3.35 How PhD Students Can Network Smarter & Avoid Career Panic with Dr David Mendes from Beyond the Thesis
5 May 2025
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Struggling to figure out your career path after your PhD? In this episode, David Mendes—host of the Beyond the Thesis podcast—shares expert tips on using networking to map out your job market early. Learn how to have strategic career conversations, explore industry roles, and avoid last-minute decision panic. This conversation offers practical steps PhD students can take to better understand their options and plan with confidence.
Links I refer to in this episode
Transcript
Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast and I have a guest with me again this week.
Vikki: I am really excited to welcome David Mendes, who is better known to many of you, probably as Papa PhD and the host of Beyond Your Thesis podcast. So welcome, David, it is so fun to have you here.
David: Well, thanks for having me. It's really a pleasure to be talking with you today, across the pond.
Vikki: Yes, yes, absolutely. Always having to get my brain around time zones, which is not my strength, but we figured it out.
David: We figured it out.
Vikki: So today we're gonna be thinking about how to make career decisions, and particularly thinking about how networking can be a really useful way to make decisions about what you wanna do, not just something to be done at the last minute, but before we get going about that, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit more about you, how you got into what you're doing and what else you do other than your podcast.
David: Yeah. I've been doing Beyond The Thesis, which at the beginning was just called Papa PhD, started in 2019. Just before Covid. Just before the pandemic. So this project of sharing people's career journeys after the PhD came up nine years after my defense.
David: I defended in 2010, I did a PhD in cell biology and what happened in 2010 was that I wasn't ready, I wasn't ready to, you know, project myself professionally into anything that wasn't being in the lab and continuing to do cell biology. I, I wasn't ready, I hadn't had any particular training on it.
David: I didn't know people, let's say in industry or in any other domains that weren't academia. And, and so this means that, you know, for that six months to a year after defending, uh, I was, you know, floundering, I was trying to leverage my like personal and family network, which was actually how I got my first like contracts, just after my PhD and eventually trying to to understand where people in the institute that I was were going, that was not academia. And then reaching out to them and doing that kind of organic networking. But it was all done in a sense of urgency. I wouldn't say panic, but some people may panic because, you know, they might be like me far away from their family, even their continent of origin.
David: And they found out or they understood that they don't want to stay in academia and to continue that path, but they need to keep paying the bills. And so it's legitimate to be kind of panicking in a certain way. In any case, I ended up finding my path into a domain, which is medical writing. So through finding out where people who were in my institute were going, I ended up being able to find my first position there. But, what happened in the years after between 2010 and 2019 was that, uh, I started getting invitations to career panels. And so the thing that started happening was all the obstacles and all the difficulties that I thought, you know, in my little personal bubble belonged to me and, and were my responsibility or my fault, I was seeing that each year I was going to these career panels and young graduate students who were almost finishing, were sharing the same feelings that I had had at the end of my PhD. And that was kind of an aha moment for me that, oh, this was not just me. It's, there's kind of this systemic phenomenon where people are getting to the end of their graduate studies journey and are feeling lost, they lose their footing and they start having this doubt of, did I do the right thing or was it a strategic error on my part and now I kind of made myself an overqualified and maladapted person in the job market.
David: So jump to 2019. What happened that here was that for different reasons, I started on my own to have my own, like medical writing and medical translation clients. So that, plus the fact that I, and it's, it's these serendipities, you know, on Facebook there was this, uh, article saying why you should start your podcast in 2019. And I had some gear, and that kind of alignment of, I have some time, I have this sense of, of mission of wanting to reduce the number of young, brilliant people who feel bad about their choice maybe of, of following an academic path. I think it's, it's unfair that that's how they feel after all these years of dedication to this journey. I'd love to, to find a way to inspire them, to co comfort them in their choices and also to comfort them that there's cool stuff out there for them after their degree. That was just kind of the right alignment of planets to get me started and to think, oh, you know, I know like a handful of people who were in my institute when I was doing my PhD, and they're not in academia and they're having fun, being entrepreneurs, being science communicators, being in industry. And I'll reach out to them and see if they're interested in sharing their stories. And they were.
David: And so that, that was how the whole concept of Papa PhD was born and then, well now we are almost reaching six years. Right. So it's, it's kind, there's a snowball effect. Of course. First I started with the people I knew and now I'm, you know, I'm interviewing people that are much farther away from kind of my close circle of people I know.
Vikki: So why do you think people find it so hard to figure out where else they could go?
David: Well, there's different aspects to it. One aspect is that the PhD is a very demanding endeavor that, the tendency is that it'll take most of your time, most of your bandwidth, you know, most of your brain for all those years.
David: So if there isn't some, um, you know, either mandatory curriculum, let's say, that pushes you during your PhD journey to do some courses on networking or to have, uh, internships in government or in industry, well, the PhD will absorb all of your energy, all of your time. And you'll stay in this tunnel vision because naturally, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of an, an ecology thing, right? If, if there's no competition for that space in your brain and in your life, the PhD is gonna take all of that space. That's the first reason I'd say. Does that resonate with you?
Vikki: Yeah, definitely. And I love that the visual of thinking of it as an ecology where things sort of expand to fill it, is such a good way of thinking about that.
Vikki: I wonder whether there's also things about the sort of expectations and the kind of emotions around deciding that this route that lots of people who did, who started a PhD thought might be their route isn't now. I wonder if you could sort of speak to that a little.
David: Yeah, so from all the people that I've interviewed, one of the main aspects that comes out is that it's only as you get into a PhD, into, you know, first year, second year, et cetera, and that you spend all those hours with your supervisor, that you actually see what being the head of a lab is.
David: And often you come into the experience, you know, you, you are, you're brought into a PhD and what you bring with you is kind of this um, romanticized, let's say image of the scientist that is probably based on some fifties, sixties era or even seventies reality. But, but which today does not exist anymore, of you have, a scientific question you are really passionate about, you'll be given a space in university to kind of dig into that and bring young people with you to also dig into that. But then no one talks to you about all the admin, all the boards you need to be on, all the grant writing. And so all of that kind of is revealed to you once you're in it.
David: And I think. I'd say the, the, that's a big chunk, maybe it's the largest proportion would be that.
Vikki: Yeah, a hundred percent. And that's without, I mean, you've already alluded to this, in your own story, but that's even without the kind of geography impact, you know, people often don't realize quite what level of sort of geographical relocation is often, I mean, I'm speaking to someone who stayed at the same place, so I'm not one to speak on that.
Vikki: But for lots of people at the moment, regular relocations are gonna be part of that journey and things. I think often it's that side as well that people don't even necessarily know is what's coming.
David: That's it. The other aspect is the competition. I know that in life sciences where I was, you know, the competition for funds, for grants, et cetera, even like between labs, it's something you also don't know about. And not everyone appreciates living with that pressure. And a reality today, at best, one in five of the people in a PhD cohort will be able to get a tenure track position. So this means that the other four actually we're going to have to scramble to find other ways to stay adjacent or in academia. And I think that translates into pressure on the graduate students and they feel it during graduate school, but then, uh, even if they, they start on the first postdoc, second postdoc, there's people who end up realizing then after one, two postdocs that, okay, I've pushed this far and there's a wall that I can't break through, and then people need to reorient after.
David: So, with such dedication and so much, you know, blood, sweat, and tears, trying their best to break through to that thing that in the end ends up being, you know, out of reach.
David: And I think that if somehow, there was some, I'd like to say mandatory, but at, at least easily accessible career training during the journey starting in graduate school, then the day you need to pivot, you wouldn't need to feel that bad about it because somehow you say, okay, this didn't pan out, but hey, I have in my network, I know people in industry, I can easily negotiate myself my, my path, my journey towards something else. And, and I feel that a, a lot of people end up having these negative feelings towards academia, and feelings of regret towards the choices they've made on that side. And I think it's unfair. I think choosing to work towards augmenting the community's knowledge is something the society needs and it shouldn't be something that people feel regret about.
David: That's my mission. It's to kind of normalize the fact that the post PhD journey is not a one track thing. And also to tell people that not following the historic canonical path is not failure.
David: That's my main, like my main mission with Papa PhD and with beyond the thesis.
Vikki: So, yeah, so, so true. And you mentioned that we're gonna touch on that network thing in a second, but the other thing I wanted to just add was when you were talking about people starting to regret their choices, starting to resent academia and stuff, it really struck me what a difficult mindset that is to then be looking for jobs as well.
Vikki: 'cause you know, it feels rubbish to be questioning your choices and thinking, should I have done something different five years ago and to be getting angry at academia that things aren't the way they should be and that all feels unpleasant.
David: Mm-hmm.
Vikki: But I think there's a big element to which that also then makes it really hard to look for other options in a way that's exciting and inspired and all that stuff. Yeah. If you are starting from this, this place where you know you've made a mistake somehow, and that's where I think the stuff that you are doing is so, so, so important to help people to kind of almost put to one side that resentment and regret and be like, no, no. Act. There's, there's a ton out there. There's so many things.
David: Yeah.
Vikki: And when you're thinking like that, you're so much more likely to find them and engage with them.
David: Yeah. Thank you and I totally agree. One third aspect that I'd want to add is and I kind of identify with this a little bit, is also so to, to do with why it's difficult at the end. I myself know that one of the reasons I decided to keep on going with my academic studies was, one, my curiosity about science, but also I, at different stages where, you know, oh, do I go to masters or do I go to the PhD or do I go get a job?
David: I was seeing what people my age and, and, and my colleagues who were going straight to the job market was were doing and I didn't identify with that. And somehow, if that's one of the reasons or one of the motives that brought you to keep on studying was, I don't see myself, I don't, uh, identify myself with people doing this or that job going straight to industry, going straight to sales or whatever.
David: I'm gonna keep studying and try to become an academic. The other difficulty is then once you see that actually being an academic is not what I thought, and now I actually need to look back at what I kind of rejected in a certain way at the beginning. And so that's also emotionally it's difficult because I have to actually go back on my word and actually look at these places in industry that I had rejected at a certain point.
David: But you need to think that you're not gonna go into it with the same background. Now bring all those years of like deep thinking, uh, you know, of, of managing and, and taking this very long project to its conclusion, uh, of communicating science, of digesting science, of treating data.
David: One of the messages that I wanna bring and, why it's important to talk with people out there that have journeys that are inspiring to you is because they can show you kind of the path of how now with this background that you have, you can go back into the space which you didn't identify too much with five years ago, but now there's another way you can bring value to that space.
David: And that's the ray of hope is and the inspiration is, and that's what I try to bring with the, the, the beyond the thesis conversations.
Vikki: Yeah. And we've mentioned networking a couple of times, and it's always a word that people kind of react to in various emotional ways. In fact, as you know, we've had Dr. Jen Polk before talking about networking. So in this context, what are you meaning by networking?
David: What I want people to start considering is not putting on a suit and going to an event and sharing, you know, a contact card and saying, hi, I'm da da da, I'm looking for a job. That's not it. What I want to share is that because as scientists, as PhDs, we have this tendency of I'm gonna go it alone. I can do the research all on my own. I'm going to go through the data and find, you know, what is it I want to do.
David: I want to posit that this is a natural but a wrong reflex to have. Because the jobs in the job market is a very complex thing and just by using your normal, you know, research and data crunching abilities and capabilities that you developed through all these years, you are going to be missing different things.
David: And one of the things you're gonna be missing is, you know, does this job or does this employer that on paper is, you know, checking all the marks there. This makes sense, but does it really align with my values? Is it really somewhere where I will flourish? Is it somewhere where, where I'll have fulfillment and pleasure in what I do?
David: And you can't get that just with the data that's out there. When you go into a networking event or into a networking interaction with someone in an informational interview, please don't go into it thinking, is this person going to get me a job? I want you to take it as an exploratory exercise, but also a social exercise. Of course, you know, you need to find people who are inspiring to you and who genuinely you're curious about their journey. And this conversation with this person will help you kind of, uh, imagine if you have, you know, a color by numbers map of the job market, that's all blank.
David: This person's gonna help you put some color in different places and help you build an actual map of, oh, okay. So the culture in this domain is like this, I like it, or very important, I don't like it. And, and, 'cause these are two very important outcomes of networking in this context is understanding where I would love to work and why, or where I would hate to work and why. And sometimes you go in thinking, oh, this is, you know, perfect for me. And then you talk with someone who works at this or that company, or in this or that space, and you understand, huh, actually this wasn't what it looked like.
David: And actually, now that I've had this conversation, I know that I don't need to put effort there because somehow it doesn't align. So it's more, it's really, you know, creating, yes, creating social capital, knowing people in the space. But it's really, it's very much a kind of a job market cartography exercise.
David: It's because for all the solo research you do, nothing is gonna give you as much rich information about a, a position or about an employer than talking with someone who works or worked there because of how much in a 20 minute conversation can be exchanged between two people.
David: Plus, if you really choose people who you admire for some reason or who intrigue you for some reason, you will also be creating relationships that you can then nurture forever and, and that eventually will be become part of your, what I call your village and who eventually will think of you if they see a job posting come by and say, oh, you know what, David actually could be a great person for this. I'll, I'll reach out to him. If you go to someone with that, I need a job from you, uh, uh, kind of feeling and, and tone. It feels transactional, it feels, you know, it doesn't align with the kind of concept that I'm trying to, to share.
Vikki: Yes, absolutely. You made me think of a conversation I had over the weekend, which is a slightly flippant example of the importance of a village. But a very good friend of mine who did her PhD about the same time as mine, um, has a friend who also did a PhD and is now very high up in the world of sports drinks and that sort of thing.
David: Okay.
Vikki: And her son is a competitive, like under 18 international sports person here in the uk and was having an argument with his mom about whether he should be taking creatine and doing protein shakes and all of this stuff 'cause he was adamant, he definitely should be, he 60 and she was not convinced. So she's just like. I'll find out. And so she contacted her friend who's like super high up in R&D in this world was like, should it be taking it? No, I win this argument. Not until you're older.
David: There you go.
