. And this is why we often say stuck in that box is because it's hard to accept that we are going to have to face some discomfort here. The discomfort might be working when you're tired. The discomfort might be saying no to a colleague and risking upsetting them. The discomfort might be turning up for a teaching session [00:21:00] broadly prepared, but not entirely. I was quite good at that back in the day. But the discomfort might be also saying, you know, I don't have time for this right now. I need to take a leave of absence. I need to accept that that article can't happen until later or whatever. And that can be difficult, and it's because accepting that discomfort is difficult, that we stay stuck in the box. So my kind of take home for you all is recognize. Recognize if this resonates with you. Recognize if you feel trapped in that box. Take a second. To just challenge some of your beliefs just a little bit and see if there are cracks in there. See which of these things you might have to accept are not quite as true as you said they were as you believed they were. I got one more bit I want to add here. And I have no idea whether this is gonna edit seamlessly in or not. 'cause frankly I'm recording it after I've edited the original one because as I was listening I could hear [00:22:00] your voices in my head. Apparently I can do that. Who knew? Anyway, what I want to add here is be very, very careful what you are prioritizing here. 'Cause I can imagine people too who are saying, I can't do this. I can't change my commitments to others. I can't dah, dah, dah and therefore it is gonna have to be my PhD that gives, it is gonna have to be my academic writing that's gonna have to wait. And I wanna remind you there's two sides to that story. On one side that might be true and you could be perfectly okay the other side of that decision. But I also wanna remind you, don't just jump to that decision. If you are somebody who always prioritizes other people, if you are somebody who always puts their needs before yours, struggles to say, no, I can't do that for you 'cause I'm doing this for me. I want you to be really, really careful [00:23:00] before you take the oh well writing or just have to wait till the summer approach. It's a difficult approach 'cause the summer brings a whole load of other challenges that we've talked about before. But also because if that's your go-to, if never doing the things that progress your interests and your ambitions and goals, if that's your go-to, we need to look at that discomfort too. Maybe we need to be considering what things you definitely can disconnect from, you can do less well. You can accept that you're no longer the go-to person for, so that this stuff that's for you does fit and that can sometimes be the most uncomfortable of all to face, that you do want to do this work and that you are good at this work and that the world wants to read this damn thing that you are trying to write. That means that [00:24:00] there are things that you are gonna have to move away from. Okay? So if when I said, maybe finally you may have to accept, you don't have time, your brain went, oh, okay. Relief. Okay. That's an option that I'm willing to take 'cause it's sacrificing myself and not sacrificing other people. Again, pause, breathe. Do not make that the default option here. Because there's discomfort in saying no to other people. That feels awful at the moment and feels like it goes against your whole sense of self of being this good person. But I want you to think of the discomfort in the future. The potential discomfort there is if you only make that decision because you are not willing to let down anybody else, because of this self-perceived, self-created notion that you have to put other people before yourself. You don't. If people wanna read your research, you wanna do your research, and that can be reason enough to say no. No. That bit's the non-negotiable bit, [00:25:00] however uncomfortable it is, I'm gonna find the other cracks. I'm gonna find other things to give because this bit that I want to do, that's my non-negotiable bit. From there, we make a little bit of a plan, not a grand plan. Do not go and buy a planner. Do not decide to color code it. People were in one of my workshops where we were talking about shape of the Day and they actually popped up in the chat and said, sorry, Vikki haven't been listening for the last 10 minutes. 'Cause I was color coding my calendar. We are not doing that, people. They got the looks. It's exactly what I would've done. I get it entirely. But we're not doing that. We don't need a grand plan. We need a little plan. A little plan. So my challenge for you is to look at this week, look at the assumptions you're making about this week, and see whether there's one little place where you could do something slightly different than you usually tell yourself is possible. Where you can say to your family, you know what, I'm not hanging out with you on a Thursday night. Sorry, dude. It's got things to do. I'll [00:26:00] be, I'll be out, I'll be a cafe. You could feed yourself whatever, whatever it might be, right? Think if there's one place this week that you can go, you know what? I'm just not gonna believe the things about that that I usually believe. And then let me know how it goes. If you're not already on my newsletter, why not? Please go to my website, the PhD life coach.com. Make sure you're signed up. That's how you all know about all the free workshops that I do, it's how you get to ask me questions. It's how you get to suggest topics for future podcasts. So make sure you're on the newsletter and if you are, reply to the email. Let me know whether this has resonated with you and what you are gonna challenge this week to look at slightly differently than you have done in the past. I really hope today has been useful. I know it was for my members. Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next week.
If you are stuck on a difficult task, then this is the episode for you! So often we get caught up on a task that we’re finding difficult, and then we struggle to see a way forward. Unfortunately we often then start making it mean something about ourselves - that we’re not good enough to be able to do the task, or that other people would find it easy, or that it “should” be achievable and it’s a problem that it’s not. In this episode we’ll think of different reasons why a task might be difficult, and go through some simple steps forward that both reframe how we think about these tasks and help us navigate a way forward. If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on what to do if you feel stuck . Transcript [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. I don't know whether you can hear it or not, but I am currently not at my healthiest. I have managed to pick up a bit of a bug. I'm not feeling too bad, but I am aware I sound a little bit coldy, and for that reason, we are gonna keep this week relatively short and sweet. But the topic that I want to talk about today is something that came up in one of our coaching sessions last week, and that I think could be really, really useful to many of you. In fact, after the session where we discussed it, one of my members came back to me and thanked me for what she called the nugget of wisdom that I shared and talked about how it really then went on to change how she was thinking about the work that she's been doing, how it enabled her to have a bit of a eureka moment, and how she's now feeling really proud of herself and what she's got done over the last few weeks. So, I really hope it has a similar effect on you too. So what were we [00:01:00] talking about? We were talking about doing a difficult task, and that might sound like, well, yeah, obviously we're doing PhDs, we're doing academia of course we do difficult tasks, but one of the things that I've really noticed is that we really conflate what that means in our heads. So many people tell me that they are finding a task too difficult and that this means they can't work on it, or it means that they may be not cut out to do their PhD or to stay in academia, that they shouldn't be finding it difficult, that if they were good enough, they wouldn't be finding it difficult and I always notice when people say those things because I think it's such a understandable thing to tell yourself. I think all the way through our academic studies and then careers, we kind of have [00:02:00] that sense that if you're good at something, you don't find it too difficult, and I think society reinforces that and praises people who find things easy or that things come naturally to them. And the other reason I always really pay attention is because I've seen the damage that these sorts of beliefs can cause. When we tell ourselves that something being difficult is a signifier of our abilities and a signifier of whether we are going to be able to do it or not, and in fact, it is signifying that there's a problem here, then it's really hard to keep persisting with that task. It's really hard to feel like you belong. It's really hard to feel like this is the right environment for you, when in reality I don't believe that finding a task difficult means any of those things at all. So what we're gonna think about in the [00:03:00] episode today is how we can distinguish different types of difficult and what you can do when you find yourself facing a difficult task that will enable you to engage with it and dare I even say, enjoy it, rather than finding it a massive threat. And I actually hadn't intended to talk about this bit of research today, but my use of the word threat made me think of it. So we're going to wing it and tell you about it now. So there is actually a portion of psychology and psychophysiology, which used to be my area. I'll tell you more about that in a second, which distinguishes between things that are challenges and things that threats. And I think this can be a really useful way of framing difficult tasks. And in that psychology literature, a challenge is framed as something that is difficult, but that you have the resources to address. And a [00:04:00] threat is framed as something that is difficult, that you don't have the resources to address and that therefore in some way could be harmful. And that can be physically harmful, but it can also be sort of socially harmful, psychologically harmful and so on. And there's a whole lot of literature around how when we perceive things more as challenges, we sort of rise to that challenge and approach those goals, try hard to do them, whereas when they're threats, we tend to try