This is the second of a two part series about thriving in our academic summer. This time we consider the balance between structure and freedom and how to plan a summer that meets all of our needs.
In this episode I talk about another episodes of my podcast:
Transcript
Hi everyone, and welcome to episode 39 of the PhD Life Coach. This is going to be the second part of my little mini series about preparing for an academic summer. Have you ever had those summers where you’ve listed out all the things that you want to get done, but you also want to rest. But you also want to spend time with your family. You also want to do some fun things, but you need to do this task for uni and that task and this task for your career and that task for this, that and the other.
Whether you're a PhD student or an academic, sometimes that can just feel really overwhelming. Often we get to the end of the summer kind of going, whoa, where did that go? Term starting up again. Classes are starting up again. Whether you're taking them as a PhD student or teaching them as an academic is all starting up again and suddenly we're a bit like, where did July and August go? I have no idea.
Last week we thought a bit about accepting a little bit about some of the things that maybe we wish were different in an academic summer these days. Maybe we wish we could have more support during that time. Maybe we wish we had less administrative work to do and things. And we talked about that balance between accepting some things where fighting them just causes more challenges, where that feeling that it's unfair really makes everything feel worse.
But also where we choose to resist things too, that we don't have to just blindly do what's “reasonable”, what people tell us is the must-dos over the summer. We don't have to, we get to pick what's right for us. So if you haven't listened to that episode, do go back and listen to that one as well. They, these don't necessarily go in any particular order, so you can stay with me here for this one now, but make sure you go back and listen to that one too.
And I also mentioned there the word “reasonable” and that gives you a little bit of a hint as to what's happening in my podcast next week. We have a guest episode from a very cool academic and author who has been writing about how what is “reasonable” isn't necessarily as agreed on as people think. And that perhaps the best thing we can do is to decide for ourselves what we want to be reasonable and what we want to do with our summers and with our careers. So make sure you tune in next week. I did the interview yesterday, it is super good. She's amazing. Her name's Kirsty Sedgman and you're going to hear all about it next week.
But this week is thinking about that balance between structure and freedom. So there's a lot of us that long for that summer where things feel a little bit more free. We haven't got as many requirements. Those of us who have got kids at home could bring different sorts of structure and different sorts of requirements, but there's at least not that sense of really firmly timetabled time that we often get during the main academic year.
On the other hand, some of us miss that structure. So in this episode, what we're really going to be thinking about is how can we plan now to create the best possible summer that we can have within the constraints that we have? Because we're not going to deny the fact that having kids at home changes, and we're not going to deny the fact that living on your own or not living on your own changes it. That having more support, less support, all of these things, it changes it. But within those constraints, how can we construct to someone that feels good for us?
I'm actually going to be touching on a few things that have come out of client calls as well. So as most of you know, I have individual clients as well as my university workshops and membership programs. And in those one-to-one sessions, we're really starting to think about planning for the summer. And that's particularly because I've decided that I'm shutting down quite a bit over the summer and so I'm not taking any client calls during the summer period. And so we are really spending some time thinking about what do they want those summers to look like.
I am going to be sharing with you some tips that have come out of one-to-one client sessions, not from me, but from the clients. Because that's one of the things I love most about coaching, is I don't sit there and say, “why don't you do it like this? Why don't you do it like that?” I help you come to things that were going to work for you. And there's been a couple of things that have come out from a couple of different clients that I think are going to be really, really useful for all of you.
So the first question I want you to ask yourself is, “what do I need from this summer?” Often what we do at this time of year is plan what things do I want to do? We make our to-do list for the summer. Usually it's unrealistic. And instead, I want you to think about what would it benefit me to do this summer? What do I need and not just need in order to be productive or need in order to tick things off that we want to tick off, but what do I need as a human? What do I need as a researcher? What do I need as a teacher, as a professional, as a parent, whatever it is. Okay.
The reason we're going to think about that is because all of that can then inform how we structure our summer. So some of you have heard me talk before about being your own best supervisor and this idea of lifting yourself out of yourself to sort of look at you as a person that you care about, that you want to look after, and to really think about how can I make this a good summer for Vikki?