Vikki: So even just silly things like that, she's like, that's why you need to know people who do interesting things, 'cause sometimes it'll help you win an argument with your teenager.
David: That's it. And, and yeah. No, I, it's a great example. Even when you are during graduate school, if you're able to, this means that by the time you get your degree, you have this kind of safety net of people who are in different spaces, who have different stories to share, who can be sounding boards for you, for your decisions.
David: There's this concept of a board of directors, right? If you are able to build a board directors for yourself of people whom you don't expect anything of, in terms of like getting a job or anything, but with whom you've developed an interest for them, but there's a relationship that's been created that's authentic , that's non-transactional. It's, it's going to allow you in moments of difficulty, which of course there are, there are, 'cause by definition, PhD, there will be difficult difficulties there. You'll have other voices, you know, that. Accept your own in your head, which often is gonna be potentially negative.
David: You'll be able to have some other people chiming in and, and kind of pushing you forward, but also helping you have a wider horizon of thinking, well, if this doesn't pan out, I know that there's other things that can, and when it gets panicky is when you really have that single objective and that starts getting difficult and then you think, oh my God, I'm failing.
David: And that's what I don't want. I don't want people going through that after all that effort, after all that dedication.
Vikki: Yeah. And a metaphor you used earlier just really opened something up for me that this idea of thinking of it as a map where you are trying to fill in information on different aspects of this kind of possible career map because people like me, you know, my background, none of my parents went to university. I say none. I have stepparents and things. None of my parents went to university. They're all sort of either go into a business and work your way up or start a business kind of people. And so I had that world and then I went to university and I found my academic world.
Vikki: But it's only when I was thinking of it in terms of that map, like you were talking about, that I realized that in my career, you know, I made my understanding of what it was like to work in academia, super vivid. I was surrounded by people that were doing that. And I knew lots of people from my family who were doing like job, you know, and some quite good professional jobs and that don't get me wrong.
David: Yeah.
Vikki: But jobs and I can't, other than people I did my PhD with, I can't remember really knowing people who had a PhD. Weren't in academia. Mm-hmm. We have one neighbor who worked in academia and other than that, I can't think of anyone that was in that thing. And so just thinking about it now, I had huge blank patches where it's like, this is stuff you do if you don't have a PhD.
Vikki: Yeah. And this is the thing you do if you, when you do have a PhD. And I love this idea of just trying to sort of fill in some of those gaps because otherwise the vividness that you have around academia, because you are in it every day for either good or bad. I think this is brilliant for people who love academia and think they want to stay in academia.
Vikki: I half wonder, had I, during my PhD in postdoc had more exposure to more of this, whether I would've been quite as convinced to stay in academia because whilst I thought it was an amazing idea, who knows what other amazing stuff I would've found.
David: I find it super interesting that, that you say that, which is this also works for people who want to stay in academia. And that's something that, that I also try to drone on, which is, even if your current objective is to stay in academia, if you go to a conference and someone inspires you, even if they're not in your domain, take the opportunity to talk with them and ask them how are you able to, let's say, develop such an interdisciplinary career and how do you make this or that work at your university or in your institute? What, you know, what did mentors tell you that really helped you? And because there's no better approximation to your future, be it in 2, 3, 5 years than someone who's there now. So talk to these people.
Vikki: Yeah, I love that one. The thing I used to be, obviously while I was an academic, I was a personal tutor and so we'd be talking to students about what are your career plan, you know, whether it was undergrad or PhD students.
Vikki: And so often they'd still be like, yeah, yeah, I should talk to some people. Some people, once I figured out what I wanna do, I'll talk to some people. Um, I would constantly be like, how about we talk to some people to help you figure out what you wanna do? And that No, no, no. I just need to, I just need to decide. And once I've decided, I'll speak to people working in that industry. So how do you respond to, I just got increasingly exasperated with them, which didn't work. How do you respond to somebody who says, yeah, yeah, that's great. Once I've decided I want to be a medical writer, I'll talk to David.
David: Mm-hmm. I totally can see how that was a very frequent, answer from people. First finding out this one thing that you wanna do is going to be a very difficult endeavor for different reasons. The first reason is you are here now at, let's say, year two of your PhD. And of course, in Europe, PhD is usually the last three years. And, but here in North America it could be four or five, six. So you can say that and then go home. And in, when you leave, you know, when you finish your PhD, the job market, the landscape will have changed a bunch. So if this is your mindset, you may be in, you know, in this like pedaling to find something that is unfindable because the terrain is changing. And you know, at the beginning of your PhD, let's say, being a data scientist is something that looks really great, but then five years later, it's not anymore. And so the, the, my answer to to this would be, you are not going to find this kind of eldorado.
David: You're not, you're not going to find this just out of your effort right now. And the second thing is, in this search of yours where you think you're gonna find this one gold nugget, you're gonna often be digging, and then you'll find a bunch of coal, and then you'll find just a, you know, basalt.
David: And so you can also lose a bunch of time not finding the right thing or finding, you know, things that are not a match for you. So the best, my best advice to you because, again, one-on-one communication with another human is a shortcut to getting much denser information and much, much more real information, is start talking today. And be curious. So don't, don't have this like one track mind of, I wanna find the thing sample. And this will give you two great sets of information. I have the bucket of likes and I have the bucket of dislikes. And this is great because eventually when then you need to really look for a position, you have this bucket of things that you can already put to the side and not spend any energy on.
David: That would be my advice. I, and again, I, you know, when they're young like that and they have this way of thinking, maybe this wouldn't make them change their way of thinking. But I, I think that would be the way I would approach it
Vikki: definitely. So. Let's get specific. People listening who are sort of thinking, either they're not sure they want an academic career, or they're not sure they'll be able to have an academic career 'cause of the competitiveness where would you suggest they start? How do they find these people? What do they ask them?
David: Okay. First give them a sense that they're right, you know, and say, start where you think you want to go. So let's say that you're thinking, I don't know, in my domain it would be I want to be a medical science liaison. So what you need to do now is to go on LinkedIn, and that's the platform I'd say is the one to go. Even if you're an academic now, everyone's there now and everyone who's interested in, in actually discussing careers and even hiring, et cetera.
David: But you go on LinkedIn, maybe go geographically around you. So there's filters you can use there. So find people in this geographical area who are medical science liaisons. If possible, they even are alumni from the place that you are, which gives you a kind of a bridge to say, Hey, I'm now studying the same program that you are.
David: And I, I saw you're a medical science liaison. I've, it feels to me that it's something that I like to do in the future. Could we meet and talk for 20 minutes? And that's the first step and then, what I was saying is you're trying to build a map.
David: So go in with questions, go in with questions that you've prepared, go in with curiosity, and then let the person tell their story based on the questions that, that you, that you prepared. They'll probably have questions for you, so be ready to, to answer that too. But then ask the type of questions that will allow you to have this kind of pinball effect, which is, so who inspired you when you were at the end of the career?
David: Yeah. Who was a mentor? Have one or two questions that, and you can even ask who would you recommend I talk next? Because I really want to understand, what's in the cards for me in the future. So always try to make it organically a snowball effect that start small, but that then you can, there's always a follow up step for you.
David: And this will do two things. It'll help you kind of grow this network, but also it can, it'll kind of put it on your agenda, what the next step is. Yeah because. Like we were saying, the PhD, the tendencies, it'll take all of your time, it'll take your whole agenda. So if there's no pressure there, like positive pressure to create space for something else, it won't be there.
David: So come in genuinely curious about understanding, you know, why the person gravitated towards that position. If you've thought of your values, let's say you value hybrid work to ask questions about that, et cetera, and then let's it, the outcome could be, oh, this actually confirms what I thought about being a medical science liaison, or, okay, I had some wrong ideas about what it is. And actually, after talking with this person, which was gracious enough to spend this time with me, I now know that I don't need to put more energy on this and so now I need to turn my radar somewhere else and restart the exercise.
Vikki: Yeah. And that, that is a win too, right? Like you said, that is a win too, that actually, you know, having an interview where you walk away going, oh no, no, no, no, no, no. Is a massive win. 'cause it stops you wasting time over there too, right?
David: Precisely.
Vikki: One of the things that struck me while you were talking was, it might be interesting to ask people, were there other careers that you considered before you ended up in this one?
David: That would be a good question to
Vikki: see if they've got ideas like that. Especially, you know, if it's something a little bit adjacent to what they're doing, because I think sometimes we have quite a limited, you know, we have those kids' books where it's like, what do you wanna be? I'm gonna be a teacher or a doctor or a football fireman, and those are our options kind of thing.
Vikki: And I think sometimes we just don't even know what jobs are out there. And I wonder whether sometimes by going for one that we know exists and asking them what they discounted, you might actually find some things that you didn't even know were there.
David: Totally true. And often, and again, I'm, and I'm thinking of like farmers and you know, companies that are related to what I did during my PhD.
David: Often, uh, these people will have colleagues who are PhDs and even within their organization and who are doing different things, you know. Asking the person, oh, by the way, do you have colleagues who are also like PhDs and who are doing different things?
Vikki: It's so interesting 'cause I think sort of getting to not only ask about the job itself, but asking about what they love and hate about it and what's important to them. So I come from a sports science background and all of our students, undergrad anyway, think they're gonna work in elite sport.
Vikki: That's their kind of, that's their kind of goal. A PhD level, it's much less so. But some of them do go on into that environment. And I remember talking with some of them that had gone off to do that sort of thing, working with Olympic athletes and stuff.
David: Okay.
Vikki: And asking them about their priorities and how they enjoyed it and stuff. And just listening to it like. This is fascinating and I don't care. So it's like, for you, this is amazing. I will watch the sports, I will cheer you on. I will be ecstatic if this all is good for you. But the idea of going to work every day where my goal is to make sure we shave one second off their performance because, you know, silver is the first loser and all of that stuff, I just don't get it.
Vikki: I I, it, it doesn't, it rocks their world. And they would talk about all this stuff, so passionately and I was just like, yeah, I dunno. I'd quite like silver. Silver was quite nice. That's good too. Yeah. I just wouldn't be that fussed. And so I think just getting that idea of what is it that you love about this job and then being able to be like, oh no, that's not important to me.
Vikki: Because sometimes people are like, you know, oh, I really get to travel all the time. I'm only at home a week a month. It's incredible. I get to see all these different places. And then for other people it's like, no, that sounds great for you, not me, for you. Exactly. Um, I, yeah, I think that's so interesting.
David: Definitely. Definitely. But, I think in this exercise of, of building, this village and having these conversations, what's important I think, is to understand that this diversity exists and that there's space for it, in the job market. Because one of the things that I remember I felt is this fear of, oh, oh, okay. Gosh, I had one chance and I, I kind of blew it in a certain way. And now that, you know, I, I have this fear that I am this weird shaped puzzle piece that's not gonna fit anywhere. But there's so much out there, uh, that, that, like you said, if you have this approach of the kids' books of you're a fireman, you're an astronaut. Mm-hmm. You're this or that. It's really not like that. But the only way to understand and to know that actually there's this place that maybe I'm not an exact fit, but I'm pretty good fit, is by talking with people and by understanding that often things that it feels like it's very square.
David: And especially if you look at job postings, it looks like you need to be like this. Like, and then you talk with the hiring manager and actually they really want to know other things about you. And again, I don't think there's a better way than talking with someone who has been there or who's there now, and that can really kind of, um, recalibrate your expectation of what the experience is.
Vikki: And in terms of when to do this. Mm-hmm. It sounds like you are talking about pretty much throughout your PhD experience.
David: I ideally, yeah. And you may, you may even, you know, be better placed to actually, you know, tell me about your experience. But I feel that first year students are very much in this, uh, how do you say?
David: I just have like puppy love, uh, coming as an expression, but you know, in this beginning of a relationship, you know, like wide-eyed, oh, I just got into my program. I'm a PhD student now. So I think it's probably very challenging or more challenging to expect that first year students are going to, uh, to be putting some time looking at more than their academic, this thing that they just got onto and then you can, you can weigh in on that given that your experience, experience with students. But I think, you know, once that kind of honeymoon phase of I got into my PhD program and you announce it on your socials. I'd say at six months, uh, if you can start seeing, okay, where do graduates of my program. Where are they located now on the job market?
David: And maybe you are really focused on academia and you can do that and see where are they in academia and start talking with them. I think that's important, but I think it's also as important to see, and those who are not in academia, where are they, what are they doing? And to do it just out of, yes, curiosity, but also it's kind of as an a kind of self preservation instinct of, I'm now in this honeymoon period, but someone's telling me that in three years you're gonna be ejected out of this reality, and you have this degree and then you're gonna have to figure things out.
David: So yeah, I'm in the middle of my first year or beginning of my second year. Part of what I'm doing now is preparing myself to be, to be a professional. So I want to be ready for any outcome. So I'm going to kind of create this cushion of knowledge, but also ideally this network of people. And I'll start and, say, let's say once a month, I try to reach out to someone.
Vikki: Yeah.
David: That just, that already would be a great thing.
Vikki: Yeah, definitely. And I, I, I definitely take your point that like people are not necessarily thinking about afterwards early on. And for me, I think what then becomes important is to think of the other benefits of why you're doing this too. Yeah. Because these sorts of reach outs are amazing for working out what you might do afterwards, but they could have other benefits too.
Vikki: I've seen people who have had chance conversations with people in different industries who've found parallels between their research and something they hadn't even imagined before, things like that. Mm-hmm. Well, they've just met really interesting people and I think if we can also maybe take almost a little bit of the seriousness out of it that this is an amazing way to set yourself up for your career, but it's actually a real privilege just to have some interesting, you know, it's a cheap excuse to talk to some cool people, right? So, one things I love about having a podcast is I get to contact random people like you who are really impressive and interesting and be like, oh, can we talk? We'll record it. People will listen. Um, so I think there is an element to which it, it could be seen just as a, let's just talk to people, you know, tell them what you do, find out more about what they do. Be super interesting even if you never do anything in that direction.