and avoid them and so on. There is also a literature on, so psychophysiology is how the body responds to the psychological stimuli, there is also a whole body of literature that claims that we have different physiological responses to challenge and threat. I have thoughts about that literature, which I'm not gonna go into on the podcast, but suffice to say, I don't think there is much evidence of that side of things. But I do think on the psychological aspect of whether you perceive something as a challenge or a threat [00:05:00] can have a really big difference in how you feel about it and how you therefore behave. So how do we figure out what we wanna do? We're facing this difficult task. We don't know. We could just say, oh, see it as a challenge, but we don't necessarily know whether our resources can meet it or not. So it's hard to just force yourself to see it as a challenge. So what do we do instead? For me, the first step is to figure out why it feels difficult. Because there are some things that feel difficult because of all the self-talk we're piling on top of it. And I don't mean that to say it's your fault, but when we are telling ourselves all the way through something, you haven't got time to do this, you should have done this before. Other people wouldn't find this, this difficult, other people will be able to do this straight away, all this kind of self-talk stuff, then things become difficult that aren't necessarily hugely difficult tasks in themselves. We make them difficult. We make them feel difficult because we tell ourselves we should know the [00:06:00] answer and it should be clear to us, and the fact that it isn't is a problem. There are then things that are inherently difficult tasks, and I would argue that an awful lot of the teaching and research that we do in academia is dealing with inherently difficult tasks. Where we are trying to generate and analyze and get meaning from complex data, where we are trying to make arguments based on evidence that people haven't argued before. When we are trying to communicate effectively a position, whether that's to teach it or to write about it in an article, and we are trying to work out the best way or the most effective way of communicating that argument in a convincing manner. These are inherently cognitively difficult tasks. The fact that you find them hard is [00:07:00] not a sign that you're not good enough for what you're doing. The fact that you find them hard is that you are engaging with difficult academic concepts. People who are good at research, the people who are the best at research, the people that have got all the Nobel Prizes and all that stuff, they have found it difficult. They have grappled with difficult problems. Grappling with a difficult academic problem is not the same thing as a task being too hard for you. It is not the same thing as just telling yourself you are not good enough to be here or should find it easy. I like thinking of like scientists of old in the, with their like heads in their hands being like, but I don't understand, why the planets move the way they move and grappling with these fundamental questions and not being able to explain it to other people, but having a gut feeling of something going on, but not being able to explain why it's going on. Those people weren't too stupid to do [00:08:00] science. They were grappling with difficult, difficult things that people hadn't done before. And so are you. So sometimes things are difficult because we make them difficult. We turn them into unpleasant experiences by the stories we tell ourselves. Sometimes they're difficult because they're inherently difficult and cognitively challenging. And then a third way that I see things that are difficult are where you are under-resourced in some way to do it. And that might be resourced in terms of having sufficient time, having sufficient training, having sufficient support, sufficient background. So as an example, if you gave me some music theory challenge to do, okay. That would be difficult for me not to, just because it is cognitively demanding, but because I am woefully underprepared to do it. I am not naturally musical on any level, and I have [00:09:00] had, apart from a brief term of playing the clarinet at secondary school badly, um, which incidentally tangent alert, uh, which incidentally I gave up because I had got a top grade in every class except for clarinet, which I got an A two in instead of an A one. So I gave up clarinet because I wasn't as perfect at it as I was at everybody else. Good old 13-year-old Vikki. Anyway, beside the point. I don't have much music training for me. I would be massively under resourced to answer a music theory question. It wouldn't be my self talks problem. It wouldn't necessarily be inherently challenging. I would just be under resourced to answer it. So I want you to think, think of something that you have been feeling is very difficult at the moment. Particularly if you've been telling yourself that it shouldn't feel this difficult. But it's been frustrating you. It takes this long and try to think, am I making it [00:10:00] more unpleasant than I need to? Is that why it's so difficult? Is it inherently difficult or am I actually under resourced undertrained to do this at the moment? Notice the kind of growth mindset vibes over there. It's not that we're not able to do it. I am sure that, I mean, I'm not sure I could sing in tune, but I'm sure I could answer music theory questions if I got sufficient training and support. It's not that we're inherently unable to do it, but we're currently unprepared to do it. Have a think for yourself, which does it fall into? Because once we can better understand that, it fundamentally changes how we engage with it. Because if the main problem is that we are making it unpleasant for ourselves by what we say to ourselves, as easy as it doesn't sound, we don't have to do that. We can notice, right? We're gonna keep, you know, habitually, we are gonna still think of these thoughts, but we can choose that we don't do that to ourselves. We can choose more intentional thoughts, that don't focus on us not being good [00:11:00] enough to be here, that don't focus on everybody else finding it easier, but focus instead on us grappling with a difficult problem. If you are noticing that the reason it's unpleasant is because of all this stuff you are layering on top of it, let's notice that compassionately, we're not gonna beat ourselves up 'cause we all do it, but let's notice it and work on that mindset stuff. If we're noticing, you know what, I am just underprepared to do this. I know a lot of my clients work interdisciplinarily, for example, I, I did, um, I did a lot at the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, and immunology. And there were times where it wasn't just that I felt like an imposter, I just was undertrained to do some of the things I needed to do. And then if we realize that that's the issue, then we take different approaches. Yes, there might be a mindset piece that we stop beating ourselves up about it and recognize that actually we're under prepared. But then we start thinking, okay, how do I get prepared? Who can support me with this? What specific training do I need? What specific help or opportunities do I need in order to be able to [00:12:00] engage with this meaningfully? So we get to think in terms of help and those sorts of things if we recognize that it's, it's an under preparedness issue. But what do we do when it's an inherently difficult task? A task that we are prepared to do. We are trained for this, but is really feeling very difficult. The first thing, same always self-talk first. We stop telling ourselves that we should find it easy. It's inherently difficult, and that's okay. Any of you who do puzzles and things, right? If you got a children's book of word searches or crosswords or whatever. You have a go at that it's not gonna engage you for very long 'cause it's like, duh, dah, dah, duh. Easy, easy, easy. Yeah, fine. Bored now. But the best puzzles, if you are a puzzle person, the best puzzles are the ones where it's like, ugh, I dunno what's going wrong here. I can't work out how to do this, but I think I can get there. I think I can figure it out. [00:13:00] This word is definitely in this word search somewhere or one of those, you know, like the logic puzzles with the little grids and stuff. There's definitely more clues here. How can I figure them out. When we have that sense that it's difficult, but we are engaging with it. But when we're in this situation, in that self-talk piece, we are thinking not just about, what can I stop saying to myself, but what can I say to myself? In our quarterly planning session last week for my membership, I used the analogy of swimmers that, actually if you are going, you're doing a big, let's say you are swimming the English channel or something like that, some big open water extravaganza. You are doing something really hard, but your coach on the boat isn't gonna be like yelling to you. You are rubbish. You should have swum faster. You should have trained more. Your coach is gonna be reminding you to use your technique, telling you how well you are doing, reminding you when the next break's coming up, giving you snacks, reminding you why you [00:14:00] decided to do this, keeping you on track, all of those sorts of things. And that's the vibe that we wanna generate in our self-talk. When we're engaging with something difficult, we wanna be reminding ourselves why we do this, why this is interesting, how we're definitely gonna figure this out at some point. We definitely believe we're capable of this. Here are the resources you need to do it. We are cheering ourselves on to get it done instead of beating ourselves up. From a more pragmatic perspective, we can also think about how we engage with the task, because when we recognize it as being inherently difficult, then we can start getting a bit experimental about how we might go about answering the problem, how we might go about overcoming the difficulty. here we might ask ourselves, what techniques might I use to be able to look at this in a different way? Are there different ways of visualizing the data? Are there different ways of like visualizing what argument I'm going to make here? Can I [00:15:00] experiment with different options? If I'm not sure how to argue this, let's try arguing it that way and see what evidence I would be able to talk about if I argue it that way but then let's see if I can work it that way. Or if your difficult challenge is your piece of lab equipment's not working, or