How can I, as Vikki’s supervisor, Vikki’s internal supervisor, make this a good summer for Vikki? What does she really need? I. And sometimes that might be rest. Sometimes it might be social contact. Sometimes it might be some fun physical activity. Sometimes it might be some clearing out of systems and tidying up and just sort of decluttering so things feel better. Some of it might be to really make progress on that one thing that has been holding us up and that we don't, that we really want to get done.
When we decide in advance what those things are, we can then go through a bit of a process. We can think, is this realistic? Can I give myself all of these things? You guys might differ. I have a massive tendency to decide in this summer, I need to do all these personal goals, which are really exciting, and I need to rest and I need to have some unstructured time, and I need to do all the to-dos that I've ever had on my to-do list, and I'm completely unrealistic.
But if I don't get that clear up front and I just notionally have, oh, I need to do this, this, this, this, and this, am I, then I don't really notice that it's unrealistic. So one of the good things about trying to get it out upfront, what do I actually need from this summer, is we get to then look at it and go, yeah, I can't do all of those things. So which ones are we going to prioritize? How much of each of these things do I need to do?
Is it true that I need eight weeks of total rest where I'm not working at all? Or actually, is that just coming from feeling pretty exhausted at the moment and actually a couple of weeks would be perfect. So we get to kind of decide in advance which of these priorities are the biggest priorities and where they conflict how we are going to resolve that.
The other reason it's useful is because often we get to the end of the holiday and go, whoa, where did that go? I didn't do any of the things that I intended when in reality we did do a bunch of the things that we intended, we just didn't do all of them. And at the end of the holiday, we have a tendency to focus on the ones that we didn't do. Or maybe you didn't even get clear about what you wanted from the summer, but you finished the summer with a vague sense that it wasn't what you wanted.
By deciding in advance what you need from the summer and what you want from the summer and trying to structure that in, it's so much easier at the end to go, yeah, I got what I needed from that summer.
Options I want you to think about, do you need total physical rest? Are you physically exhausted? How much of that do you need? What does your body need? Do you need change rather than rest? I used to massively benefit from going off and doing completely different things. So when I was still an academic, I worked for an adventure race company and would go off and help run adventure races in the countryside, and it definitely wasn’t a rest.
There were times I was getting four or five hours sleep posts sat on the side of a hill all day waiting for competitors to come past because I was marshaling, I was organizing all this paperwork. I was doing so much, it wasn't a rest, but it was absolutely a change and that was what I needed. I needed time where I was occupied and busy and having fun, but I wasn't thinking about work and that was what I really needed.
Sometimes I combined it up with needing the physical rest time too, when I got back, for example. But I knew that for me, a change was really rejuvenating for me, especially where it was something fun where I was getting to be a version of myself that I really liked.
Another thing that I've heard people talk about in terms of what they need from the summer is they need to fall back in love with their subject. This can be giving yourself space to read about it. It can be going to conferences, talking to collaborators. Giving yourself that room to fall back in love with the stuff that you are researching. And this is particularly apparent with academics where we can get really caught up in leadership and teaching and all these other things, and it becomes just one more thing on the to-do list.
But even as a PhD student where it feels like we should be immersed in our research every day. Sometimes we forget the why we are doing it bit. We get caught up in responding to those comments from our supervisors and collecting that data and doing that ethics application and we forget why we were so excited to do this PhD in the first place, why we picked this topic. So maybe what you need from your summer is time reminding yourself of all of that, reminding yourself why this is important. If you do research that has knock-on effects on people out in the community, whatever it is, reminding yourself of that, for example. Reminding yourself why you find this fascinating.
Perhaps what you need is time spent sorting your systems. You actually need to say, you know what? I don't need to be writing things for publication right now, what I need is for my life to feel less chaotic. I need to declutter my house a bit. I need to tidy my desk. I need to sort out the files on my computer.
I need not to have 20,000 unopened emails in my inbox and you get to think are those the things that I need? Or do I need to move along one big project that is really going to make a difference in what I'm able to focus on in the future, and I need focus time where I can do those things.
Okay, so we get to think, and these aren't either/ors. It's not that you need to pick one of these. You maybe can't pick all of them, I'm going to say. Or if you do, you need to be realistic about how much of each of these you get. But you get to pick. And when we do it from what do I need, what am I lacking at the moment, what do I miss? Then it suddenly becomes much easier to see what we need.