David: That's totally true. And actually, I'm, I'm remembering one of the episodes now, I'm, I'm not remembering the name, but I was talking with someone who, who went for their PhD in England and the person would ha would go have lunch with the philosophy people and then, and, and this is you staying in the academic thing, in the academic bubble.
David: But it really, it even, and I don't remember the exact example, but I remember the, them telling me, actually there were projects that were born out of that because I was having lunch with a philosopher and I was discussing my physics thing and, and then there was some kind of bridges between the two and there was a project born out of that.
David: So just even widening a little bit of who you are interacting with day to day at university can already bring some, like cross pollination and, and widen the, the view of what you do. So for sure,
Vikki: definitely. Well, thank you so much. It is been amazing talking with you. I'm sure lots of my listeners are already familiar with your podcast, but for anybody who isn't, tell them where they can find you and how they can find out more about what you do.
David: Sure. So the podcast is Beyond the Thesis with Papa PhD. You can find it on all podcasting platforms, there's a French version too. You can find me and reach out on LinkedIn. David Mendes, you should find me. The other way to, to talk to me directly is to go to, the community I've just created on this platform called School where I have some like zoom coffee time, like weekly, coffee time sessions there. So it's SKOO l.com/papa PhD. And, uh, i, it's a place where I try to have like direct, one-on-one or group, but, but direct contact with the community. there's also Papa PhD on YouTube if you, if you like to see the video versions.
Vikki: Perfect.
David: Thank you, Vikki. It's been a pleasure talking with you and I think it goes to show how just the power of conversation, you know, in our lives.
David: And I think it's another moment for me just to help people out there who may be introverts like I am. Of course, now I've been doing this podcast for a while, and my introversion, I was able to kind of build some muscle around it. But, you know, of course conserve your energies if you're an introvert, but do consider the power of having conversations with new people. It's huge. It can really help you a lot and especially it can help you break some like cycles of negativity or some cycles of negative self-talk that, that you might be in because it'll bring in someone else's view into the conversation. So yeah, if that's the only thing that you take from today that, you know, having, having more conversations with new people, I'll be happy for that outcome.
Vikki: I'm sure everyone will take lots. Thank you so much. Thank you everyone for listening and see you next week.
< Today I’m coaching Gillian who is a member of The PhD Life Coach membership! She has been making great progress on her procrastination during Q2 of the membership, but asked for coaching around making time for herself. She lives with her parents and young son, and finds that she spends all her time in daughter mode, mum mode, and PhD student mode, and hasn’t been “just Gillian” for a while. She also finds the different roles blend together which can make her feel like she’s doing everything and nothing at the same time. Listen in as we work through her challenges and come up with a plan! Links I refer to in this episode If you found this episode useful, you might also like this one with Marie on How to plan your week . Transcript Just jumping in quickly with two things that I wanted to tell you. The first, this is gonna be the last episode for season three. So if you're listening live, it is the 4th of August. We will start up again properly on the 1st of September, so there'll be a few weeks without a new episode, but you've got my entire back catalogue. The second thing is, again, if you're listening to this live, quarter three of the PhD Life Coach membership is open. If you want more support with your PhD, you wanna feel like you're not battling through this alone. If you still procrastinate, if you wanna figure out how to have a better relationship with your supervisor, if you wanna feel part of something with other people who have the same challenges as you, make sure you check it out. Go to my website, the PhD life coach.com. Click on the membership. You'll find all the details. You get access to online group coaching, mini workshops that are live. You can get asynchronous coaching where you send me questions and I'll send back a private podcast where I answer those questions. There's self-paced materials. There's everything you could possibly want. The members organize coworking. I organize some coworkings. It's amazing. Check it out. Today's episode is with Gillian, who is actually one of my members. So it is a coaching session with one of my members. And if you wanna experience anything like that, you need to join the membership. Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach and we have another special coaching episode and I am particularly excited to be joined by Gillian because not only has Gillian volunteered to be coached here today on the podcast, she is also one of my members in the PhD life coach membership. So welcome Gillian. Gilian: Hello. It's lovely to be here, Vikki. Vikki: It's fabulous to have you here. So why don't you go ahead and tell people a little bit about why you got in touch, what it is that you think would be useful to get coaching on. Gilian: Okay. So, when I saw the chance to be coach one to one, I thought it would actually be a good chance for me to try and open up a bit because I don't tend to actually take much time to talk about myself. I see it as something that's maybe a sign of weakness and it's something that I know I'm trying to work on. And then I started thinking about what would be better or what could make my life better if I could just do something about it. And that's when I thought, actually, for me, taking time just for me is something that I don't really do. So I have PhD time, I have mommy time, I have, you know, time looking after parents, but I don't actually, there's nowhere in my diary where I do something just for me. And so, yeah, I reached out and, and here I am. So I'm hoping to see if I can get a bit of a better balance in life. Vikki: Perfect. And I think it was such a useful topic when you suggested it. 'Cause I think some people will be in your sort of situation where they're trying to do parenting, their caring whilst doing their PhDs, others, um, I've got lots of listeners, lots of clients as you know, who've also got full-time jobs alongside their PhDs and things like that. And others, it's just their PhDs become so all consuming that it feels like there's never space for themselves. So tell me a little bit more about why it feels like a problem for you. Gilian: Well, I think part of it is when you were saying about you're quite right, we're not not feeling there's enough space that part of the thing with the PhD is there's always this looming, mysterious figure almost over your shoulder going, you've gotta get it done by this date. And then in my mind I get to these negative thoughts coming and going, but what happens if you get ill? You could, you're okay now, but you could get behind. You must try and be ahead, but you know, you're behind, I mustn't stop. And the other thing is of course you can get stuck down that rabbit hole because I do, we all care about what we're researching. So sometimes you could have something you are looking at on a Friday afternoon where you think, Ooh, this is really good. And before you know it, you can be picking up a book you've been looking at again whilst you are ignoring family. And it's an easy excuse, isn't it? I can't come out tonight. I'm working on this for my chapter. So it's an easy out, but it's not a healthy thing to do because I still have two and a bit years to go. That's not a balance. Vikki: Yeah. And I think that's so insightful to recognize that there's different reasons why this might be, that part of it sounds like it's a little bit sort of fear and anxiety driven, of kind of must do more, must be further ahead, must not get behind. But there is an extent to which that sometimes it's a temptation driven thing. You know, we get all fascinated with our work and actually it's that we are drawn into it rather than it being out of fear. But both can have consequences, right? Gilian: Yeah. And that's the thing and. I think I was pretty aware, maybe that was at the forefront of my mind. My son last week he had something where he was hoping I'd be able to take him to it, but I had to coax it outta him and I said, well, why didn't you say something? And he went, well, your PhD is just more important. And I went, no, it's not, it's not more important than your happiness. This is not a PhD versus you. That's when I thought, oh no . So for about 12 years before I started my masters, I taught at secondary schools and I'd left that to have a better balance with my son and then realize that in an odd way, this is not somebody externally putting these pressures on, it's me, but I'm doing the same thing to myself, so I'm still not available to him in the way I should be or could be. You are always gonna get pressure points. I'm not saying, I mean, PhDs are not easy, but I realize I'm not as available as I should be and I'm shutting 'em out, and that's not something I want to do. Vikki: Yeah, no, definitely. And I think what often happens, and I think this will be interesting for us to dive into, what often happens is that people don't really define what as available as I "should" be. We don't really define what that extent of availability is, and so we always have this kind of general feel that we are not doing enough for our kids, or we are not doing enough for our PhD or for our parents, or for our other job or whatever it may be, without really defining what that would look like anyway. Gilian: Yeah. Vikki: So do you have an idea as to how available you should be for your son? Gilian: I don't, um, I don't think it's necessarily, I haven't really fully set, but I am aware that I am the sort of person where if there's an interesting online thing on a weekend or whatever, that I would be prioritize, I'd go, well, I'm going to that then and you'll be okay, uh, because you've got granny or grandad or, or whatever. So, I think because I have very blurred end of the week boundaries or lack of that, then there isn't a sense of for most people, if you've got a parent who's going off to work once they. Where they're home now so I can access them. But there is this strange thing when you obviously are doing, um, I'm quite a distance from the university I study at as well. It takes over two hours to drive there. So, most of my work is done here. So home and work and all of that blends. And I think that's part of the problem is, you know, when I'm available, it's not as clear as when I used to go and work in a school. Vikki: And how do you decide which it is? Gilian: Um, I don't think I have actually, that's what I realized is so damaging. I don't think I have actually actively thought about being a bit, I tend to, if there's been, um. We more of our time together, it's been if we've gone away on holidays together, and now when I look, I think it's no wonder that he probably really likes the holidays because then I down PhD tools and it's fully family time. Gilian: I haven't really thought about separating the two, the PhD world from my home world, they have collided in a messy, um, Vikki: I think that's gonna be really interesting to explore because if you are already doing it with holidays, 'cause I don't want you to think that's inevitable. Okay. I have clients who really struggle with not working when they're on holiday. So it's not inevitable that you down your PhD tools and don't do it that. So you are already setting some boundaries. So I think it's gonna be really interesting to explore why you set those boundaries with holidays and to start thinking about what boundaries might look like at home as well. But before we get into that, I mentioned at the beginning that you are already in my membership, and one of the things I think is interesting with this stuff is to sort of think about what are you already trying to do. So perhaps tell people a little bit about why you decided to join the membership and whether there's any of this stuff or other stuff that you've been kind of trying to work on already. I know you've only been in a couple of weeks. Gilian: So I joined the membership after coming to one of your monthly, the free workshops, which was amazing. And then it was one of the first things I'd been to where your advice was actually, there was a support for actually saying it's okay to, to have worries and things, but also you've gotta have that compassion, but also let's look at how we can try and make things better. Gilian: You can't just go, it's okay and leave it 'cause that's not what your membership's about. And I, I came away from it and I was buzzing. And that was a workshop to do with procrastination. Which after that I had this huge to do list and I realized that a lot of the problems was my own fear because I hadn't broken things down. That I'd got far too much on it, that I'd got things on it that I didn't need to look at for another six months, but that I still just had. So I had things in the wrong places. And after that, I just knew as soon as, so I, um, had to wait for the, the next round of the membership to be available to join. But I knew that I wanted to be part of it. And, it's been so lovely being part of the community actually, to realize that I'm not the only person who struggles with so many different things. Procrastination, self doubt, organization, and that these aren't necessarily skills that you go into a PhD just knowing. 'Cause that's the other thing I found with a membership is I think so many of us came to PhDs just thinking, we should know this because the way that it, they're not really discussed in a lot of institutions. There's just this suggestion. You should have an innate understanding of juggling. What is the biggest project for, for many of us, it's the first huge project that you will have undertaken. Obviously some people come from different backgrounds, but in a lot of us that is, it's a huge undertaking and you need skills and that's what's been great since joining the membership. It has been brilliant in terms of. I've been looking more at procrastination than family time, actually. Uh, and I think that sort of stems for one thing, does lead, you know, they connect. Gilian: But I realized that even though I was on time for things, I was getting a lot more stressed than I needed to be because I hadn't shown compassion and I hadn't broken stuff down. And so that's why I thought with the chance of this, I said actually, if I can use what I've known from joining and actually just being a bit more willing to think about myself, which is uncomfortable, and I don't think I'm probably alone in that. A lot of us don't take time to think about ourselves and give ourselves compassion. Yet we spend quite a lot of time with others, maybe showing them compassion. So I thought actually it would be good to try and, um, yeah, get to know myself a bit better and to try and see that I can get a bit more balance. Yeah. And just make things be better. Vikki: Yeah. I love it. And I just wanna reflect that, I want you to recognize that you did take a big compassionate step in joining the membership because accepting that some support would help and accepting that you are worth putting some time into and that you are worth putting a bit of money into. Vikki: You know, I try and keep it affordable, but it's obviously, it is a financial investment for people. You took that first step of putting yourself back in this picture by taking that step of joining as well, which I think is important to recognize. Often people are like, oh, and now I need to learn how to, you know, put myself forward, look after myself. But you are already doing those things by putting yourself in that sort of a situation. Gilian: Yeah, I hadn't really thought of it that way, but yeah. Right. That it's, um, and it's lovely being part of that community as well. I think I was saying, I think I said yesterday to you, in an online thing, I said, I've found my smile again. I didn't realize how much of a rut I'd gotten. And even by being, you know, so by being able to come along to things of the membership, to be part of that community, is massive. Um, all of us trying to kind of make things better and help each other, which is great. Vikki: That's always lovely, lovely to hear. And I think you're really, really also insightful to recognize that procrastination and learning to manage that procrastination as you have been this quarter will help with this separation of work and non-work time. I wonder if you could just tell me a little bit more about your thoughts about why managing your procrastination will help with that. Gilian: I think because for me, a lot of the tasks that I was procrastinating on were, partially because of not breaking them down. And partially that was as a result of self doubt of wondering whether I was really good enough and, there's always been that thing of, am I, do I deserve to be here? It's not coming from anybody else. There's not anything negative , everything my supervisors have said and others, it's all been positive. So it is just my own self-doubt. However, that would mean if, for example, I had a paper that I needed to finish recently, I delayed starting it because I felt I wasn't good enough to write the paper and why would they want to listen? And it was, through being part of the membership and then looking at procrastination techniques that I actually was able to get started. Once I could get started, then I was able to get it done. Otherwise, before joining the membership, that paper would've been something where I would've still been struggling with it over the weekend when my son would like, you know, isn't at school and that's when it's valuable time to spend together. Gilian: But actually within the last week I actually did the not worrying about doing your very best in everything because you can't possibly do that and always say setting time limits. And I had a second paper to do it and I thought, I'm not putting it off. Gilian: And I broke it down and I said to myself, right, I'm gonna spend no longer than six hours working on it. And I actually managed to do it, and get the draft sent to the right people as well ahead of time. And when we talk those intrinsic wins, it felt like an intrinsic win because I hadn't procrastinated, I'd trusted myself and, me prior to joining, that paper wouldn't have been planned. It would've been something just left hanging over me. Vikki: I love that. And I think that is one massive way that learning how to manage the procrastination is gonna help with this work life thing. Because if you can be more intentional about when you are working and know exactly what you are doing in that slot and know that you've got tools, and now we we're always gonna procrastinate you, you and I know I still procrastinate. Other members still procrastinate. It happens. But if we know we've got tools there that when we notice we're procrastinating, we have ways of addressing it and minimizing the impact. Like we talked at the webinar yesterday about then suddenly we can get work done in the slots we allocate to it. Which as you say, then it makes it much easier to have freer weekends 'cause it hasn't just sort of drift. We haven't put it off and put it off and put it off and drifted it into the weekend. Gilian: Yeah. Vikki: I do think there's another way though. So one of the things that we have talked about before in the membership is how procrastination is often about emotion avoidance. And I want you to tell me a little bit more about what emotions you experience when you are doing your