your cells keep dying, or whatever it is, what options have we got? What, how can we think through all the different steps of the procedure you're trying to do to figure out where it's going wrong? So instead of thinking, I'm just not good enough to do this, when we recognize it's difficult, we start to shining lights in lots of different directions and bring our creativity to play, to decide and try and under give ourselves the best opportunity of figuring out a way into this difficulty. A really useful, apparently my members love my analogies and I feel like I'm mixing all my metaphors today, but I've got a cold. We're going with it. Another analogy that I find [00:16:00] really useful is have you ever seen like a bundle of tangled necklaces? So if you think of like fine gold chains, that kind of necklace, right? So not like big beady things, just like little gold chains. And somehow you put them down in a jewelry box and somehow they tie themselves into a massive knot. When we want to untangle those, it can be really frustrating 'cause it's like, ah, it is really knotted, it's really difficult. But when we just get cross about the fact they're knotted, we pull too hard and often that's when we end up breaking a necklace. But when we say to ourselves, I can, I can slowly ease this apart. This is something I can do. It's gonna take a bit of time, but I can go at it gently. I can go at it from different directions. And if you're watching on YouTube, I'm doing like little pulling apart motions. Um. We can like ease this bit out so I can see a little bit more. We can ease that bit out. What happens if I pull it from this side? What happens if I loosen it over [00:17:00] here? That's the approach we want to take to difficult questions like how can I ease it apart? How can I find bits of clarity in here? How can I find bits of space? And we allow ourselves to do those things when we acknowledge that it's difficult and we recognize that we can go through the process, and we don't even have to believe we will find a solution, but we believe that we have the capacity to go through some steps to see what we can figure out. This is also where I want you to be very careful of your notions of efficiency, because often people think, I don't wanna write anything until I know what I'm writing. 'cause it will be inefficient to write it one way and not another. And so then people end up grappling with this difficult thing, trying to decide how they're gonna write it, how gonna do it, but they don't make any progress on it. It doesn't feel like they get anywhere. Whereas actually exploring options going, oh, what if I did it like this? What if I did it like that? Let's [00:18:00] spend two hours writing a few paragraphs as though I was arguing it this way. How easy does it come, does the evidence seem to fit? Do I believe myself? What if I argue it that way? Okay, so we get to experiment with these different options and accept that we are not necessarily gonna to see immediate benefits of these things, we are not, that knot is not going to automatically, immediately come untied, but we are gonna leave it a little looser and the next time we come back we'll ease it again. And sometimes we'll do something and it'll make it less clear. But that's progress. Moving to towards solving the problem. When tasks are inherently difficult, we can also still ask for support even if we feel like we're readily resourced to do it. So we talked about asking for support if you feel under prepared to do a difficult task, but if it's a task that kind of should be within, should, You know, that's always a big word, but should be within your capacity that you have been trained to solve, but you're finding it difficult. That doesn't mean you shouldn't ask for support. [00:19:00] What it does mean though, is you can think carefully about what sort of support might be useful, because often if it's inherently difficult and you are prepared to do it, sometimes people might be able to give you advice about it, but often they won't know either. Because you guys are working at the edges of human knowledge. That's literally what academia does. And so if you are expecting somebody just to be able to give you advice and tell you how to do it, you're probably underestimating the complexity of the problem and you're probably underestimating yourself too. But that doesn't mean that asking for support isn't helpful. What we wanna think about instead is how can we be creative about that support? So what I ask for sometimes when I'm trying to figure something out is just the opportunity to talk it through some of us like that kind of verbal processing and sometimes in explaining it to somebody else and them asking questions, it clarifies our thinking. Other times just telling somebody, it will help you recognize blind spots, things that you thought were obvious but weren't obvious, that you [00:20:00] hadn't noticed before. So it's not necessarily about getting expertise from somebody who is better than you, but it can be getting sort of fresh eyes on a problem that you've looked at for too long. So don't underestimate how much support can help, even if it's something that you feel like you should be able to do on your own. So those are my tips for grappling with difficult tasks is make sure we are not making it more difficult than it could be by the way we speak to ourselves. Make sure that if there's any way that you are under-prepared or under-resourced to doing it, how can we go about getting the resource that you need there, and then recognizing and celebrating the fact that you are grappling with a difficult problem and that this is literally what you came here to do. This is the bit that's meant to be fun, that having hard intellectual conversations with yourself, grappling with difficult data. This is meant to be the bit that we love and enjoy. And often it's the time pressure, often it's the um, kind of [00:21:00] judgment we pile on ourselves that stop us enjoying the bit that's the bit we came here for. We can reclaim that by saying, no, this is just a hard task. I'm doing academia, man. I'm doing science, I'm doing research. Whatever it is for you. The more we can reclaim the fact that doing difficult things can be joyous and beautifully frustrating and interesting and engaging and all of these things, the more we can re-embrace that, the easier and safer it is to get on with those difficult tasks, to perceive them as a challenge rather than as a threat, and to look creatively at ways to navigate our way through, figure things out, and make decisions about how we're gonna solve these difficult tasks. I really hope that's helpful. It definitely resonated with my members and they asked for more details on it, so I said I would do this episode for them. I hope you all enjoyed it too. Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next week.
In this coaching episode, podcast listener Claire is exploring career options, but worries she lacks the lateral thinking skills to come up with possible ideas. I am not a career coach, but we use this example as an opportunity to explore how limiting beliefs can prevent you finding solutions and how there are many routes to creative ideas. Listen in as we discuss her situation and identify a path forward. If you want to be on the podcast in the future, make sure you’re on my newsletter to hear about future chances to volunteer! If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on How to make decisions you love and this episode on how PhD Students Can Network Smarter & Avoid Career Panic with Dr David Mendes from Beyond the Thesis Transcript [Vikki: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast and today I have another listener on for a coaching session. So you all know periodically I do a little shout out to my newsletter asking for people who have got something that they think it would be useful to be coached on, but we haven't really talked about much on the podcast before or where they think they've got a kind of different angle on things. Vikki: So before we get into it, first thing, if you're not on my newsletter and you think this will be an interesting opportunity in the future, do make sure you sign up. I try and do a shout out every month or two for new people. And this time it was Claire who answered. So welcome Claire. Thank you so much for coming on. Claire: Thank you Vikki: and Claire got in touch. I was really keen to talk to some academics as well as people who are doing their PhD full-time, for example because PhD life coach really does go across every stage of the academic journey. And I wanted to make sure that I was representing all of my people who were working full-time in academia as well.[00:01:00] Vikki: And Claire got in touch, you'll hear much more detail from her in a second, but Claire got in touch because she has a bit of a career dilemma coming up now. Just to make really, really clear before you guys get over excited. I don't really do career coaching. Okay. It's not my specialty. There's lots of people out there who have real expertise in that stuff, in careers post PhD, for example. But I am very interested in decision making and I'm very interested in how we go about making decisions, particularly decisions that we can be as confident as possible that we won't regret later. And I'm interested in what makes those decisions difficult for people. So today we are gonna be thinking about career options, but we are gonna be thinking about them from that kind of decision making perspective. So Claire, why don't you tell people a little bit more about where you are at at the moment and what this decision you've got to make is Claire: Okay. Thank you. So,, I'm an academic at a [00:02:00] university and I've been there for best part of 10 years now. I'm a physio by background, but I've moved away from clinical working, so I'm purely in academia now. But I teach a variety of physio skills to undergraduate and postgraduate students and I am also doing a professional doctorate part-time, which I've been doing for some years. Claire: And thankfully I'm coming towards the end, so I'm in the write-up stage. So that's my goal for this year is to finish and submit and come out the other side of doctoral life. I guess my reason for getting in touch was, because I want to think about what my doctorate can do for me. That wasn't initially why I started it. But I've come to realize that it can actually do quite a lot for your career or, even if it in terms of, you know, interesting new roles, and doing different things. However, I don't [00:03:00] feel particularly skilled in finding some of these different things because they're potentially moving away from, sort of a traditional type of job progression or career progression. And so it is kind of a bit more lateral thinking and that's the bit that I struggle with. Vikki: Perfect. And what I love about this is I've done episodes about decision making before, right? And i've taken people through the sort of different steps of my decision making process. If people wanna hear more about that, I'll link to a show where I explain the decision making process in the show notes. But one of the very first steps of that is outline all the options. And I almost skim past that sometimes when I talk about it, right, because especially the way my brain works coming up with all the options is the easy bit, right? Deciding which ones I want to do is the hard bit. And so I've sort of, without really thinking about it, skimmed [00:04:00] past the, well, how do you figure out what options there are to then decide from anyway? Vikki: So I think it'll be really useful for everyone today for us to think more about that very first step. So I suspect today we are not gonna get in anywhere close to figuring out how you are gonna decide which one of these you want to pursue. But I think if we could get to a place where you've got a lot of ideas as to how you can find what different options there are, then I think that'll put you in a really good place to then enter into the rest of the decision making process. How does that sound? Claire: That sounds ideal. 