One question you might want to ask yourself is, what can I do this summer that will make next year feel easier? And sometimes we tell ourselves that that's getting everything sorted. That means having a perfect virtual learning environment set up if you teach, and all those sorts of things. Having the perfect referencing system, if you're a PhD student, for example.
But sometimes it can be as simple as, I just need to start next year not hating my job and not exhausted. It literally doesn't matter about anything else. Everything else I can figure out. If I can start next academic year, not feeling like my entire professional life is a bonfire, then that's a win. You get to pick. So spend a little bit of time asking yourself those questions and deciding what do you need, what will make next year easier?
Then what we get to do is we get to make a plan. And some people don't like to plan their summers because they tell themselves what I love is the lack of a plan. But what you get to do is you get to plan your lack of a plan. So if you are somebody who really likes freedom, let's plan in advance that in this section of the holidays, from these times, you are going to give yourself freedom to do whatever feels good for you at the time.
And you remember that that is what you decided. So if you then don't use that time in the perfectly optimal way that you wish you had, you don't beat yourself up for wasting time. You weren't wasting time. You decided you wanted that freedom, and that was what you chose to do, and that's okay.
Equally, if we are planning a structure, we're going to plan a structure from a place that feels compassionate and feels like it's got our own best interest and heart at heart. One of my habits that I got myself out of was making completely unrealistic structures for myself, often from the point of view, I have to do all the things. There's not time, they don't fit, so I'm going to wedge them in anyway. And also from the perspective that I never quite believed I'd stick to it. So it didn't feel that important to make it realistic anyway, because I didn't believe I'd stick to it.
So when you are planning this structure, really try and think about how much structure feels good to me. How much do I want structure? How much do I want freedom? Do I want to have structure that I don't need to do anything before 10:00 AM and I can be as unstructured as I want before that time.
Pick a time that works for you. 10 AM's kind of mid-morning for me… but then I'll be structured between 10 and two. Or perhaps you say, you know what? While the kids are at home, those weeks completely unstructured. If I get anything done, happy days, but you know, whatever, but I'm going to have a couple of structured hours first thing in the morning when I've got some childcare and I can crack on with that.
So you get to plan in what structure and what freedom you want, and it doesn't have to be the same all the way through. And in fact, one of the tips that I would give you when you're thinking about this is think about how you can divide your summer into zones. Often we treat the period, the entire six week school holiday or the entire period from when the university kind of stops doing all its stuff through to the beginning of the next academic year.
We treat it as one big summer, and it can sometimes mean that we kind of forget what we did. It zooms past really fast. We lose track of where we are. All of these things. I would really strongly recommend that you zone it out. That you go these two weeks, it's going to be super fluid. I'll do whatever I want. My purpose is to rest, feel rejuvenated. Maybe I'll do a little bit of work, but only the fun stuff.
These two weeks is going to be about systems, system structures, getting myself organized. I'm not going to beat myself up for not writing my academic articles because I am in my admin row, because I am in admin mode.
If you haven't listened to my episode about role-based time blocking, go back and listen to that. That was thinking about planning your week, but you can absolutely use that to plan your summer in a kind of more macro way. So really thinking through how you can zone it out and have different focuses at different times.
Within that, a way you can really emphasize that zoning, is thinking about how you can make it structurally different. So maybe in the two weeks where it's really about systems, you are going to go into the office and you are going to be in like admin mode. You're going to be sorting it all out, you're going to be filing, you're going to be tidying, all of this stuff.
But then maybe in the bit where it's about head down writing. I mean, retreats always sound lovely to everyone, but it's not always feasible. But how can you make it feel a bit like a retreat? If you are working from home, how can you make it feel a little bit like this was a special week where I got to focus?
Maybe you want to work in your garden space, if you have space for that, maybe you want to decide that for that week. You're going to go to the library and write so that it feels different from the other weeks. Let's try and zone it out. Let's have some weeks where we work mornings really intensively on hardcore intellectual stuff, but we then give ourselves the rest of the afternoon off.