PhD, but feel like you should be with your family or when you are with your family, but feel like you should be doing your PhD. Gilian: For me, it's normally a sense of guilt, so if I'm working on something for the PhD and I know it's past six o'clock or something, I feel that I'm not spending time. With my family and, and being with them. And then if I'm with my family doing something, maybe we're watching a film, there's a sense of guilt creeps in just going, wow, there's still work that could be done. And then maybe depending and possibly slightly dread, as well. Not so much with the family, but with the PhD side of thing of just, there's still so much to do that of which I think is a very common thing for many people to feel at all sorts of stage. But that sense of, um, am I gonna get through this? What if I don't get it done in time? So, um, yeah. So those two kind of come together. Vikki: Yeah, because when we are feeling emotions that we don't like, so in this case, guilt and dread and things like that. There's a bunch of things we sort of almost automatically do. One of them is spiral, like you mentioned, that suddenly the guilt becomes, oh my, I'm a terrible mother. They're gonna hate me. Or, or, oh my goodness, I'm never gonna finish my PhD or whatever. It might, we know whichever direction it is. We tend to spiral, but we also tend to then avoid the tasks. Right? Vikki: Anything that we are having thoughts about that make us feel guilty, we then tend to avoid it. So tell me a bit more about how feeling that guilt or that dread affects your ability to either get on with the work or to enjoy the time with your family. Gilian: I think, when it's with the work, I think the dread actually, because it, it's there, it's a distraction, that then slows you down. Um, so whether I'm trying to, um. Do close analysis or whether I'm trying to read secondary things. If you've got a voice in the back of your head going, oh, and if you're trying to look at one text and you think there's another 20 I really should have already looked at, it's actually your own mind is sending you off in directions that you don't need to be in. Gilian: And then I think when I'm spending time with a family as well, that part of the distraction the other way is that without meaning to sometimes there are con the amount, I've lost count of the amount of times I've been asked. So, you know, what are you gonna do when you finish PhD? Have you not finished yet? Gilian: When are you gonna get a job, a real job? Those sorts of things. So you've got that with members of family where there's that pressure as well. So you're thinking, well, actually I'm sat here watching a film, but with what you're saying, I, I ought to be going off back to the office and doing some more work because if you are not viewing this as a real job, I need to get a real job and I need to get this done to get a real job. And so it sort of devalues, um, you both need to complete the PhD so there is value in it, but it sort of devalues the process. Yeah. Without meaning to Vikki: Yeah. And ruins the time with your family, right? Because suddenly it becomes you're thinking, I shouldn't be doing this, I should be doing something else. And that makes it hard to relax and enjoy the time with them too, I assume. Gilian: Yeah. I guess it's just, there's always these constant things just playing on your mind. I suppose, it's like with anything, isn't it? If you go and visit somewhere, but you are aware that you've only got an hour to be there and then you've gotta dash off and you've gotta make a train in time, it just plays on your mind. And it's the same thing of if you are watching a film, and there's also that guilt of, have I done enough? Because if this, if my PhD doesn't count as real work, then do I deserve to watch a film because this, you know, my work isn't worthy. And, you know, films and things and family time. I mean, they're for people who've put in effort. So there's all these sort of, all the bad thoughts going around in circles. Vikki: Well, let's grab that one. Films are for people who have done enough work. How, how do you feel about that thought? How true does that thought feel to you? Gilian: Well see, I, I associate that I have a real difficulty with yeah, feeling that I actually deserve to have free time or spare time, sort of, of, because I see those things as, almost rewards for having, you know, worked hard. Even though being able to spend time with family is, you know, that that should just be part of being healthy, really mentally healthy, having time, whether that's going out walking or playing games or watching tv. I mean, time together is important. You can't just shut yourself off. But sometimes it would be easier, , you know, with guilt that you can make yourself cut off from other people. You realize that you haven't got those connections , because you're pushing people away. So, Vikki: and these, these deep seated thoughts that you need to have earned rest and earned time with other people and earned fun stuff on your own as well. Right? Because we are gonna talk about that. This is not gonna just be about finding a balance between time with your family and time with your PhD because one of the things you mentioned in your initial email was that actually there's this whole chunk of time, for just you, Gillian, as a person, that isn't happening at the moment. Vikki: These deep-seated beliefs about when people deserve those things can be really, really hard to shift. Right? That starts getting into kind of therapy territory of where does that come from and how can we unpick it and those things. But what is really useful from a coaching standpoint is to be able to go, I recognize I have these beliefs. They come from somewhere. They're longstanding beliefs. However, I don't have to live my life by them. I can believe in a deep down right in my chest way that I don't deserve rest or that unless I finished what I was gonna do, I don't deserve family time, but cognitively I choose not to reinforce that. Cognitively I choose to follow my plan, which involves rest and family time, regardless of what I've got done. How would that feel? Does that feel possible to separate out for you or does that feel like something that's just way too difficult? Gilian: No, I think it does feel possible. I think it wouldn't have been something possible, before I started coming to different coaching things with the membership, to be honest, that I needed, I needed to make those first steps. Gilian: But, actually I've made the first step of acknowledging it is something that I need to work on, which is a positive thing. Because before joining the membership, I hadn't even thought about the fact that I don't make time for me and I don't make enough time. So it is, you are right Vikki, it is a mixture of both. I don't make clear out time for my son and I don't make any time really for, so if I do make any time, it's not, I don't ever think about just myself, that it's always me doing either the PhD. I see the PhD as time for myself. Except for realistically, I mean, I'm doing it full time. Gilian: It is the equivalent of a job. And you wouldn't say to somebody else? I wouldn't say to myself if I was back, in my previous profession, I wouldn't have gone, well, I mean even enjoyed teaching all week, but that, that was you time that teaching in the classroom. Hope you really enjoyed that you time, I'm sure it was relaxing. Gilian: You wouldn't say it. And yet with a PhD, because you get that, well, it's something you're passionate about, it's something you love, which of course we are. It, it's, um, separating that and realizing that actually I need to allow time for me. Because I will be a better researcher, like, because I'll have some balance and actually some space away from things. Vikki: So i'm gonna pause you on that one just because I don't even want you to reinforce that thought. I don't even want you to reinforce, I deserve time to myself because it will make me a better researcher. I believe, and I would really encourage you to kind of reflect on this. I believe you deserve time to yourself. Full stop. Even if it had no benefits for your research whatsoever. You are a human being and so you deserve time to yourself. Yeah. Because there's something about this weird productivity world that we live in that starts, but you know, you see it with like people who talk about sleep and sleep research and things. You know, Ooh, get good sleep because it'll help you be more, you know, get enough sleep, it'll help you be more productive tomorrow. It's like, no, just, just get enough sleep. 'cause enough sleep's awesome enough. Sleep feels great. Let's do that. Even if I do no more tomorrow than I'm doing today, let's just do it feeling better 'cause I had a good rest. I. And this is why you will know from the membership. But for the listeners, this is why I Vikki: really discourage you all from setting external rewards and self-care things for after you've done work. So for having a, if I can get this piece of writing done, then I can go for a walk, or if I get this piece of writing done, then I can go for dinner with my friends. Vikki: Um, I really discourage those sorts of motivators because they firstly make the task itself feel intrinsically like something you've got to bribe yourself to do as though it's got no worth or enjoyment of its own. And it makes those things contingent on having been productive enough. I think you should go for dinner with your friends regardless, I think you should sleep enough regardless. I think you should hang out with your son enough regardless of how much work you've done. And the irony is you probably will end up working more effectively. But that's not the kind of ultimate end goal. The ultimate end goal is to have in your life the things you need in your life to thrive. Gilian: Yeah. But actually it's about coming out from behind the shadow, you're, more than what you're creating. Vikki: Hundred percent. Yeah. Gilian: Yeah. Because I'll still be me, whether I, you know, whether I had a PhD or not. It's still me. Vikki: So let's get a little bit pragmatic about it now as well. I think we've done some sort of mindset chat, which is always, you know, that I always like to try and bring together both the mindset sety stuff and the kind of pragmatic steps. So. I think this is a little bit of an example. There was an episode that I suspect you will have listened to 'cause you have always listened to the podcast about making half-ass decisions. Vikki: That often what goes wrong is where we sort of decide something. And it sounds to me, tell me if this feels true for you. It sounds to me like you've only made sort of decisions about when you are working, when you are with your son, when is it okay to drop work for your son? When is it okay to leave son with his grandparents or whatever to so that you can work. So tell me a bit more about how you make those decisions and what kind of boundaries are in place? Gilian: See, I think, um, for me that is another challenge. So we, my son and myself, we both live in the same house as my parents. So in terms of. We don't have the separation that some people would have and also my parents both work from home as well. So we've got three adults working different jobs from home in one. So the space is quite a mixed use space. It's more of a workspace than a home space a lot of the time. So there is that difficulty of, um, boundaries. Um, but in terms of, I realized that in terms of practical, I have realized that I didn't have an end of week shutdown process at all. Um, so therefore things were just rolling from one week to the next. So I'd be aware that obviously the week would end and that there'd be the weekend and those sort of typical things that a lot of parents would've to do. So, you know, taking to sporting activities or whatever, way off doing stuff. Gilian: But there wasn't actually a sense of closure or a sense of recapping of the week. And therefore, if I'm not setting boundaries for myself, then it's not any surprise that, there's not that clarity for my son either and that he's not aware or, or is trying to work out, you know, is mommy available now or am I disturbing, or, you know, so, I'm aware that I need to be working on those sort of boundaries. Vikki: No, absolutely. And we can think, we'll have a think in a second about what sorts of things that might be, and it doesn't have to be absolutely hard and fast rules. You could decide I never work after six, I never work on weekends. I always go to every sporting event my son ever has or whatever. You can decide those sorts of concrete rules if you want to. Vikki: But there is also a version where they're kind of rules of thumb. In a normal week, this is what it looks like. However, in these sorts of occasions, there might be a bit more PhD time. In those sorts of occasions, there might be a bit more son time, these sorts of occasions there might be a bit more me time, whatever it is. Vikki: So we don't have to have hard and fast rules, but when we are not intentional about it, it sort of ends up being a bit of a mush and you end up being disturbable when you thought you were gonna work, but your son comes in and asks for something and you haven't got a good enough reason to say no. So you go with it. Vikki: And then other times you do just a bit of work in front of the telly or whatever it is, and we end up in this slightly grey mush where nothing feels very sort of intentional or separate from each other. What would make it hard, before we start thinking about the kind of exactly what things you might put in place, what would make it hard or what does make it hard for you to enforce any boundaries? Gilian: I think in terms of being disturbed, I think I need to have, um, more, uh, sort of a bit more self-compassion and actually be aware that my work does have value. So therefore, if I have blocked out time saying, I am working on this and I need you to be with granny and granddad who are perfectly capable of looking after you, that you need to respect that this is my job and that I'm telling you I need to do this. Gilian: So I need to have that self value of what I'm doing on one sense , which I know sounds strange when I'm saying I'm working too much, but it is that, that sort of side of things of actually value in what I do. Um, but on the other side , so it is quite tricky because our lounge is also where my parents do their work from as well. So there's not a very, uh, I quite like, like to divide space and it would be quite nice to, to feel that I was finished on the night. But it's quite, can be quite difficult because I'll be going quite often down into a space where somebody else is doing their work as well. So, so boundaries, setting boundaries is quite hard when we all work here. Vikki: Your son's at school? Gilian: Yes. Vikki: So you have time, is it PhD time while he's at school? Gilian: Yes. Yeah. I think as a lot of parents, I think summer holidays are probably the hard, they're both joyous aren't they, but it is six weeks that is, harder when your children are there. Vikki: I'm gonna suggest we focus in on term times for now. Gilian: Yeah. Vikki: We can talk in future coaching sessions in the membership and stuff when it comes but I think it's useful. 'Cause sometimes these are the stories I want you to notice. These are the stories where we complicate ourselves. And I do this with exercise. Other people do this with exercise too. It's like, oh, but I couldn't do that in the winter because it will be rainy and it'll be too cold. So to do it, it's like, yeah, but you could do it now through till September. How about that? And then we'll worry about and then do later. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So sometimes these kind of, I need a solution that's gonna work for all eventualities prevent us from finding solutions that work some of the time. So I would think, right, let's not even worry about holidays right now. Holidays are gonna be a mishmash until we come up with a different strategy to think about those. They're gonna be a bit of a mishmash, all working parents experience it. I'm just gonna be super kind to myself, but let's think about term times. So is he at school full-time? Gilian: Yes. Vikki: Yeah, so you've got the kind of full-time days. Do you find you're able to get on during that time or do you find you're called out for parental duties and stuff with your parents? Gilian: Yeah so I find that I've managed to get a reasonable pattern 'cause I'm quite an early riser anyways, so I find that I can be up and happily working at quarter past six in the morning because it's quiet and there's no disturbing until about nine o'clock when other people then start to wake up. And I think then I can get disturbed because both of my parents are at home and they can't go to the shops on their own or whatever. So if they need something, there'll be a knock on my office door and then I will go and do that. Gilian: But generally, yeah, I do manage to get, things done. And I have tried to work on, saying when I'm in meetings or things to, to block out space to not get disturbed. Vikki: See, this is a fascinating one. I think this is gonna be relevant for people, even if they don't have kids or if they're not living with parents or any of these things is what is different to you? So you told me before we started recording here that you'd got your do not disturb sign. Everyone knew they couldn't come in 'cause you were recording, you were doing this thing. And you've just said also that you tell them when there's meetings and things like that. What to you is different that you are willing to enforce boundaries around i'm on a podcast. I am, you know, getting coached. I am in a meeting. You must not disturb me versus I'm doing an hour's close analysis. You must not disturb me. Gilian: I think it's, I'm honestly better at saying it if somebody else is involved. I've noticed that. So it would be me saying, don't disturb. I don't disturb because Vikki's kindly giving her time to coach me. There's somebody else. So, it's important that you leave me alone. It's always when this, if it's a group thing, you know, somebody else is giving up their time. Say, let's respect that. Vikki: So why should your parents, your parents, respect my time who they've never met more than they respect your time. Now, I'm not saying your parents don't respect your time. Let me rephrase that. But why are you willing to put a boundary in place outta respect for my time, rather than putting a boundary in place out of respect for your time? Gilian: Yeah, I think it is, honestly, it probably just comes down to just lack of trust in what I'm doing. So just thinking, well, I'm, you know, my stuff isn't good enough, as if it doesn't matter as much, and then so I can see when other people are doing things and I think, wow, that, that PhD sounds amazing. That sounds amazing. But I don't see it in my own. I think, oh, that sounds amazing, but mine's just okay. I'm not putting in the boundaries because I'm not respecting what I'm doing enough. Vikki: And do you want to respect it enough that you can put some boundaries in place? Gilian: Yeah, I do. And I actually think that I've started to appreciate what I've been doing more since I've joined the membership. And as you rightly said, I haven't been there that long. So I think it will, it, this is not, it's bit like procrastination will never be fully fixed, but at least this is gonna be a process and starting to build up. Gilian: I'm not gonna just wave a magic wand and suddenly change my behavior just overnight and go, well, that was perfect but when I can start spotting what I'm doing and then thinking, right, I actually need to set boundaries, then it's a step on the way to actually caring more for myself, which would be a good thing. Vikki: So definitely, and I think it's another one of those examples where you might not at the moment have the deep seated belief that what you are doing is super valuable and important. I think you do have that belief to some