'cause I think sometimes when I know what my options are, I, I can eventually at least make a decision, but it's knowing what all the options are from which to then pick or, I get some of them, but not all of them. I get the obvious ones. Vikki: Yes. No, definitely, definitely. And there's never gonna be an all of them, right? But enough of a [00:05:00] variety that we're confident that we've kind of covered it off. As it were. And before we came on, you were saying a little bit about how with physio there's quite a sort of specific career path. You know, you're choosing perhaps specialties I guess. But beyond that, the actual structures similar. And I think academia is saying in traditional academia can feel a bit like that too, that you do your PhD and then postdoc if appropriate. And then you sort of work your way up the academic level, and there's a bunch of decisions about what you specialize in and things, but what the job is that you're aspiring to is kind of ahead of you. But for people who want to move outside of that, I think it can be a lot more kind of fuzzy, I guess, to, to see the different options. Vikki: Okay. So tell me why you think you are not very good at coming up with the different options. Claire: Because when I kind of sit [00:06:00] down to think about what options I have, and I'm, I'm a bit old school, I'm very pencil on paper. So in the initial sort of brainstorming kind of stages and I'm scribbling things down, I don't seem to have very much that is beyond what would be considered the kind of traditional, obvious ways. Claire: And then I hear other people saying, oh, I'm doing this, or, oh, I've moved on from that and I'm doing this really exciting job now. And I'm thinking, good grief. How did you find that? How did you know what was out there to look for? I would never have considered that. So for example, a former colleague of mine went off to work with a charitable organization. Claire: It just never occurred to me that there might be anything related to what we do in that kind of environment. And so once I've heard about something, I might then look at it, but it doesn't occur to me to look at it [00:07:00] initially or I, I just don't think about, think of these things. So once I've read about them, oh yeah, that seems great, but then how do I find it elsewhere? Vikki: Okay, perfect. So how would somebody who was good at lateral thinking, who was good at identifying options, talk me through how they sit down with their paper and pen as well. How does what they do differ from what you do? Claire: Do you know? I'm not actually sure, but I guess they maybe have a wider range of thinking. Vikki: What does that mean? Claire: Oh gosh. I guess it's kind of being able to be a bit more flexible with thinking, so getting beyond the sort of the traditional, you start off at a junior or whatever and then go to a senior or whatever, and then you're a bit more senior. And [00:08:00] perhaps they're able to blend ideas a little bit. I don't wanna say a bit better, but perhaps a little bit more readily. Vikki: Mm-hmm. Claire: Than, than I I can, because I know there are some combinations. So in academia you might do some teaching and you might do some research. Vikki: Mm-hmm. Claire: But if it's a more unusual or a different type of blend. Or a different type of split, unless I've heard of it, it doesn't, I, I can't think, I don't think of it. Maybe they're a bit more flexible with their thinking about what kinds of things go together. Vikki: Okay. So in your mind, people that are good at that kind of lateral thinking and things like that, sort of semi spontaneously come up with these different options without having heard about them. Claire: Now you've phrased it like that, that sounds a bit unrealistic. I guess maybe they have heard about them, but perhaps just [00:09:00] better at retaining it or better at then seeing those, combinations or those different ideas or places where people can work. Whereas I either don't remember, 'cause my memory is quite notoriously bad at times or I remembered it, but I don't then make the next step, the next connection in my head to put it together with something else or to see it as something that I could look for somewhere else. Vikki: Okay, perfect. Now, people might be saying, why are you banging on about this, Vikki? Why don't we just think about what options there are out there? And the reason is that when you tell yourself something like, I'm not good at lateral thinking, and you don't see that as something that can change, and you see that as something that is absolutely necessary for the thing you want to be able to [00:10:00] achieve. So in this case, coming up with lots of ideas for this, it makes it really hard to move forward with it because you get to a stage where you're like, well, I'm just not good at thinking these things. So if I'm not good at coming up with them, how am I ever gonna know what they are? Okay. And I think what can be really useful is instead to start thinking, okay, how do people that are good at this do it. What sorts of questions are they are intentionally or implicitly asking themselves? Because I'm not gonna deny there are some brain, I, I am someone where my brain tends to fiz and make connections often to my detriment, just generally. So I'm not gonna sit here and say, I have a really systematic way of how I go, oh, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? Have you thought about that? 'cause I don't. But if I sat back and was like, okay, how am I making those connections? What would that look like? [00:11:00] Then we would absolutely come up with some sort of more intentional methods, I guess, by which you could come up with ideas. Vikki: And for those of you listening, you might not be in the same position as Claire trying to think about your next career moves and stuff, but everything we're talking about today can be applied to thinking of research ideas, for example. Often it can feel like other people have just got research ideas coming outta their ears and you dunno where they come from and da and how do you even, you know, think of it. Everything we're talking about can apply to anything where you are trying to sort of brainstorm options. How does it feel to think that you could modify or at least give yourself some strategies to support your lateral thinking rather than saying I'm just not good at that. Claire: That would be really great. You know, because I'm aware sometimes maybe can do, but it just feels a little [00:12:00] bit, by chance or by luck, rather than an active choice so yeah, any strategies that can support that process, that would be really helpful. Vikki: Things coming up by luck or by chance are often a sign that you're just good at it so you're discounting that. Claire: Mm-hmm. Vikki: I have this with people who say, oh, and I do write much faster than other people, but honestly it's not 'cause I'm good at it, I'm just lucky. It's like, why are you just good at it? And that's okay. So I'm not saying that like it's a super strength of yours, but if you have some situations where you do make these connections, where you do spot things and you are currently telling yourself, that's just by luck and chances. That's an example of discounting your skills. Claire: Okay. My only thought for that is it, it is reasonably infrequent and it does feel a bit random. [00:13:00] Yeah. Vikki: Well, that's okay. Not we get to spot those. Claire: Yeah. Vikki: We get to spot those and appreciate those and think about how we can create those environments, create those opportunities more often. Okay. So let's take one. Have a think. You mentioned that you met somebody who had gone into the charity sector. Claire: Oh yeah. Yeah. Vikki: So tell me about that. When you realized that that was an option. What happened in your brain, how you made that connection? Claire: Well, when I heard that they were leaving and they were moving on. And so you get the usual questions, oh, what are you going to do? You know, when are you gonna be going? And when she said where the organization that she was going to my initial thought was, wow, that's amazing. How on earth did you think of that? You know, how did you even think to look at that as an organization for which that there might be a job that might be appropriate? It was just a real wow, mind blowing moment that I was thinking, gosh, it would never have occurred to me to, [00:14:00] you know, because you think healthcare or you think education and you certain think of certain companies or organizations, and that's certainly not, not on the normal run of things. Claire: And you know, I'm still friends on social media with her and I know she's getting on really well and she's loving it and there's, you know, all these projects and things that she's been doing and it's been amazing. And the same is actually true for a couple of other people who might not necessarily be in those kinds of organizations. They may be, are in a traditional university role or a physio related organization. And, um, again, I'm like, wow, that sounds really interesting. But it's having that initial, being able to look and find it, it's just like mind blowing. Vikki: Okay. Um, did you ask? Claire: Yeah. Vikki: Okay. So how did she come up with it? Claire: So, it was not what I was [00:15:00] expecting her at all to say, oh, I found it on a one of the main, like job search engines and I was like, oh, which was kind of good in the sense that it's easily accessible, but kind of bad in the sense of I was expecting it to be something more super fantastic than that. Claire: But I immediately went, oh no, because when I have looked at similar or, or the same search engine, putting in the right words to get the right job search can then be another challenge. That in itself is, that's something different, but that in itself has been a bit of a problem. So yeah, the answer was just like a, a normal job search engine that probably most of the population would look at. Vikki: So what do you make it mean then about you that you saw her do that and you're like, wow, that's amazing. I never would've thought of that. And then you asked her, and it was fairly [00:16:00] mundane how she found it. How does that then translate into thoughts about you? What thoughts do you then end up having? Claire: So my initial thought was, oh great, I could do that. Vikki: Mm-hmm. Claire: Although in all fairness, it is then backed up with, like I said, about actually searching on those search engines. 