Maybe we make it so that some weeks we work late. Maybe we re-imagine that time that we really enjoyed working late into the evenings, but we give ourselves the mornings off. Think about how you can zone it because it helps us to remind us what our priorities are. So if in this week my priorities are admin, I'm doing it first thing in the morning, I'm doing it in the office. That reinforces to me that it's admin time.
So, I used to do things, this can make me sound very strange, but go with it. I'd take my shoes off when I was in like organizing mode because I'd go in in somewhat scruffier work clothes. I mean, I was a sports science lecturer, I was never that smart, but I'd go in somewhat scruffier clothes. I'd take my shoes off in the office and I was in sorting mode and that kind of differentiated that time for me.
If I'm in writing mode, maybe I'll get in something like comfy, but nice looking and go to a coffee shop with just my computer. So I don't really want to get on with admin things because I'm on just a little laptop and it's annoying. And then I'm in like, look at me being cool girl in a coffee shop with some makeup on. Who knew? Typing away on my laptop and making it a thing.
So, really thinking about how you can use your environment. How can you use what you're wearing? How can you use the time of day that you're working to really divide it out? It helps us focus on our priorities.
The other thing it helps with is it helps make the different steps of the summer, um, feel more distinct from each other. And one of the things we know is that if things feel more distinct from each other, it’s more likely to feel like a longer time.
Have you ever had that feeling like as you get older, that the years get shorter? Often it's because we are doing the same things. We are living in the same house, we're doing the same job, and the years when things are the same, fly by in a way that when we spend some time doing this, some time doing that, some time doing that, they feel like more has happened and therefore they feel like a longer time.
So you can create that for yourself over that summer period so that when you look back, you're like, “oh, I had my writing vibe then, and my relaxing time then, and my admin time then.” So think about how you can zone your summer.
The next tip I want to give you comes out from another client meeting and I asked her permission to share this one because I love it and I am going to be trying this on myself in the times in the holidays where I'm not away. And this is the notion of a weekly meeting with ourselves.
This particular client, like many of my clients had had another career before she came in to do her PhD and there was various things she was struggling with in her PhD. But one of the things we realized as we were talking was that she had a whole bunch of skills from her previous career that she currently wasn't using with herself in her own PhD.
And one of those things was a weekly meeting. And when I asked her, well, what would you do with a weekly meeting with your staff because she had experience of line management, and she had some really, really clear ideas about what she would do with that time. She would use it to remind the team what the key priorities were and why we were doing this, and to kind of inspire and motivate a little bit. To get any reports in as to what had happened the previous weeks, whether there'd been any issues, whether there was anything outstanding that needed sorting.
She had this wonderful idea about picking one big thing on one small thing for the week. So what's one little mundane thing that needs to happen this week? What's our big meaty topic for this week? And when she was thinking about this as something she would organize for her staff, super clear. So many ideas. They were absolutely brilliant.
And I was like, I was writing these down as she was talking. And then we discussed how could you do that for yourself? And she came to this idea of having a few set questions that on a Monday morning she would ask herself that were modelled on how she would look after her staff, but use it to look after herself.
And I absolutely love this. I'm going to try and implement it myself. One way that I'm going to slightly modify it is I know that I sometimes struggle with sticking to things like that if it's only a commitment to myself and in those sorts of situations you can coach yourself on it and coach yourself around, why don't you stick to things when it's just yourself?
And I will be doing that work too. It's an ongoing process. But you can also go, okay, well in what situations does it work for me? And for me it works having somebody else involved. So one of the things I'm going to experiment with is bringing in a family member who's not actually connected to the business in any meaningful way at the moment, and have those weekly meetings with them.
Where we sort of go through, okay, what did I do last week? What am I doing this week? What are my priorities? Why am I doing this? Why is it important? But actually building in some structure by having somebody else involved as well.
My client, in contrast, actually, when she had those questions, felt really quite comfortable to just take herself through those and really believe that she would do that so if she's not going to build those structure in, I am.
So what you get to do is you get to look at all this stuff and think, okay, how could that work for me? Maybe a weekly meeting doesn't work for you, but maybe you need that quick check-in in the morning.
Those of you who might be familiar with like Lean methodology and like Sprints and things, that's something you can apply here. So I'm certainly not an expert in this area, but a Sprint is a packaged piece of work that's usually like two weeks or something like that. That's your focus for that time.