extent, but it may not be a completely like I'm therefore willing to do this, but you can still choose to act as though you did. Vikki: You can still choose to say, you know what? I have moments where I'm not convinced that what I'm doing is as important as what other people are doing, but it's what I'm doing, so I'm gonna act as though it's as important as anybody else's job. And I think sometimes when we act like that, the belief comes afterwards. Vikki: You know, usually you'll know we talk about the self-coaching model in the membership. Usually we think about our actions being driven by our thoughts and feelings. So it sort of goes thoughts, feelings, actions. Sometimes if we've got really deep seated beliefs, sometimes we start from the actions. We start from thinking, I want to behave as though my PhD has real value to the world and feel determined. Vikki: And so your action is that you block in some time where you are not disturbable. Well, my old coach always used to say she had three young children when she was running a business. And she always used to say that if no one's bleeding, you cannot disturb me. So it was like, if anyone's bleeding, it's fine. Come in, come get me, whatever. No one bleeding. It's all good. You can, you can wait till later. Go and ask your father. Vikki: But sometimes it can be useful to act in line with how we want to believe things are and how we hope our future selves will believe. And we start to act in that line already, even when we're a bit wobbly in here at the moment, about whether it has true, true value that makes it enough to put these boundaries in place. Gilian: And I could actually see potentially, what was that you were saying about them not wanting to be disturb, but probably with me, it's actually a case of my son's quite self-aware. So actually, probably being able to say if you catch mommy's sneaking, you know, sneak in the old book notebook out and stuff, um, when, when we're supposed to be, when I've said we're gonna play a board game or whatever, well yeah, you have the right to call me out on that because you matter too. Vikki: And that's where I think being really intentional could be really useful here. But before we talk about, I want, I'm aware we've thrown around the world boundaries quite a bit and people have different definitions of boundaries, and I wanna make sure that you and I are both on the same page with that, but also that anyone listening is, so for you, what do you mean when you talk about a boundary? Gilian: I think for me, if I talk about in terms of that, it needs to be something where there's a clear understanding of what you are crossing. So if I'm setting a boundary saying I'm working, that there's a clear understanding that if you're gonna disturb me when I'm working, that there's got to be a reasonable reason for you to be doing that. Gilian: Not just talking about a game of football or something random. So, yeah, it's about something where both sides, well, I, that, you know, both sides of something, but yeah, boundary is a really tricky word, doesn't it? Because it can mean a lot things, Vikki: And I'm really glad we had that conversation because I wanna tweak a bit of your definition, if that's okay. Which is, for me, a boundary is something you put in place about what you will do. 'cause even your child you don't have control over what he does. As much as parents would love to have full control over what their kids do, you don't, you don't have control over what your parents do. You don't have control over what anybody does. Vikki: You have control over what you do. So in this case, a boundary would be something like, if you disturb me when the sign on my door says don't, for example, if you're gonna go with signs or whatever, I will just ask you to leave and carry on with my work. I'll give you a kiss on the head and you can go and carry on with what you were doing. Because this is mommy's work time, I won't have a conversation with you unless you're bleeding. I will dismiss you and get back to my work immediately. So it is not, you can make requests to the people around you. So you can say to your son, to your family to say, you know, when it says this on my door, please, it would really help me if you don't test my willpower with all of this. It would really help if you didn't. But the boundary is you saying if you come in, I'm not engaging, I'm not going to the shop while I'm on one of those sessions. Shop's for later. I'll do it one later, but in these blocks of time, I won't engage with what you're asking me to do. And you can do that in a super loving way. It's not like not talking to you, please leave. But it's saying I'm in a session right now. I can't. Same as you would if somebody came in now. I mean, I would be understanding, but I'm gonna assume if somebody came in now, you'd be like, shut out. I'll talk to you later. You can do the same thing when it's your work. Gilian: Yeah. So yeah, it's about deciding and setting those boundaries for, for me. Yeah, that makes sense. Vikki: And that can be in both directions, right? It can also be, if I'm in time I've set aside to be with my family, I'm not going to pick up my PhD. I'm not going to also just have a quick scroll to look up something that I've just thought of or whatever. But it's always about your behavior. Gilian: Yeah, that makes sense. Vikki: So how could you be more intentional? So this kind of fits also with the role-based time blocking stuff that we've talked about. There's an episode about it, if people wanna check that out. How do you want to be more intentional? How could you be more intentional about when you are in phD role when you are in mom role, when you're in daughter role, and when you are in human being, individual person role? Gilian: I think that you're quite right. Time blocking is something that I've started looking at, but it's not something that I've had too much chance to work with. But I have found that when I've done the time blocking that it is easier for me to make boundaries, with the procrastination, working on procrastination because, even the sense of a boundary of, no, no, you cannot wander off and go and Hoover because that would be easier. You've gotta just stay put, you know, um, and get going. It's gotta be the same sort of thing that if I'm in boss mode when I'm working out my week, that I actually block out family time. Gilian: And I think that's what I haven't done is blocked out the time that you actually need to just have that self-care, it needs to be a mixture, mixture of self-care and family time, because I think I'm not alone in that. Um, I've only since joining the membership started thinking about putting in proper breaks in the day. Gilian: And I think I'm not alone in that. I haven't sort of thought to myself, right, well let's set aside this chunk of the evening. This is the equivalent of it being blocked out rather than for meetings, but this is blocked out for me to just step away and do family time or at some point hopefully, I dunno, okay, maybe I'd like to go and, you know, go see friends or something, but that I can make the choice. Vikki: I don't want it be, we're gonna talk about this. I don't even want it to be go see friends. Go see friends will be lovely. We're gonna talk about, what would it be if it was literally just you, something that is just you. Gilian: I dunno what I'd do if it was, I'm not sure I can get there yet. Vikki: What did you used to enjoy doing? Pred kids, maybe even as a kid yourself. What hobbies and things did you love doing? Gilian: I like gonna the theater and I like gonna museums and art galleries and things like that, so. Vikki: Okay. How far away is your nearest museum or gallery? Gilian: Oh, about, well there are local ones to do with planes and things, but more traditional ones about 45 minutes, I think, to the nearest one from here. Vikki: Cool. And when did you last do something like that? Gilian: I, no, um, since, well, my son's 10, so since before he was born, so. Vikki: And how about things at home? Are there any sort of do at home hobbies? You like or used to like or would love to get into but haven't done? Gilian: Um, because really for me, I, I really obviously enjoy reading because of the, the nature of, I do a literature degree, but honestly, by the time I finished reading for the day , it's not something that I have the energy for. I cook sometimes yeah, that's one of the things I like to do if I'm avoiding doing stuff. Vikki: Okay. So, and is that for you or is that for other people? Gilian: Um, if I cook it, so I cook for family. Vikki: So even if you enjoy it, that still doesn't count. This is gonna be one of your bits of homework and because you're a member, I'm gonna follow up, is to think about, you know, what do you, are you on social media or anything? One of the things I often ask myself is, what do I look at on social media? Gilian: No. See, I, I'm actually one of the lucky ones where I don't really scroll. I'm not, I'm perfect. Vikki: Don't, don't start right. Not gonna use that for inspo. I want you to think, and I want everyone listening to think of this, I want you to have one thing that you like doing if you go off somewhere on your own, like if you are looking for sort of day trip or morning trip type thing, and one thing you like doing, if you're just at home on your own in the house, okay? Vikki: And if there aren't answers to things, that is partly why you are not making time for this. It's partly some of these beliefs about not deserving it, but it is partly that it's really hard to make time for yourself if you don't actually know what you're gonna use that time for. Vikki: Yeah. And so the, one of the first steps is thinking even if there haven't been things in the past, thinking what would be fun. I might learn to juggle, I might learn to do Rubik's cube, I might learn to paint, I might, whatever it might be. Okay. I might go for walks. I might look at birds, see how many birds I can find in my garden or whatever. Vikki: Right? Coming up with an idea as to what it might be and doesn't have, you haven't gotta pick a hobby forever. That's not what I'm saying, Vikki: but like picking some, if I was gonna take some time for myself over the next couple of weeks, it'd be fun. What? What? Might it be fun to have a go at trying? Gilian: I might try looking at some videos to do with sign language. Because it's something that I could reasonably because we're not fully out in the sticks here, but it's not the, whilst I enjoy going to museums and things, it's not the easiest to get to stuff. Yeah. But, videos, there are videos to do with sign language and it's something that I've always been interested in. So it's something that I can have a look and try. So, Vikki: perfect. I went to this, it's called Camp Wildfire. Recommend. It's basically Adventure Camp for adults. And I did sign language choir. It was so cool. We learned the signs to sing, um, stronger by Christina Aguilera and it was amazing. It was so cool. It becomes so much easier. It's all the part of this intentional thing. And people often think that being intentional is about always being productive and being efficient. And it's not. You can be intentional about your hobbies. It's so much easier, like you said about seeing your friends. I want you also after we finish recording, to think of one friend that you want to catch up with, one specific one because it's one thing to say, oh, I should see my friends more, or to say, I want to go for coffee with her. Yeah. The more specific you can get about what making time for yourself would look like, the easier it is to then schedule it and then to say, look, son's at football or whatever. I'm gonna have coffee with that one friend. Well, I'm not gonna stay and watch this time, love staying to watch, but I'm gonna take 45 minutes to go do that. Now I know the logistics of that might not work out, but. take the principle of it. Gilian: If you've got something concrete that you're planning to do, then you can put it in rather than just so vague that you can put off. Vikki: Yes, exactly. Exactly. How could you then share some of this intentionality with the people around you? Because this is gonna be a bit of a change for them, right? If they're used to being able to come and go, mom always being available, daughter always being available, whatever is gonna be a little bit of a change and people react to that. Right. And one of the things we can do is to try and be as transparent as we can or as we're willing to about why you are doing it and what it actually means. And I'm just wondering whether you got any ideas. Gilian: I think in terms of not working as much on the weekends, I think because it's been impacting on my son, but also means for the sake of whatever has or hasn't been done, I still deserve a break. Everyone needs a break. That probably just an open conversation saying I'm actually going to be working hard on taking a break. Gilian: So if you see me, you know, sneaking, going and grabbing my laptop and scrolling, clearly looking at work stuff. You know it because I only, if I have my laptop, I'm doing university stuff, so if you see me sneaking for that then you are allowed to, Vikki: don't put too much responsibility on them. This is still your behaviour mission ok? You can ask for support. Gilian: Yeah. Probably stuff outta the way. Vikki: Yeah. Explaining to them why you're doing what you're doing. . I was wondering about whether, whether you could almost have a clear timetable, and I don't mean, when people talk about time blocking, they think they then have to time block all the hours and I, I think that's a really dangerous place to start. Vikki: I think starting with some time blocks is really useful and being able to say, right in these two hours a day or these three hours a day, please just don't bother me. In the afternoon. I'm more flexible. I'll be doing stuff, but I'm more interruptible. If you need me to go to the shop, that's when I'll go to the shop and stuff. But between eight and 11, please, just unless there's an emergency, let me crack on or whatever. Vikki: And saying to your son, then, you know, but look at this. This five till seven slot. Five till seven is all you. All you. Mommy will have finished work by five and it's whatever we want to do together. That's our time. Vikki: So that you're not saying to him, leave me alone. I'm working. Leave me alone. I'm working. You are saying, no, no. Remember, this is mommy's work slot because five till seven's you. Five till seven is all about you and we, yeah. So whatever you wanna tell me, I'm gonna hear all about it. Tell me everything. Everything you've got between five and seven. So that they can kind of see these are the times when I'm interruptable to go and do jobs for the parents. These are the times that I'm proper set aside for fun, social wonderfulness. Here's some grey time that I'll work, but I don't care if you come in and these are my deep focus hours that please just let me have. Gilian: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, because I completely agree with you, with blocking that I could end up wasting a lot of my weekend trying to micromanage myself, but actually saying generally, you know, leave between six and nine and then between sort of two and four and unless there's an actually actual emergency, then yeah, please treat me as if I'm not here. Vikki: And, weekends. Remember, you don't have to be black and white, all or nothing about weekends either. So I always recommend that people are intending to get to a place where they only work on weekends in proper push to deadlines and stuff. I know that's not always possible if people are part-time and things, but if you are used to your weekends being a kind of extension of your week, it might be a lot to go from that to, I do not work between Friday and Monday, but you can choose intentionally about each weekend as well. Vikki: So one of the things that I've really developed in myself and has helped me a lot is that now if I need to work on the weekend, I will say to my husband, I'm gonna work this weekend. Saturday morning, I'm in the study that I'm doing my thing. And then we'll have the rest of the weekend to not do it. Vikki: So I used to sort of be like, oh, I need to do some work this weekend, but not now. I'll do it later, I'll do it later, I'll do it later. I should really be working, but I'm not. And then it's sort of the weekend becomes this kind of half-assed thing where you are neither working nor doing fun things. Whereas if you can say in advance, okay, it's not ideal, but I do want to do some work this weekend. I need to do two hours or I need to do four hours or whatever. I'm gonna try and do it in that block, which means the rest of the weekend is free for all the other fun stuff. So even in that, you can be super intentional about it. Gilian: And I think the things have been working on, you've been coaching on the procrastination. Gilian: That those then dovetail in because if there is something that genuinely needs to be done or maybe meetings from across the globe that happen to be on a week of, but they usually only one to two hours. So that doesn't give me the excuse of going, well, I mean that's, that's one hour, but I mean, I could just go and do an extra hour. Vikki: So it's basically a work day now, sorry. Gilian: Um, and I need to not allow myself to, to opt out quite so easily, so I need to be better with the boundaries and actually write that is, I have, that is blocked into there. That will be how long I'm allowing for it. And then the other time is weekend and step away. Yeah. Vikki: Perfect. So the last thing I wanna ask you is what thoughts could you kind of cultivate, choose, and remind yourself of for those moments where your brain is going, "oh, I probably should go and spend some time with my son", or, "oh, but I probably should go and do my PhD." What thought? 'cause we can kind of preload those, right? Vikki: Because we know these moments are gonna happen. You are gonna go away from this hopefully feeling like, yeah, I've got a plan. This is great, but we all know that a week down the line, or even sooner, at some point you're gonna be like, "oh, I know, but he, you know, he's, he didn't have a good day at school. He just needs some mummy time." Vikki: Whatever. Right. What thoughts can we preload in your head that you are going to use in the moments that kind of make you go, oh, maybe I not gonna stick to my boundary. Gilian: Yeah, I think if it's, maybe if it's a case of about not being disturbed that maybe I need to, say to myself, it doesn't matter what other people are doing for their PhDs or not doing, you are here, you are doing it. Enjoy it. Yeah, remember that you're here, here, that you are here, enjoy it. Make the most of it. So you know, it does have value. Vikki: I'm doing this for a reason. My PhD has value. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Gilian: And so, and then when it's the other way around, you know, when it's family time, if it's creeping in, just tell myself, I'm more than a PhD and that. I'll still be there whether it does or doesn't get done. Yeah. And that family matters as well and I matter. So, you know, doesn't matter whether I've got that chapter finished or not got that chapter finished, but we all deserve that time. We deserve that time to be happy and to be doing what we want to do regardless of whether you've had a great PhD day or not, it's life is still there. So. Vikki: Perfect. I love that and I look forward to continuing to support you through it in the rest of the coaching sessions in the membership. So thank you so much for coming on, Gillian. I hope that was useful and what you wanted it to be. Gilian: Oh, it was brilliant. Thank you so much Vikki. It's given me a lot to think about and, um, yeah, really excited to try some different things. Vikki: Definitely, and I'm sure it will have inspired lots of people who are in similar situations themselves. So thank you everyone for listening . Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics time.