'cause I haven't had much success in the past with picking the right words to put in to get the right stuff back. So what tends to happen for me is I put in what I think are the right words and then I get completely different job adverts back that are not what I was looking for and not related to me but my initial thought was, oh, I could do that. Vikki: Mm-hmm. Claire: So, which was kind of good in the sense it was positive. Although my enthusiasm was slightly curtailed when I thought about the logistics of actually doing that. Vikki: Okay. Well, what words did she put in for that to come up? Claire: Now That, I don't know. That unfortunately I didn't think to, [00:17:00] to ask. Um, and I, it was a lot fair while ago now, so I'm not sure she'll remember, but, um, Vikki: but she might have thoughts. Claire: Mm-hmm. Vikki: Because, so what happens here right, is there's all, especially if we are convinced we can't do something, that then as soon as a bit of evidence that it's something that you couldn't do, comes up, we stop asking, okay? So you had this example of somebody, and I want you to notice that means that you had people in your network who you knew, who had similar skills to you and were doing interesting things, okay? Vikki: Which is a brilliant source of options, okay? If you have a net network where people are doing things fabulous, that's, that's a tick in the, I can come up with options box already. The fact that you even knew her. Okay. And then your first thought was, oh, I would [00:18:00] have no idea how I would find that. Vikki: Okay. Now a lot of people would've just stopped that, oh, I have no idea how she found that. Stop. You actually did ask, which again, shows that you are willing to then reach out. You're willing to have those conversations. You're willing to ask people how did it, which is another big tick in the I can do lateral thinking box. Vikki: Okay. And then she said, I did this. And you thought, oh, I can do that. Which again, brilliant, it means that you can hear what other people have done and immediately think, oh yes, I could do that too. So that's another tick in the, you're gonna be able to generate options box. So you did lots of things very right. Vikki: The only thing I think that happened was then you had one go at it and you then decided, oh, I haven't found things. I must not be good at searching for stuff, where I would really encourage you to ask questions about what exactly did you search for? [00:19:00] How many different searches did you do? How much crap did you filter through before you found this? What was it about that advert that made you think that you might be a contender for it? Claire: Mm-hmm. Vikki: Okay. So I think you did a ton of things right in this, you just paused when it felt a bit difficult on your sort of first attempt, and often that's because we've got this story. If you believed you were gonna find your job on one of those and that that was just inevitable that you would find it, you wouldn't stop if you looked once and didn't find it. Claire: Okay. Vikki: Yeah. But when we, yeah. A chunk of us. It's like, so I've started doing, okay, this is an example of my problem with hobbies. I decided that it would be nice to do jigsaws so that I spend less time on my phone, more relaxed [00:20:00] analog vibes, except me being me. I've, I've turned this into, um, I want to do speed jigsaw competitions because obviously I can't just do it in a calm and restful a little bit at a time. Vikki: My mum's got her head in her hands just like, what are you doing? Anyway, I want you to think about how hard you would search for a piece if you knew it was in the box versus how hard you would see search for the piece if I told you, oh, I did actually drop some of the pieces up the farm, carrying it from the car, which is also a true story. If I knew it was definitely there. I would search for way longer. Claire: Yeah, that definitely makes sense. I, I think if I knew for sure that it was some out there somewhere then yeah. Much like you, you just explained with your jigsaw piece, yeah, I would definitely search harder and if I felt more [00:21:00] confident in my abilities to find said, piece, then yeah, I would perhaps persevere a bit more. Whereas if I'm not sure it's there at all, you kind of think, oh, well what's the point? I'm wasting my time. Vikki: Yes. Claire: Or if you think, well, I dunno how to do this, or I'm always, you know, rubbish at doing this, I'm never gonna find it anyway. Then again, you think, well, what's the point? It's a waste of time. You stop. Vikki: Yeah. So what we're trying to do here is recognize that people who find these things have essentially used a bunch of tactics. I think we can look at it from the point of view of how can we figure out what's out there. We start from that kind of, where would we look to see what's out there? Mm-hmm. And we can do it from starting much closer to us of identifying what skills you've got. Vikki: And I suggest we talk a little bit [00:22:00] about both of those because we can think about how, and you've already identified two ways that we can find out what's out there. We can find people who are doing interesting things, either through our immediate network or in some other way. And we can search on search engines essentially. Yeah. So there's a couple of ways already and we'll think more about how we can do that in creative ways. Mm-hmm. So how can we find what options are there out there? And then afterwards let's talk about how can we start from, I am a person with these skills, these skills, these skills, these skills. And I don't mean physiotherapy skills, I mean the broader, more transferable skills than that, assuming you're not looking to go back into clinical, um, Claire: no. Vikki: I thought that was perhaps Claire: not. Vikki: Then we can think what more generically, what skills you have and how you could identify those, because that can be a starting point as well. Right. Because then you can ask yourself, in what environments [00:23:00] would those skills be useful? And I think having that er approach of looking at what's out there and looking at what I've got and then we're trying to find matches can be really useful. Claire: Sure. Vikki: Okay. So how can you find out more about what's out there? Claire: Um, well the first one that springs to mind is, I guess , the obvious perhaps. Do a Google search on how can I find what jobs there are or something like that, which I sometimes, I've used quite well with other things, but perhaps not for this. I don't know why, but anyway, you could, you know, ask the question of Google or something like that. Yeah. Doing a brainstorm of all the places that I could actually think of like straight off the top of my head and I've write, written them down. Vikki: Okay. Claire: So that, although that does make long. Vikki: So you could come up with some things off the top of your head. Claire: Yeah, they're perhaps not necessarily always [00:24:00] very helpful 'cause it's a bit like the difference between, you know, doing your car insurance on one of the comparison sites and you know, finding the best deal straight away or going around every single insurance provider that you can think of. So I have been known to write down all the specific organizations I can think of and then go to their job search and see what there is kind of thing. Vikki: Okay. Claire: Um. There is obviously the job searching websites that you, or searching places that you can, that I could think of. Vikki: Mm-hmm. Claire: So whether that be more profession specific ones or whether that be general ones that are out there in the market. And yeah, you said about asking people, which I, I would admit I'm not very good at. Vikki: Okay. Why not? Claire: I'm not sure. I think, [00:25:00] I dunno whether I kind of expect myself to already know. Vikki: Mm-hmm Claire: And therefore I'm not very good at asking. Like some things I'm really good at asking, like a work related thing. I'll put my hand up and say, I often dunno the answer, so I'll go ask the question. But with something like this, I don't know. I dunno why I don't ask more. Vikki: Have a think. What feels uncomfortable about asking? Claire: Um, I just wonder if I don't like people knowing that I'm maybe thinking about not thinking about my career, 'cause everybody thinks about the career, but in the sense, more, in a more specific way. Because then if you don't get what you want or you go for something and you, you're not successful for whatever reason. And it might just be that there was somebody that had got more skills or whatever. I think I have been made in the past to feel Oh, well you didn't get it. You know, it's a bit like failure, isn't it? [00:26:00] So I don't like to ask, Vikki: what do you dislike about failure? Claire: Certainly that the one time where I was in that position where people were making me feel like I'd failed to get the job. It felt embarrassing. It was uncomfortable. It felt like pouring salt in the wound. You know, I was kind of okay with the fact that I hadn't gotten the job because I got some feedback and I, yeah, if I'm, you know, I, yeah, I kind of agreed that it wasn't, you know, I hadn't answered