And then every morning the team have a little huddle where they have a quick check-in for five minutes. So maybe you are thinking, you know, well, I'm not sure about this whole weekly meeting thing, but I could have a five minute huddle with myself in the morning. What's the key thing today? What barriers do I need to overcome? What do I want to remind myself? Something like that. So you can think about how these techniques that are used to manage teams we can use to manage ourselves during this summer period.
My final thought for you today is I always used to start summers with these amazing intentions. I truly believe that this would be the summer where I didn't procrastinate, I stayed on track. I got all these things done, whatever those things were, and I would start next year in a better shape than I have done before.
And I love that optimistic me. I love the fact that to some extent that kept me trying. It kept me sort of having another go at trying to get the summer that I wanted, but it was also a hugely unrealistic me and it was a very unaccepting me because it was a version of me that said, unless you do this exactly as you intend, then you've mucked it up.
Okay. So it was always, don't muck it up this time. We're going to do it. We're going to do all the things. We're going to get this done. So my final point for you is set your intentions now. Set your plans now, but also set that you are not going to stick to this perfectly. Things are going to happen. You are going to be more tired than you realized, or something's going to take longer than you thought, or something new is going to come along.
Or you are going to have to reprioritize because your childcare falls through or whatever it is. Something is going to mean that you don't stick to this plan perfectly. And there are two things I want you to do with that knowledge. I want you to accept it. And to understand that that doesn't mean that you've mucked it up.
It doesn't mean anything's wrong with you. It doesn't mean that you didn't try hard enough, you lack discipline and you lack willpower. It just means you're a human being having a summer. Okay? It's totally, totally okay. Totally understandable. And I want you to remind yourself that… no, there's two more things.
I said two, there's going to be three say We're going to be compassionate, we're going to accept it. All that stuff. That's one. Two is we're going to remember the law of partial success. I don’t think it's a law. I've made that up as well. But that thing of partial success that we've talked about in past episodes, where just because you don't stick to something perfectly doesn't mean it's a fail, and it doesn't mean you just go, “oh, well next summer”.
You get to pick at any stage of this summer. How can I get make the remainder of today a success? How can I make the remainder of this week a success? The remainder of this holiday, if you don't stick to the plan perfectly, okay, how can we continue to do that? How can we get ourselves back - not onto the original track? People often talk about trying to get back on track - How can we get ourselves onto our new track where we accept that we are where we are? And now we move forward from here with that kind of intention and deliberateness that we want to.
And then the third thing, the one I'd forgotten what I was going to say. The third thing is that wherever we spend our summer, however we end up spending our time, it was worth spending the time planning it was worth spending the time nudging ourselves back towards partial successes and we will finish this summer being super proud of ourselves, okay?
We don't make that pride contingent on doing this perfectly. You are a PhD student or an academic who has had a long and hard year. For some of you, it's been incredibly long and hard year, especially if you've been involved in all the strikes and the marking boycotts and all of these things. You've had a really tough time.
Whatever you end up doing this summer, let's be super proud of ourselves. Let's trust that we did for ourselves what we needed. And start the next academic year with that same compassion and forgiveness. So we make a plan to make it the best summer that we can, the summer that we need, the summer that rejuvenates us and gives us the bits that our mind, and body, and soul needs.
We do our best to show up for those things by using our best coaching to get ourselves there, by making it realistic in the first place, by reminding ourselves why we're doing it and at the end and as we go along, we have compassion for the fact that we are not perfect, but we still did our best throughout this summer.
I really hope that's useful for you. It's reminded me of things that I want to get sorted over the summer and plans that I want to make, so I have found it useful for myself too. Next week we've got that guest episode with Kirsty Sedgman. Make sure you tune in for that. And the one after that is going to be my last podcast for the summer because I have decided that one of the things that I need to do for myself is to take a pause on the podcast until the new academic year, so that I can rejuvenate my plans, rejuvenate myself, and spend time with my family and my new husband, because I'm getting married in, when you listen to this, it'll be in two weeks.
So there's two more episodes left. Then we'll have a pause of about six, seven weeks and we'll start back up at the beginning of September. So thank you for listening and see you next week.