< Loneliness in academia is so common yet so rarely talked about. In this episode I’m going to get honest about some of my experiences of loneliness, share why I think academia can be a particularly lonely place, and give some tangible tips that you can use to make it all feel a bit better. Links I refer to in this episode If you enjoyed this episode, you might like this episode on the six types of social support you need and this one on how to build your academic community . Transcript Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. Now, I think this episode could end up being a little bit more personal than some of the episodes that I record. We are gonna be thinking about loneliness, loneliness in academia, and life in general, and what we can do about it. But I'm not gonna be presenting it from a, and I've got this all sorted kind of perspective. I'm actually gonna be sharing with you sometimes in my academic career that I was quite lonely, and I'm gonna be sharing with you some of the challenges that I'm having at the moment as somebody who moved away from a place that she'd been for a really, really, really long time, and how that's still not quite where I want it to be. So let's dive into this slightly more vulnerable one together. But I wanna start by thinking about why loneliness is so endemic in academia. You know, people talk about it being a kind of global issue in all walks of life at the moment for a whole bunch of different reasons. But I think academia is particularly prone to loneliness and particularly prone to not talking about feeling lonely. And I think that's for a bunch of reasons. It's a career where you often have to move a lot, right? If you, you know, a lot of people will move at the end of their undergraduate, their end of their PhD, and then at various stages through their academic careers. And it's not always easy to just up sticks, essentially move away from family or establish networks and reestablish them, especially if you're doing it for a short period at a time. Right. I have clients who, you know, they're PhD students, but then they go and do a postdoc here and a postdoc there, and they're only ever in a place for a year, and that's really, really tough. Some of you though might be thinking, well, hang on, I've stayed in the same place, but I still feel lonely. And that's because it's not just about moving. So many of you will know that I stayed in the same place through my whole academic career. So I left home to go to university like two hours away from where I grew up. Um, so not super far from Americans, but you know, that's beyond the commute from British people. But then I stayed there. I was an undergrad, PhD student, postdoc. Lecturer, senior lecturer, reader, professor. And so I stayed there my whole career and people often think, oh, well you must have had a network the whole time. But I didn't because the thing was everybody else left. So at the end of my undergrad, most of my friends went off to do other things, and I had to make new friends as a PhD student. And then at the end of PhD, most of my friends left and I then had to make new friends as a member of staff. And then there's always a sort of cycling of academic stuff in the department. And so whilst I had friends sort of in other bits of my life, that kind of real network that I had at work, we were a very social department. It really did change every three to five years and I really had to reestablish things over and over again. And that was often not that easy. And I'll, I'll talk later about reasons that was complicated. So whether you move or not, academia has this kind of transient feel to it, which can make it really hard to build lasting relationships. It's also kind of weirdly hierarchical, right? Where we're sort of collegiate and all work together, but sort of also hyper aware of the fact that they're a final year PhD student. I'm a first year PhD student, or they're a professor and I'm only an assistant professor or whatever. And often, especially as the junior partner in that, you are hyper aware of the differences in seniority. Often when you are older, you are less, not necessarily older, but more senior, you are less aware of those hierarchies. But you are aware that the other, the, the junior person sees those hierarchies, so that can make friendships difficult. People are also often at very, very different life stages, even if at the, the same career stage. So I, because I did my PhD quite quickly, which if you wanna hear that complicated story, I have a whole podcast episode about it. I did my PhD quickly, and then my postdoc was a permanent position that turned into lectureship. So I was in a permanent job by the time I was 24, whereas most of the other people who were starting their permanent jobs were, with the exception of my gorgeous Jen Cumming, who I always mention, they were all five, 10 years older than me. Most of them were in relationships, many of them were having children. It was a really, really different life stage for me. And often we have that that complicates our friendships within the workplace. And then when you think, you know, I'm talking about all, many, many moons pre COVID. So I'm not talking about the modern times, but with modern times, with the increase in remote working and more and more use of Zoom and things like that, people not being on campus, far more distance learning students and things like that, we're often geographically remote from the people that we work with too and the places that we work, which can mean that a lot of that kind of incidental chat that happens around the building just doesn't happen in the ways that it used to. And I think some of that is by necessity, right, that actually we need to do this sort of remote working. Sometimes it's that we've kind of got in the habit of it. Since COVID, we found that it's quite comfortable to be able to work from home with your own fridge and your own dog and all of those things, right? And so sometimes the benefits of going in just feel a little bit oblique and so we don't do it. Other times there'll be many of you that are still being COVID cautious in terms of avoiding getting infections through transport or through going to crowded places and all those sorts of things. So for whatever reasons, a lot of us have got more used to this kind of remote working. Now, I am not someone who doesn't think you can build relationships online, right? Some of my favorite people in the world, I've barely met in real life that I keep in contact with by this sort of connection , but that does make it harder to make new friends and meet new people. We are then in a world where we work really hard, right? There's loads to do. Often it's loads that we need to do on our own, other than meetings with people that are in a position of authority over us, like our supervisor advisors or whatever. So often it is lots of solitary working, lots of work so it's sort of bleeding into evenings, it bleeds into weekends if we allow it and then that can be tough. Many of you will also be supporting a family, which whilst gorgeous is not the same thing as necessarily having friends outside of the family and having that time just to be yourself. Performance is really drilled into us how important it is we do well. And to add on top of that, if your friends and family are not people who have PhDs or understand academia, it can be really hard to explain to people why your life is the way it is or why you are stressed about the things that you are stressed about. I remember one of my besties works for a really big corporation. Shall remain nameless, but like a proper businessy business and she's pretty high up in it. And I was moaning. I was in some leadership position at the university and there were some dudes not doing what I needed them to do. I can't remember what, it was some crappy form that I needed to make sure people had filled in properly and they were just being really difficult and they weren't doing their role and all that stuff, and my friend was like, I know it's okay. What you should do, you should talk to your boss, and they'll put them under performance review and then they'll get fired if they don't step up. I'm like, oh my dear soul, it doesn't necessarily work like that in academia. Now it might be, if they've been rubbish at their research and all that stuff, it might work like that, but if they're just being rubbish at their administrative roles, I don't think it works like that. And they were like, and she was like, but can't you just tell him he has to do it? I'm like, I'm not his line manager. She's like, how are you going to do anything? I'm like, exactly. So we have this kind, people don't get it. And that's one of my besties and she tries really, really hard to understand, but she doesn't get the unique pressures that there are within a university environment. Yeah. Those of you who are doing PhDs who may be a first generation in your family to do PhDs or where you don't have friends doing PhDs. They don't get it. It's like, oh, you can start work whenever you want and stop work whenever you want. That must be gorgeous. It's like gorgeous or infinitely pressure all the time. So people don't necessarily get it and that can be really difficult when you're trying to make friends receive social support and things like that. There's then also, academia, especially if you're not properly supported either through good supervision, advisors, mentors, all that stuff, it can be a bit crushing to your self-esteem, right? You can get yourself to a stage where, you just think you're not very good at anything and that you're just a bit of a boring person 'cause you haven't done anything except work on this thing for ages and you're not even any good at that. Okay. And that is not a great mindset to be trying to make friends from. Yeah. That doesn't make you go, oh, I know what I'll do. I'll go and shine at a party so everyone wants to be my friend. No, it makes you be like, oh, no one's gonna wanna be friends with this. It's really easy for that to translate across into your social life as well. I've been there. I'm a pretty extroverted person, but that can be really tough. And then for those of you who have moved and are like, yeah, I do have friends. I do. I just live a long way from them. I don't see them very much. That can be really hard too. That's what I'm struggling with at the moment. To be completely open with you. So I lived in Birmingham, big city for 20 something years. And I moved back to, it's a big village, but it's a village. Um, and it's very families around here. And I'm a family now. You know, I'm married, I've got stepchildren, all that stuff, but I'm not bringing up little people or anything. And almost all my friends are other places, right? They're either back in Birmingham. The people that I spent the most time with, or like my old friends from university and stuff, are all over the country, all over the world. I have one bestie that is still here, who I went to school with and is still local but she has an uber stressful job, so she's very, very busy. And the problem is I do have all these friends, but they're not friends that I can do things with tonight. Right. They're not people that I can just say, let's go for a walk on board. They're two hours away and we have to plan it. And they have children and their children have social lives and hobbies and things that fill up weekends and stuff. And it's hard. And then you're like, well, yeah, okay. But you could text them or whatever. You could speak to 'em on the phone, say, yeah, I can and I do, but there is a big difference. It's something that I saw on Instagram, you know, that font of all things, but it really resonated with me that there is a difference between catching up with friends and living your life with friends and those of you, this is an emotional one for me, and those of you who are far away from your old friends will probably feel this too is. You can catch up with those people. You can have a conversation with those people. You can arrange to see them for a weekend, but if that consists of getting up to speed on each other's lives, well, how's this? How's that going? How's your job? How's your kids? How's your partner? How's your this da da da? If it consists of doing that, it's not the same thing as just going to the park together 'cause you see each other all the time. Or like my, one of my besties from Birmingham, we used to just do jobs together. We'd go to like the, you know, the DIY shop, the hardware store for my Americans and get the stuff we needed for our house jobs and we'd help each other with our house jobs and things. Especially 'cause we were both single at that stage. It's not the same thing. If all your friends are far away, even if they're gorgeous and wonderful, I have the most gorgeous and wonderful friends you can possibly imagine. But it's not easy when they're far away, and it's easy to still feel lonely in your day-to-day life. And when everyone is so busy, it's hard to meet new people that become friends. We're gonna talk about strategies, some of which I'm trying and some of which I'm setting myself the goal to try over the summer. But that's what many, many reasons that I think that feeling lonely in academia is really, really, really common. So where do we start? We start where we always start, guys, we start with compassion. Because often one of the problems with loneliness is right, you haven't got people to talk to about it, okay? But often, you know, if you had people to talk to about it, you might not be feeling quite so lonely. And so it can become this slightly embarrassing thing, right? It comes, becomes this thing where you're like, oh my God, people are gonna think that I'm not a nice person or that nobody likes me, or any of these sorts of things. People are gonna feel sorry for me or think there's something wrong with me and everybody else has got friends, and why don't I, and you know it, it can be really hard to not criticize yourself for this and that's where we always start with compassion. It is completely understandable that you feel like this. Some of you might be thinking, I feel lonely, even though I'm surrounded by people all the time, and that is normal too. Loneliness is a completely separate construct from being alone, okay? You can be on your own and not feel lonely at all. You can be in the middle of a crowded place and feel immensely lonely. They're two completely separate things, so if you are like, I've got people around me and I still feel lonely, normal, okay, I'm here. I'm with you. All right? It's completely normal. And the reason that's so important is that if we are telling ourselves that the loneliness is either a personal failing in itself or the result of other personal failings, like being an annoying person or whatever, then it's really hard to snap out of it. It's really hard to take the steps I'm gonna talk about in a second, because you don't feel like you're somebody who people would want to be friends with. So compassion first, it is understandable that you feel lonely. It is kind of a part, not an inevitable part, but it is kind of a part of the industry that we are either studying in or working in, and more people feel lonely than you think. So what do we do about it? I have a few different tips for you. The first is about almost accepting where we're at and appreciating what we do have. That's not to say get over yourself. You're not as lonely as you think, but sometimes we don't recognize the bits we do have. So I have had the biggest flip in my circumstances, right? So when I was in Birmingham, I had, especially for the last like five, eight years I guess, where things got a lot more stable in terms of who I was friends with and all those sorts of things. There wasn't such a turnover. My friends were less based at work, there was less turnover, and so on for the last sort of seven or eight years. I had friends coming out of my ears. I had so many people that I could just live life with, have fun social things with , like my sort of bestie friends. And then I had my layer of kind of gorgeous acquaintances who I knew from my various different clubs and classes and things that I did. And so I had this huge swathe of social support, of friends. I did not feel lonely, but I did feel lonely 'cause I didn't have a partner and I wanted a partner. I wanted to be in a romantic relationship and I wasn't. So I'd still felt lonely even though I had all those things. Now, fast forward however many years, I'm now living in a village where I don't have that sort of friend network around me. I have my gorgeous husband and I have, I'm now close to where my parents live, where my sisters live, and things like that. And I often feel lonely because of not having those friendship groups, those acquaintances, those communities around me at the moment. A really, really important thing to do in a really important thing that I do is recognizing the togetherness that you do have. It's not saying we're not gonna go look for the other bits. We are gonna go look for the other bits. Just like back then I was dating. Now I'm gonna be, I'm on a mission to find new friends, but we can appreciate the bits that we do have, so that we love on them. We