the questions the best and therefore, yeah, they, I, I totally okay with the decision, but then other people making me feel a bit uncomfortable, you know, oh, well you should have got it and things like that. So maybe I perhaps wrongly assume that people are gonna do that every time. So if you go for something and you're not successful, or [00:27:00] you look for a job and you don't find anything, they're gonna come back to you. Oh, well, oh, was there nothing? Oh, did you not find it? Oh, you know. You didn't do it or you didn't succeed. Vikki: Mm-hmm. And that is possible, right? Claire: Yeah. It's possible. Vikki: They might say that. Claire: Not necessarily guaranteed, but Vikki: what might they say about you not looking? Claire: I guess there's the flip side to that, where they might say, oh, well, didn't you look, you know, or, oh, well I would've looked, or, oh, well why don't you look here? Or, yeah, Vikki: usually when there's something we're avoiding, we're predicting some discomfort associated with that thing. And in a second, I'm, there's something else I wanna say about, what we're actually trying to do, which I think will hopefully relieve some of this, but even, let's say we are actually talking about applying for jobs [00:28:00] and this fear that people are gonna be like, oh, you didn't get it. Vikki: You tried and you didn't. It's really useful to just remind, this is not trying to make you feel uncomfortable all the time, but this is to really useful to remind yourself what is the downside of the opposite here. So we are doing this a lot in my membership at the moment where there's discomfort around putting your research out there into the world, right? Vikki: Because people might read it, they might criticize it and so on, but there's also a massive amount of discomfort around doing research that no one is ever going to see and that no one is ever going to respond to. There's a bunch of self-criticism that comes on that side as well. Claire: Mm-hmm. Vikki: And the more you can remind yourself, it sounds terribly negative, but genuinely, I think it's positive. Vikki: The more you can remind yourself, there's the potential for self-criticism on both sides of this. Vikki: Mm-hmm. Vikki: You could criticize yourself for looking for things and not finding stuff you could criticize yourself for [00:29:00] applying for things and not getting it. But you could just as readily beat yourself up for never applying for anything and for being bad at lateral thinking. Vikki: And when we recognize that there's self-criticism in any version of this. Yeah. Anybody listening who's got a family and a career at the same time will very much resonate with the idea that, you know, over here I can criticize myself for being a bad parent over here. I can criticize myself for being a bad lecturer and everything in between, right? Vikki: Mm-hmm. Every choice we take, there's, there's criticism on either side of it. If we look, and then what you get to do is say, okay, what would I prefer to be criticized for? If I am gonna be criticized? Do I wanna be criticized? And we're talking criticism of by yourself most of the time, but also potentially from others. Do I wanna be criticized for looking, do I wanna be criticized for trying and failing, or do I wanna be criticized for never having [00:30:00] looked? Which do I want to criticize myself? Claire: Yeah. Yeah. I guess it would be worse having not looked or found something and not applied because of whatever not very, not very strong reason. You know, I don't wanna say an excuse 'cause it might be valid, but it might not be particularly a strong argument for not applying, because then I guess the argument is, well you know, you might have been successful or you might have found something, or, yeah, you didn't even try. That sounds quite hard. But yeah, I guess that's what it boils down to. Vikki: And you, there's arguments in both directions, right? I, for one, I would always rather be criticized for something I have done than something I haven't done. For [00:31:00] sure. Other people will have different sort of thresholds for that, which is absolutely fine. And obviously with coaching and stuff we can work on reducing the amount we criticize ourselves for the decision we make anyway, right? Claire: Mm-hmm. Vikki: But you don't get to avoid the potential for self-criticism. 'cause whatever you do, there's potential for self-criticism. And so we then get to make the decision on other reasons instead. Claire: Mm-hmm. Vikki: Now I said there was something else I wanted to come back to, which is, and I think this is such a common mistake that people make when they're thinking about career hunting, is conflating working out what options there are out there with applying for jobs. Claire: Mm-hmm. Vikki: These are two entirely separate things. Okay. When I asked you about what was sort of worrying about reaching out and asking questions and things, it was all to do with what if I don't get it? But if we're in research phase, we are not applying at this [00:32:00] stage, we are just trying to work out what exists in the world. Claire: Yeah. Vikki: And this fundamentally changes how you interact with people. Okay. And I've got a couple of episodes that I'm gonna send people onto and you can have a listen to if you haven't already. There's one episode with Jennifer Polk about networking, which touches on this, but probably more relevant. Vikki: There's an episode with David Mendez talking about inter informational interviewing and kind of using your network to find out more about what's possible. So I would definitely, definitely check those out. Okay. But if we can separate researching what's out there from applying. Claire: Mm-hmm. Vikki: It makes it so much easier to have the conversations and it makes it so much less of a scary prospect. How would it change things for you if you thought that research phase where you're just trying to find out what's out there, it's not about applying for anything, you're just trying to find what's out there. How might [00:33:00] that change the experience for you? Claire: I guess it would make it potentially a bit more positive in the sense that if you're not really thinking too much about the logistics or you know, the realities of it. You're just thinking blue sky thinking at the moment. It's sort of going in within everything, anything's possible kind of Vikki: mm-hmm. Claire: Approach and then worrying about the real, the reality of it at a bit of a later date. Vikki: Yeah. Claire: Um, so I guess it would change the mind frame a little bit. Vikki: And how or would it change the way you interacted with people? So if you were gonna contact people to find out about it, how would it change that? Claire: Um, again, I guess it would just be much more in, well, for me anyway, much more informal, perhaps just throwing caution to the wind and see what comes back kind [00:34:00] of approach. Vikki: Yeah. Because there's such a difference between contacting somebody on LinkedIn and saying I'm looking for a job in your industry. Can we talk? Versus, I'm really interested to find out how you got where you are. I think you've got a really interesting career path and I'd love to know more about it. Completely different nature of conversation. Completely different how people are likely to respond to it. 'cause the first one, it sounds like you're trying to get something from them. Vikki: And the second one that you, it sounds like they're interested in you. And therefore you're like, oh, okay, that's quite nice. Now some people will get people contacting them all the time. People who've got like, you know, Steven Bartlett or whoever will have people contacting them all the time saying, how did you get to be the diary of A CEO, man? Or whatever. But for the vast majority of people, you don't. You know, I got a message recently where it was, you know, I'm looking to do something similar to you. And I'm, I don't go, oh, you want something [00:35:00] for me? I'm like, oh, you are interested in how I did what I did. That's cool. You know, it feels nice. Right. And it completely changes the nature of it. And you don't even necessarily have to contact them because if you can get to the stage, where it's like okay, let's go on LinkedIn and look up people who have physio degrees and experience working in higher education. Claire: Mm-hmm. Vikki: And see where they are. It's just look at a bunch of them, but then it suddenly it isn't, I need to identify what I'm going to do. It is where do academic physios end up? Claire: Yeah. Vikki: If you wanna translate it out, then you start saying, okay, where do academic nurses end up? Where do you know? And start thinking, okay, if I don't want something that's specific to my physio skills, who else is kind of like me? And where do they end up? People with broad clinical backgrounds who've kind of done some leadership bits of academic stuff. Claire: Mm-hmm. Vikki: [00:36:00] What do they end up doing? Okay. How does that feel, that kind of searching out for what people might have ended up doing? Claire: It sounds kind of good and scary and equal measures. It is good in the sense that, yeah, like you say, you're not directly saying, oh, hi, I, you know, I want a job like you, or I wanna come and work with, work with you, which might feel a bit like you say you want something from them. Claire: Um, so it's good in the sense that bit sounds better. Um, the sort of networking bit that sounds quite scary. I'm not naturally not very confident at doing it. I think I'm, I can do it and I'm, I don't think, it's, not that I'm no good at doing it but I think it's confidence, you know, I feel, um, a little bit [00:37:00] like, you know, what am I doing here? Kind of thing. Yeah. Which I watched your imposter syndrome webinar, so, um, uh, a little bit aware of, of that. I think because I'm a bit of a technophobe, things like LinkedIn and all of that feel really alien. Really uncomfortable. Yeah. And I am trying to avoid like the plague, um, but I feel like I'm probably gonna have to grasp the metal at some point. Vikki: I feel like of all the metals to grasp in this sort of question, LinkedIn is probably the one. Claire: Yeah. Vikki: I have to say. Claire: Yeah. Yeah. I, I'm kind of coming to that conclusion, um, myself. It has cropped up a few times and given that I don't seem to have had massive amount of success without it, I think probably I'm gonna need to to do that. Vikki: And I don't mean from the perspective that you put [00:38:00] yourself on LinkedIn and then all these jobs are gonna come flying towards you. I don't