recognize where we are getting support, offer support to them, and remind ourselves of the network that we do have. Sometimes that might be your remote network too. So, if any of my old friends listen to this, be warned. I'm on a mission to be in better touch with you all. So it's whether it's a close network geographically, a far away network geographically, appreciating what you do have is a huge first step. The other part of it is recognizing and appreciating the alone time that you have without it having to make you feel lonely. So having time, I now, my life is so much less chaotic than it was in Birmingham because of all these coaching things that I've learned but I have so much more time. I have more time to just not feel like a hot mess all the time. And part of that is not seeing as many people and not feeling as busy, not trying to cram everything in quite so much. And so remembering to appreciate that stuff really helps as well. Some of the things I'm experiencing, not all of them, but some of them are the result of positive changes. They're kind of that flip side of a positive change. Now when it comes to actually expanding our friendship networks, building these relationships, I have a couple of different tips. The first is to remind yourself what you either love doing or what you used to love doing often, especially those of you who have allowed hobbies to get away from you in your PhDs and, and academic careers often you'll say, you know, what's your hobby? I don't know. Sleeping, don't do anything else. Too much work to do. Once I've dealt with the kids, dealt with, they dealt with that to do nothing left. But there will have been times in your life where you had things that you love doing. This is one where I've always been all this. I am like the serial hobby meister. I've always had a hundred thousand things that I enjoy doing and that I've tried to cram into my life. So remembering what those were, figuring out where you can find bite-sized bits of that. Now, remember, it's also worth thinking about the different levels of friends that you need. It is really useful to have one or two local besties so that you have people who you can confide in, who you can spend time with, sort of on the regular without having to make big arrangements and things like that. That's really useful, and they're not easy to find. That's what I've not found yet here. They're not easy to find, but there's also that level of just nice community. So when I was in Birmingham, I had my bestie besties, my people that came to my wedding and all that stuff. But I also had a whole layer of people who I adore who were colleagues that I knew less well from around campus, but who I bump into, have a chat with people that I paddle boarded with, people that I did circus with, people that I did CrossFit with for my shortlived, ruined by the pandemic CrossFit career. People that I did british military fitness with whatever it was, right? All my different hobbies, I had this like layer of people who I wouldn't arrange to spend the weekend with them. We weren't that level of friends, but I blooming adored them. They were great and they were people that I would see regularly that I would do fun things with. I would turn up, I'd go to my adult gymnastics class and we'd mess around, fall in the pits. It was all good. I miss those people. So think about what things you used to enjoy doing or that you currently enjoy doing and think about how could you reintroduce one of those things into your life. Now you might be saying, I don't have time, Vikki. I'm too busy. Everyone has time. Everyone has time. I know it can be complicated, especially if you've got children, especially if you don't have family close by. But even if it's one thing a month. Having something like that that you can do where you see people you like. Now we are not necessarily looking for besties here. We are just looking for people who we enjoy spending time with, where we are someone other than our PhD self or our academic self. I, for what it's worth, have signed up for a life drawing class in Cambridge, so I'm going to go and learn how to draw rudey nudey people cos why not? I used to enjoy doing art classes, so there we are. And right now, 'cause of my stupid broken ankle, I'm not in a position to do a lot of the active things that I'd planned this summer. So I'm going to do that instead. Happy days. What more can you want? The second thing, and I stole this callousy from, again, somebody on Instagram who I'm afraid I can't remember her name. I feel bad about it. I feel like it's also quite generic advice, but I found it really, really useful, which is if you wanna make friends as an adult, you have to go to the same places regularly and be open to having conversations. She calls it putting in the reps. You have to put in the reps. So I want you to think, where could you put in the reps? Now this might be going to a coffee shop at the same time each week. So every Friday morning you work two hours in a coffee shop instead of at your own desk, for example. Or it might be at the pickup or the drop off of your kids at school if you have that. So I, I don't have children that I take to school, but I help run a local or guide unit girl scouts from my North Americans. And so I'm starting to get to know some of the parents there and some of the other leaders, for example, things like that. Where can you put in the reps where you keep turning up and you keep having the bits of inane conversation that especially you introverts out there probably go, oh God, don't make me. But how can you put in those reps so that there's an increased possibility that at some point you might find somebody that you're like, oh, they're nice. And that's where we then have to manage our minds because our minds are gonna tell us there's no point. They're gonna tell us we don't have time. They're gonna tell us other people don't want to that. How do you translate that into being friends anyway? What do you do next? Da, da, da. You have to be willing to put in the reps, willing to stick your neck out slightly. Because that's when you know you have little tiny conversations. If it's someone that you're a bit like, okay, they seem quite nice, quite like them, da, da, da. You figure out what things you might have in common, you then suggest, you then tell people where you'll be. Now, this was a brilliant one. So instead of saying, do you want to go and do X with me? You tell people, I am going to X, come along if you're about. Completely different vibe. You are doing it anyway, so I'm gonna go, so one of my plans where my foot's a bit better, I wanna start open swimming. And I'm on a relatively new build estate and we have a, a ladies WhatsApp Chat. Who knew that existed. But anyway, somehow I'm on it and I've decided that when I'm well enough that I can go open water swimming, I'm gonna drop a message in there and say, I'm going open water swimming next Wednesday. This is the location, this is the time. Let me know if anyone wants to join me. We can either share lift or I can meet you there or whatever. I'm going regardless. Let me know. Because that way you are doing something cool. You might meet somebody when you are there and you are giving other people the opportunity to opt in to do this stuff with you. This all sounds like stuff that takes brain space. It all sounds like stuff that might be potentially quite awkward or difficult if you are quite introverted or quiet or whatever. But loneliness is awkward too. Loneliness takes brain space too. However busy you are, you deserve people around you. You deserve not to feel lonely. You deserve to find people that understand you, and it's okay to take a bit of time to do this even if you feel like you have a hundred thousand responsibilities right now. Now, one option I can offer all of you who are PhD students is my membership. So many of my members talk about how it's a wonderful sense of community. They are all over the world. They drop into their co-working sessions together. They hear each other talk in the coaching sessions, they chatter with each other in Slack. So if you haven't checked that out, yet, we open for new members on the 4th of August. Quarter three starts on the 11th of August. It's going to be amazing. So if you are feeling lonely in your journey and you want the sort of support that only comes from people who really proper get it because they are having it too, check on the membership. I hope I will see lots of you there. Thank you all for listening. I'm on on a mission over the summer to build new community and make more friends, and it's gonna be fun. I'm gonna do it doing lots of reps and lots of fun stuff, and I will keep you posted. Keep me posted on your journeys too. Thank you so much for listening everyone, and I will see you next week. Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach.com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time.
< If you put off having difficult conversations or get frazzled just thinking about it, then you need to bookmark this episode! I am going to give you my three step process for preparing for a difficult meeting. You’ll learn how to manage your own worries, strategize for success, and leave feeling proud of yourself. Links I refer to in this episode If you are preparing for a viva or oral defence, check out this episode for more specific advice. Transcript Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast, and this week we are thinking about difficult meetings. We've all had them right where you are, just dreading having to tell your supervisor you haven't done things that you said you were gonna do or waiting for your annual review meetings or whatever it might be, where you find out whether you've progressed enough to go into next year all the way through to meetings where you're just worried it's gonna be a bit uncomfortable. Right? They're a lots and lots of reasons that meetings can feel uncomfortable. You are worried about actual tangible outcomes from those meetings. Maybe you are worried about what might be said in those meetings and your emotional responses to it. You might be worried about other people's emotional responses to what's said. You may be worried it's embarrassing or awkward or upsetting or a whole load of different things. And all of those worries are completely legitimate. We've all been in meetings where it has been super uncomfortable and we've not enjoyed that situation. So it's not a big surprise that when we are looking ahead to a meeting that we anticipate might be difficult, we're sort of not filled with joy. The trouble is what we often end up doing is rehearsing all the ways it could go badly. So we then end up having a horrible time between now and then, and often end up not being as prepared as we could be 'cause often when we experience uncomfortable emotions, we procrastinate. Right? Or we end up super over prepared so that we've come up with a sort of defense against absolutely anything that they could possibly say. And we go in there with that kind of mindset, or I've gotta stand my ground, I've gotta convince them, I've gotta do whatever. And that doesn't make the meetings go well either. So often these kind of self-protective mechanisms that we understandably do, end up making the meeting more uncomfortable or more confrontational than it needs to be, and certainly not as calm and helpful as it could be. So in today's episode, we are gonna think about what you can do instead. What it is that we tell ourselves that make these things feel so complicated and how we can focus on different things in order to make these meetings feel less uncomfortable or be better able to tolerate the uncomfortableness in the run up to and in the meeting itself so that we can achieve our goals and more move on to more interesting and exciting stuff. Now this topic today is actually a taste of some of the stuff that I'm going to be teaching and coaching on in quarter three of the membership this year. So if you're listening to this in real time, you still have enough time to get on the waiting list and to join before we begin on the 11th of August, we open for people to actually like pay and stuff from the 4th of August. So if you enjoy today's episode and you want more advice about managing the relationships with your supervisor, how we can make that work better, get the things that you need, and managing your relations beyond that, whether that's building community, which we're gonna talk a bit about next week or whether it's networking and collaborating across different universities and disciplines, if you need support with all that stuff, make sure you're checking out the membership. So go to PhD Life Coach.com, click on the membership button that's at the top, tell you all about it. And depending on when you're listening to this, you can either jump on the wait list in which cage, you'll get some freebies or you can just join if you're listening in the first week in August. If you are listening to this, I know some people find my podcast and then kind of binge all the past episodes. If you are listening to this going, oh no, it's not August anymore, I missed it. You can join every quarter. So. Four times a year, we have options and each quarter has a different focus but if you particularly wanted this focus on building relationships and all that sort of stuff, it's okay. 'cause when you join, you have access to all the past content as well. So never fear, the PhD Life coach membership is here for you regardless. So let's think about preparing for these difficult meetings, and I wanna divide this into three sections, really. I wanna think about really understanding what we're telling ourselves about this meeting, because often that's where this all begins, okay? This sort of assumptions that we are making. We are gonna think about how we plan our strategy. For in the meeting, and I've got a bunch of different things I want to talk with you about there. And then finally, we are gonna think about how we plan for after the meeting, and that's one that we almost never do, but I'll explain to you why it's so important. So let's start with the assumptions. I want you all to think about a difficult meeting that you've got coming up. Potentially something where you're just, it might even just be your next supervisory meeting. Might be something kind of bigger scale than that. Try and pick something that feels like it might be awkward in the future. And I want you to think, in fact, you grab a piece of paper and start listing all the thoughts you have about that meeting, why you think it might be difficult. What are you really worrying about? And as you do that, I want you to really ask yourself, what am I assuming here? What am I assuming about what's gonna happen in that meeting? What am I assuming about what they will say? What am I assuming about what we will say? What are you assuming about what they will think? 