mean that. It is just, it's a great way to snoop on people. Yeah. In the nicest possible way. Your university will almost certainly have how to use LinkedIn courses. Claire: Yeah, probably. Vikki: Which would be completely free. If not, if you get on YouTube and search how to use LinkedIn to find career opportunities mm-hmm. Or something, you are gonna find a thousand. As I say, David Mendez, who I interviewed for one of mine, he does a lot of this stuff that he's, um, he is worth looking at. Vikki: In fact, he has a whole podcast, um, Papa PhD. His podcast is, he has a whole podcast, which is people post PhD who do things other than the traditional straight through academia thing. So that's the other thing is listening to things like that. Right. And just seeing where people end up and what kind of tickles your fancy as you go through. Vikki: The other thing that I would always recommend, and this is something that I actually learned back in the day when I was doing human research, [00:39:00] which you probably empathize with, is snowball recruitment. Okay. Yeah. So for people who don't do, um, you are nodding. So, um, in fact, tell us what your understanding looks like. You know what I'm talking about. So tell us what I mean by snowball recruiting. Claire: So, um, well I did a little bit this in my own participant recruitment because I'm doing qualitative research, which brought up a whole bunch of problems in its own right. But so recruiting participants proved to be difficult. My participants were students. The hilarious thing about it is they've all long since graduated. So I had year ones, year twos and year threes, and particularly recruiting year ones was a bit of a nightmare, if truth be told, because of course most of them are fresh out of college and they're trying to find their feet in university, let alone do anything. Else. And it's all very alien and scary to them, which I completely understand. [00:40:00] So once I'd got a couple of participants, sort of at the end of the interviews, I'm sort of asking them if you know of anybody that's interested or this who might be thinking about it please do suggested to them if you think they're appropriate, point 'em in that direction of the information sheet. So it kind of, as the name suggests, goes on like a snowball. And I did get an extra. Participant outta snowball recruitment. Vikki: So you can do the exact same thing with this. You find one person who has a physio background who's gone into something cool and you have a bit of a chat with them, and at the end you ask them, is there anybody else you think it would be interesting for me to talk to? Is there anybody else you can think of that has done physio? In fact, you can ask people who are within your existing network. You don't even, you know, this can start from, especially people that you sort of trust and you're willing to have that conversation [00:41:00] with, um, perhaps people that you used to train with rather than your kind of current colleagues. Um, where have people ended up? All those people that did physio with me 10, 15 years ago, whatever, where, where have people ended up and asking them, do you know anyone who was a physio who's now doing something different? Claire: Mm-hmm. Vikki: And then having a little snoop, what they're doing too. Vikki: Before we finish up, let's also just think about that other side of it that I mentioned of identifying what skills you are bringing. Because sometimes the barrier here is sort of feeling like the only skills you've got are teaching physio to physio students. Claire: Mm-hmm. Vikki: And sort of being like, well, if I'm not in a place that teaches physio students, then I'm no use. So how do you feel, first of all, about identifying your more general skills? Claire: I feel like I could do it in a very superficial way. Vikki: Okay. Claire: So like, you know, sort of one or two word. [00:42:00] Answers kind of thing. But then if I have to talk about it in a deeper sense, I'm not as good at doing that because I tend to either play down my role or put it onto somebody else, you know, as in, oh, this went really well, but that was because so and so did this. Claire: So yeah, in a superficial sense. So like for example, I'd say, oh yes, I've got leadership skills and I've got, you know, skills with working with research. But then if we get into, well, which research skills? No. Well, I don't know. I'm not very good at qualitative research, but Yeah. But you did your doctorate on it. Yeah, I know, but I'm still a bit of a novice, so I kind of played it down all the way to Vikki: bit of a novice compared to who. Claire: This sounds a real, this to me at least sounds like a really silly answer, but compared to people who've done lots of it Vikki: Yeah. Claire: In the sense of, yeah, it, that sounds like a really silly answer because as a student, obviously you go along to [00:43:00] tutorials and sessions and webinars with people who are really experienced in it, and you ask 'em a question and say, oh, you could do this, or you could do that. Or they answer in a particular way and you think, wow, they've got so much knowledge and it's, and you know, for, well, it's because they've done loads of it, or that's what they do as their bread and butter. But, um, it still feels like this, you know, you put 'em on this pedestal because they're amazing. Vikki: So who do you know more about qualitative research then? Claire: My students. Vikki: Yeah. So you know more than your students. Who else? Claire: Um, I guess people that have never done qualitative research on anything about it. Or who have done it a little bit in theory, but not in practice. Vikki: Okay. So what proportion of the world do you think you are better at qualitative research then? Claire: Okay. When you put it like that and you think [00:44:00] about everybody in the world, then yes. Okay. There's maybe more, Vikki: you probably top 1%. Claire: Yeah. Rather than the other way around. Yes. Vikki: But, but genuinely, you know, you think, you know, I think around, um, I live in a housing estate with like 200 houses. I mean, I live just south of Cambridge, so frankly there's a shocking number of PhDs on this estate. So it's probably a bad example. Claire: That's a bad example. Vikki: But generally, if you think generally in the world, you genuinely probably are top 1% for qualitative research. Claire: Oh, I could feel, I can feel my face heating up when you say that, Vikki: but what percent of people have PhDs and at least half of them don't do qualitative research, if not more. Claire: Mm-hmm. Vikki: Probably loads more 'cause actually the sort of qualitative research you are talking about, you wouldn't do in the arts and humanities and stuff. Claire: Mm hmm. Yeah. Vikki: Yeah. I mean, it means you're probably [00:45:00] also bottom 20% for literary criticism or whatever, rightly. There's, you know, whatever it is. There's all the other things we are not, but one of the things that I think academia is terrible for is convincing incredibly knowledgeable people that they don't know enough because they don't know enough as the people at the very top of their field. Vikki: Where if, and I'm not saying this is the sort of job you want necessarily, but if a charity or a corporation wanted to collect qualitative data about their users or about their customers and analyze it in a meaningful way in order to make decisions about the strategy of the charity or the organization, you would probably be better placed to do that than most people. Claire: Yeah. I guess when you phrase it like that, it does kind of make a bit more sense. But you're right. I think , you tend to focus on the bit [00:46:00] that tells you you're not as good as the people that are really experienced rather than focusing on the bit that says, well, you've got more experience in it, you know, all these other people. Vikki: Yeah. We have to remember that we have to compare ourselves to the people. It's the same. Everyone focuses on the people that have done their PhD faster than them. And we never compare ourselves to the people that didn't finish their PhD or never started their PhD or are taking longer over their PhD. Vikki: Any of those people. We compare ourselves to the people that are publishing more, but we never compare ourselves to the people that are cut publishing less. 'cause we just see it less often. You know, we're always fixed on the bit where they're better than us. Vikki: So when it comes to identifying your skills, the two tips I would give you, the first one is exactly that, is put yourself in a general population rather than an academic population and then ask yourself what skills you've got. Okay? Because it will come out completely differently. The hierarchy that we understand within academia when we are in it. Just doesn't seem to [00:47:00] exist. You are kind of an academic, the notion that a professor would be much, much, much more senior and experienced than knowledgeable and stuff, than somebody just straight out their PhD in the general public is all just clever people over there. And that's really, so firstly, remember, remember what you are comparing to if you're thinking about moving sector, you know, what skills have you got compared to those people? Claire: Yeah. Vikki: And that's with all respect. Every, every sector's got their things right? Claire: Yeah. Yeah. Vikki: So it's all respect to other sectors too. The other thing, and this is useful for applying for jobs just generally for everybody, is get way more specific about what you're saying, because I've got good leadership skills. I've got good communication skills. What does that mean? It means virtually nothing. Okay. So I would get much, much more specific about what do these skills enable you to do. I can move a [00:48:00] long-term project, for example. Yeah, PhD. Absolutely. I can move a long-term project dealing with large amounts of data, draw out key messages and communicate 'em in a way that's appropriate to the audience or whatever, right? Vikki: I can pull together a team of five people to deliver a complex module against, academic standards as well as clinical requirements. Do you see what I mean? You're getting much, much more specific about what that actually means, because then what you can start doing is going, okay, so what other places other than universities do you need to take a team of three or four people and put on some sort of educational program. What other situations do you do that loads of situations virtually all organizations will have training arms. So suddenly you're like, oh, okay. I've made it much more specific. And in making it specific is much clearer where you can apply it. Claire: Yeah. Vikki: [00:49:00] Okay. How does that feel? Claire: Yeah, that, that sounds really reasonable. Actually. Thinking about, like you say, you know, if you say, oh, I've got communication skills, what does that mean? But if you actually drill down into what it allows you to do and therefore what, how could you apply that elsewhere, then yeah. Yeah. I think that's really useful. Vikki: Okay. I would always start with these things, trying to come up with 'em yourself. Claire: Mm-hmm. Vikki: And it's not very often that I recommend ai, but I think this is one where it might be useful. I would also recommend that you go into just the basic I free AI thing, so into chat GPT or something like that. Yeah. And put in, this has been my career path. I do this, I do this, I do this, I do this. Claire: Mm-hmm. Vikki: Give me 15 transferable skills that you think I'm likely to have based on this background and why they might be useful, or what sectors might they be useful in, or something like that. Because [00:50:00] sometimes the reason I'm saying it, 'cause normally I prefer people just to be creative on their own without using ai. But I think sometimes we get such a block on about what we are good at that actually, sometimes you read it and you're like, that probably actually is technically true, would never have come up with it. But yeah, I probably could argue that I could do that. Yeah, I guess actually, yeah, I haven't really thought about that as a strength, but yeah, I do do that and it kind of gives you something to reflect against, so that can be a really useful thing. Vikki: I've also never tried just typing in where do I, where else employees, academic physios or something like that. I'm putting that into something like chat GPT and just seeing what they come up with. Claire: I'm quite new to ai. Again, I'm a bit of a techno fo, but I have done it. I have used it. It's probably not my go-to. It certainly wouldn't be the first thing that I come to. But yeah, I think that, again, that's based on what I've used it for already and that it was [00:51:00] reasonably successful then actually, that sounds like a reasonable suggestion. Vikki: Because especially with something that's free and just straightforward like Chat GPT, you can just treat it like Google, but ask a longer question. Vikki: Right. Just ask a more detailed question. Um, so I don't think, you know, yes there's probably skills to writing good prompts and stuff, but you can definitely just muddle through it too. Claire: I mean, I guess ultimately if it comes back with us rubbish, then you can just bin it off. Vikki: Exactly. It's not like you're putting it in to try and get an output that you're going to use for something. I 100% wouldn't use it to write your CV or anything like that. Claire: Yeah. Yeah. Vikki: So where it's text that you want to sound like you, or where it's important that you've intellectually engaged with it, I would not recommend it at all. But where it's just coming up with a bunch of stuff that you can then evaluate, then it can be really helpful. Claire: Yeah. [00:52:00] Yeah. Vikki: Okay. How are you feeling about starting this process of identifying things that might be out there? Claire: A little apprehensive, but kind of definitely more positive as in the sense that even if I don't find anything, well at least I've got some ideas to try. And if I don't find anything, well I'm no worse off than where I am now. Kind of a, so it, it's kind of good in to, to have some ideas about places to, or, or at least, uh, actions to take rather than places to look, but actions to take. Claire: Um, so yeah, it's kind of encouraging. Vikki: I would even, can you genuinely see a world in which you plunk some stuff into chat, GPT. [00:53:00] You had a snoop around on LinkedIn. Claire: Mm-hmm. Vikki: You talked to some people that you used to train with Claire: mm-hmm. Vikki: And you didn't identify anything you haven't thought of before? Claire: I think there's always that possibility, but in the sense that, you know, never say never kind of thing. Claire: But I guess if you think about then the likelihood of, of that, um, and I guess this is the sciencey part of me coming out. The, the, the chances are you're gonna find something that makes you go, oh wow, that's, that's really interesting. Or, Hmm, I like the sound of that. And, and that's really good. 'cause at the moment I'm looking at people who are in. Claire: Completely different fields. And I mean, they're not even in healthcare. They're in like, I don't know, paleontology or something and going, wow, that sounds so exciting. But it's not realistic for me to just, you know, [00:54:00] jump fields completely and start from scratch again. So I, you know, I think the, the chances of finding something that I could feasibly work towards or at least aim vaguely in that direction and then see where it goes that that's more realistic. Vikki: Yeah. Perfect. And remember, we want to keep the criteria here to be interesting stuff because if you start changing the boundaries and making this, what's the chances of me finding something that I actually end up doing? Then you are smushing about five steps of the process in together. Mm-hmm. So finding something that you end up doing. Vikki: Is not the purpose of this first part. Claire: Mm-hmm. Vikki: The purpose of this first part is solely coming up with a load of stuff. Claire: Mm-hmm. Vikki: This is putting the sand in the sandbox. We're gonna build sandcastles out of it later. Yeah. So when we then think about it like that, what's the chances of you not finding some roles that you didn't know existed that might be possibilities? Vikki: Mm-hmm. I think it's virtually [00:55:00] impossible. I literally don't see how you could do the steps we've done. Claire: Mm-hmm. Vikki: And not come up with some. Now does it mean you will definitely find the role that's gonna be the perfect one for you? Who knows? That's 10 steps down the way, but you'll definitely find some stuff and the more you can kind of congrat rather than being like, oh yeah, but it's probably not gonna work. Vikki: Oh yeah, it's not gonna be fees. Oh yeah. It doesn't pay enough if the more you can avoid doing that and just being like, I'm just finding stuff. I'm just doing the lateral thinking bit. I'm just finding different options at this stage. The more you can stay in that mindset and be like, the other stuff's for next month, that's for another day. Vikki: Then narrowing it down to another day. This is just the finding bit. Claire: Yeah. Yeah. Vikki: The more likely it feels. 'cause suddenly it's like, well, cool, I'm gonna, I'm gonna find some stuff. Who knows what I find. But you, you have to find, you know, there's so many things. You have to find some stuff there. Claire: Mm-hmm. Vikki: Okay. Claire: Yeah, I think that, I think that's, um, [00:56:00] reasonable and as you say, you can worry about the feasibility or the practicalities and all of that sort of stuff Yeah. At a, at a later date. Vikki: Exactly. Um, Claire: but Vikki: yeah. And hopefully that takes a little bit of the apprehension away because the consequences here are really very, very small. Claire: Yeah. Vikki: You're gonna spend a little bit of time messing 'em about online. You might speak to a couple of people and they might not reply to you, which is quite normal. Claire: Mm-hmm. Vikki: Um, that happens. Um, so the kind of, it's not this sort of big pressure. If I don't find this, then that it's gonna be awful. It's gonna be, it is. Vikki: Like find some stuff. And they'll figure out the rest later. Claire: Yeah. Yeah. That, that does make it much more doable when you phrase it like Vikki: that. Yeah. Claire: I guess it's the, you know, the coming back to the old I did of, you know, journey of a thousand Miles Begins with a [00:57:00] step and all of that sort of stuff. So Yeah. Claire: Rather than thinking about it, I've got to find this amazing job role. You forget thinking about like that and just think about the first step. Vikki: Yeah. And we, that's where we get have to, because your brain will offer that. Your brain will say, yeah, yeah, but that's probably not gonna work. Yeah, yeah. But I'm probably not qualified. Vikki: Yeah. Yeah. I probably wouldn't get that. Yeah. Yeah. It's probably not gonna, it's gonna offer all those things for sure. And that's fine. We are never gonna switch that off. But what we get to do instead, just like children that are being irritating, we get to go. I know, but we're doing this now. Claire: Yeah. Vikki: Yeah. I know. Vikki: That's for another day. Right now we're just finding stuff. Claire: Yeah, yeah, Vikki: yeah. So don't try and stop those thoughts 'cause they will come a hundred percent. Mm-hmm. But we get to be okay. That's next month's me's problem. My problem right now is just finding a bunch of stuff. Claire: Yeah. Yeah. Vikki: Okay. Claire: Yes. Vikki: Cool. Fabulous. Claire: I think that's been really, really helpful. I've scribbled down a few [00:58:00] things and it's definitely given me some ideas of where I can start with, which I think sometimes that's the, the worst bit, isn't it? Yeah, definitely. It's like going to the gym. The hardest bit is going out the front door. Yeah. Once you're actually there, you're kind of like, oh, well I'm here now so I'll do it. So once you're on the job website or whatever, you go, well, I'm here now, so I'll just look. Vikki: I think sometimes we feel like we have to have the whole journey plotted out in our heads. You don't. You need some places to start looking and then it'll be like, oh, there seems to be a couple of different things in the military where that came from, but go with it. Claire: Yeah. Vikki: That, you know. Oh, I wonder if there's anything in other branches of the military. Oh, actually that's made me think of guides and scouts. I wonder if there's something, you know what I mean? Yeah. Right. That it kind of once you get little bits of ideas, that snowball thing then kicks in either by asking people or just because your brain will give you ideas as you go through. Claire: Yeah, that's definitely true. Vikki: Thank you so much for coming on. I know that will be useful for people who are in your sort of situation, but I'm also hoping people really can [00:59:00] translate it out to any place where they need to come up with ideas and that sort of thing. So thank you so much for coming on. Thank you everybody for listening. If you wanna get coached in the future, do just join my newsletter and I will see you next week.