'cause sometimes that's just as bad as the things they say, right? Even worse, 'cause we don't necessarily know what they're thinking. What will they, what Are we worried that we are going to think? Okay, try and brain dump as much of that as you can. And whenever you think you've run out thing, write it in actual sentences. As always, when we do our reflections, write it in actual sentences. Let it all fly out of your brain. And whenever you think, oh, I think that's everything. I want you to ask yourself, But what else? What are the assumptions am I making? What am I making this mean? We wanna get out as much as we possibly can. When we let thoughts spin around in our heads, they just magnify inside. And those of you who have been with me for a while will know that one of the first steps of self-coaching is to be able to get thoughts out of your head so that you can see them, so that you can actually look at them in a slightly more rational way than when they were just sort of banging around inside your head. So if you need to pause and go do it, go do it. But make sure you come back to the podcast. And what we're gonna do then is we're gonna look at these thoughts. And you are probably gonna see a whole bunch of drama there, which is completely understandable, right? We always have these full on dramas in our heads. That's fine. There's no big deal there. But we get to recognize them for what we are, and we're gonna ask ourselves, the three questions that I always get my clients and my members to ask themselves about these sorts of thoughts is, are they true? What else is true? And what if it's true? And that's okay. I might even add a fourth one. I do sometimes also ask, do they help? Okay, so these thoughts you're telling yourself. You're telling yourself that your supervisor's gonna think you're an idiot. They're gonna hate you, they're gonna be disappointed that they're probably gonna tell you that they should never have recruited you. All these sorts of things. Is it true? Is it actually, how do you know? How can you describe it in a way that might actually be true? Because for some of these, it might be right, your supervisor might be disappointed about something, that might be true. Perhaps. We'll have to think about how we know that, but it might be, are they gonna tell you they should never have recruited you? Probably and hopefully not. Okay. So we get to figure out which ones do we think are true and whether they're helpful or not. Because sometimes, even if they are true, it doesn't necessarily mean they're helpful. Okay. Telling ourselves, I don't think my supervisor likes me. It's possible. That's true. Okay. Supervisors are human beings. It's possible that, I mean, I think it's unlikely, but it's possible. But is it helpful to keep telling yourself that they don't like you? Does it help you show up in the way you wanna show up? Almost certainly not, Even if it is true. Okay, then we're gonna ask ourselves what else is true? Because often when we're filling our brain full of the drama of what might happen, we are not filling our brain with the other things. It might go fine. They might be keen to help. Uh, they are invested in your progress. There's another thought that's probably true and that would probably help more. Um, I can get through a difficult situation. That might be a thought that is an alternative that feels true, but helps more than the others. Okay? Be careful as usual. We're not aiming for manifestation thoughts, we're not aiming for. I can handle any situation at all. I don't feel emotions. We're not here for that. This could be awkward. We just need to tell ourselves that we're capable of doing awkward things. And then the third one as usual, is what if it's true? And that's okay. It might be true that your supervisor's gonna be disappointed. It might be true that you'll have to completely rewrite this draft or whatever. In what ways is that okay? And by, okay, I don't mean up not upsetting. I don't mean not a bit of a pain. I mean, how will we be okay if that's true? And many, many of the things we tell ourselves, you know, it will be really embarrassing. It's like, yeah, it might be. Maybe it'll be really embarrassing. But how could we be okay anyway? So we are sort of planning just so that we are not going into this with this enormous amount of drama because when we have this enormous amount of drama feels horrible, changes the way we prepare, changes the way that we act in the meeting and after the meeting. So it is not always easy, especially with your own stuff, right? It's always easier to see how somebody else is being a bit dramatic, but you can kind of peer into those thoughts, pick them apart a bit bit and go, you know what? These ones are probably true, but I can deal with it. These ones I need to stop telling myself 'cause they're probably not true. These ones I don't tell myself very often, but actually probably are true and help. So we get to sort of tease it all apart. The next step, step two is that we're gonna start to strategize for this meeting. And no one really teaches you how to do this. And in fact, some elements of this I did quite a automatically. So the sort of pragmatic, what am I gonna say? What solutions am I gonna bring? That kind of stuff. I generally did that. Okay. I didn't find that stuff more difficult. But we're also gonna think about how we want to show up as a person. And this one I definitely did not do. I remember my very good friend, Jenn Cumming, who friend of the podcast, um, who. Sports psychology professor, absolutely genius. One of my, you know, really, really close friends and I remember when we were junior academics together, her saying to me that before she goes into a meeting or whatever, she thinks about the other person and thinks about what they were from that meeting and thinks about how best to present her ideas in order to make them convincing to them. And how does she wanna come across it? I dunno, just being like. Oh my God, this is, gee, do people do this? Because I was very much a steam in there and be as persuasive as I humanly knew how and not a lot else. The idea of I'm gonna hold back so that they think it's their idea, or I'm going to give them space to raise their concerns rather than me just give them all my opinions. Absolutely like completely unknown to me. So if you're like, oh, I don't think about this. Don't worry, I didn't either, but I've learned and it's really good. It really, really helps. So what are we going to think about? Well, the first thing we are gonna think about is when we want to have this meeting, if it's not already booked, because often what I see more than anything is that people put off having difficult meetings. They sort of feel like, think, oh, things might resolve themselves. It might not be an issue. Maybe they'll change. Maybe they'll stop. Maybe it'll blow over all those things. My first tip is to err on the side of early action. If you've got an awkward conversation. It is not likely to get less awkward. Now it's slightly different, i'm not talking about, you know, if somebody's just left the room in a huff, you don't have to go steaming in. Give them time to chill out. Right? But if you are sort of thinking, Ooh, I've gotta tell my supervisor I haven't done this piece of work, or I need to tell my supervisor, I don't understand that, or I need to get feedback on this piece of work, but I'm worried they're gonna tell me it's rubbish, or any of those things, I want you to err on the side of early action. Because usually what we are doing is we are simply procrastinating experiencing those uncomfortable emotions, and most times it will get resolved more quickly and more effectively if we can get on it sooner. So err on the side of early action. The second tip I have here, and this is gonna sound like a funny one as usual, but my second tip is focus on managing your own emotions, not other people's. And by managing emotions, I don't mean not having any, you know, I've cried in meetings, I've got cross in meetings, I've got frustrated in me, you know? We don't have to not have emotions. I don't mean that, but what I mean is often our obsession is not disappointing the supervisor, not frustrating the supervisor, not making the supervisor cross, not making the supervisor, all these different things, right? We are trying to manage their emotions about the stuff that we want to talk about, and the problem is other people's emotions are really, really hard to manage. You can be considerate, right? I'm not saying don't be considerate, but when we're trying to tiptoe around other people's emotions, we often end up making it worse. Yeah. If we end up trying not to disappoint our supervisor, we end up sometimes not being honest and authentic about the problems that we're having, which means they can't help us, which means we get further behind, which ultimately could be potentially more disappointing. I am not saying just steam in there and say whatever you want, but your supervisors, the people you're having difficult meetings with are adults. Okay? They are adults who are more or less able to regulate their own emotions. Some of 'em may be better at it than others, but it is certainly their responsibility to regulate their own emotions, and it is not your job to prevent your supervisor ever being disappointed or ever being cross or ever being upset. So what do we do instead? What we do instead is thinking about who do we want to show up as? How do we want to come across in this meeting? Now, again, this doesn't mean coming across as perfect. I would really, really encourage you that vulnerable can be a really useful way to show up in a meeting and a really sort of effective and healthy way to show up in a meeting where you are able to say, I've actually found this bit really difficult. Now we don't have to go in there with all our drama saying, oh, and I'm so scared this, and please reassure me, but we can go in there saying, I've found this bit really hard and this is what I want the support with. So think about how do you wanna come across in this meeting? Do you wanna come across as clear? Do you wanna come across as calm? Do you wanna come across as thoughtful? What might it be? What we get to think about is how do we present that? Now I just really wanna reiterate this point about emotions 'cause it can get misunderstood and I have a strategy as well. So often people think that if they get emotional in a meeting, then that's the worst thing in the world. And to be honest, people tend to think that crying in a meeting is the worst of the worst because our gorgeously, patriarchal society has somehow convinced ourselves that crying and sadness are bad emotions where anger and. Things like that, frustration are somehow more socially acceptable to express. I don't know how this has happened, but anyway. That's beside the point. I am not saying don't express emotions here at all. What I am suggesting though, is that you a focus on how you want to come across, but b, also don't use your emotions as a way to demonstrate how serious a problem is. I have experienced many, many times from both staff and students to be honest people coming to me and almost having geared themselves up to emotionally tell me how awful this is, how emotionally difficult this has been for them, dah, dah, dah. And that's fine. Sometimes you may feel you want that release, but I want you to think very carefully. And I actually talked to a client about this recently. In fact, it was the winner of one of my, the giveaways that I did to celebrate a hundred thousand downloads of this podcast. I talked to them about it and if you go to a meeting intending to share all of your emotions in order to get them to see how bad this is, for example, I want you to think carefully what you want from that meeting, because if you present emotions as the problem, the problem is I'm overwhelmed. The problem is I'm stressed. The problem is I'm tired. You'll get likely solutions to those emotions. You are likely to get reassurance. You are likely to get kind of care and attention. If that's what you want. If that is what you're actually looking for, happy days, let's go. But if what you actually want is less work or a longer deadline or less pressure or those sorts of things, then actually it can be really useful to take the logistics rather than the emotion. This doesn't mean not telling them you're stressed. Okay, and what this means is really reminding them that your anxiety, worry, stress, disappointment, all those things, those are your emotions and they're things that you can look after. I can care for myself while I'm stressed and upset and things like that. That's fine. You don't need to look after me. I can look after myself. But the reason this is so pronounced is because I don't have time for X, Y, Z because these things are filling my time. That this thing ended up taking longer than intended, and therefore that other thing has been impacted. Okay. Notice if you're presenting it in that way, you're saying, this is having an emotional impact on me, but I don't need you to reassure me for that. I can look after myself. The bit I need help with is the logistics of how there can be less pressure or less work, or more time or more resource, or whatever it might be in the future. So think very carefully about what you want for the meeting, and think very carefully about how you want to present to give yourself the best opportunity of doing that. Now part of that is understanding your supervisor, right? What I want you to really do is look for win-wins, okay? I want you to really look for the ways that actually, things that would help you would probably help them too, because often we are pretty entangled in these meetings, right? Whether they're your examiners or whether they're your supervisors, advisors, whoever, we are pretty entangled. Often what's good for us is good for them too. So yeah, definitely think about what are they looking to get from this meeting? What are their priorities? What would make this a useful meeting for them? But you don't have to manage their emotions. You get to manage your own emotions, come across in a way that you think is authentic, in a way that you think is appropriate and professional in the way that you want to bring things forward and they get to respond to that. Another part of the strategy is often we get told bring solutions, not problems. And in many situations, that's great advice. So part of your strategy can be being able to say, if I was solely in charge, could make decisions. These are the steps I would take, these are the things I would do. I would drop that, I would postpone that. I would do this first, for example. Okay, so going with solutions demonstrates that you've thought it through, that you're not just looking for them to fix everything for you. It gives you the opportunity to put across the stuff that you think would best suit you, so you can kind of prioritize the things that you think would be useful rather than just what they come up with. And it just gives them the impression that you've planned for this meeting. Right. So when we're thinking about how you come across, one of the things I'm sure all of us want to come across at is prepared. And coming with solutions rather than problems is one of the ways that you can do that. However, and again, this came up in the coaching session that I did recently. The one thing I want you to be cautious of is where the problem is something that is way beyond your pay grade and seniority. Okay. So for me, for PhD students coming to me with a, I'm behind on my recruitment and my data collection problem, I absolutely want them to come to me with potential solutions. This is their project. They're gonna be implementing the solutions. I'll brainstorm with them. I'll help come up with ideas, I'll make suggestions if I've got experience that will help. But I want them to come with solutions because this is their project. I want 'em to at least thought about it. However, if they come to me and tell me that the problem is that someone in the lab has been behaving inappropriately to them or that they've been having bullying emails from a member of staff, or that a, there's not enough funding to fix the piece of kit that they need, you don't need to come with solutions for that. You need to come with observations and implications. So let me know what's happening, let me know what effect it's having. But the solutions to those things are my problem. They're the academics problem, and often they're the people above me's problem, right? So when it's stuff about staffing, when it's stuff about how you're being treated by people, when it's stuff about resources. Please don't think that you have to bring a solution for those things. Your only job in those situations is to raise awareness of the people who can do something about it. Okay, so we are taking early action. We are focusing on managing our own emotions. We're thinking about how we wanna show up at the meeting. We are bringing solutions as well as problems, as long as the problems are things that are kind of within our pay grade, as it were. And we are gonna look for win-wins. We're gonna look for ways that this will be helpful for both parties. Those are my big tips for preparing for the meeting itself. Now, the third thing I mentioned was one that I said almost everybody doesn't do. It just never gets talked about, and this is planning for what you are gonna say to yourself after the meeting. Now those of you who have listened to my episode about preparing for your viva will have heard me talk about this, but it is true across any meeting, any difficult situation. You can apply it to doing presentations, doing conference talks, anything like that. Anything where essentially you are kind of building yourself up to something you're a bit worried about. One of the worst things that make these situations feel super stressful is knowing that if it goes badly, if the person doesn't react the way we want them to, or if we say something, we regret that we are gonna rehearse that for the rest of our lives. Right? We've all done it. Okay. We've all got stories in our head. Where we're absolutely mortified by something that we did or something that we said or whatever, and we go over and over them and use it as evidence that we are intrinsically useless, right? We don't have to do this. We don't have to do it. And what you can do when you are preparing for a meeting in advance of it actually happening is you can decide here and now that however that meeting goes, you will be kind to yourself afterwards. Now, does that mean we don't reflect on it and learn a bit? No, obviously not. We can still reflect on it. We can still decide, ah, it might have been better to do this than that. That's fine. But we are gonna do that in a kind, supportive, loving way. Not a, oh my word, you idiot. I can't believe you said that kind of a way. Right. We can decide that yes, we'll be reflective, but we are gonna be kind, we're gonna be supportive. And importantly, this is not only if you do your best, I want you, and this, any of you who still have exams to do or any of those sorts of things, I want you to remember this. Most people reassure you with, oh, well as long as you did your best, then it's okay. No, we are not gonna reassure ourselves with that because sometimes you won't have done your best. Or at least you won't have done what you think your best is. You did what you were capable of in the moment, but you may not be able to tell yourself that it was your best. And I want you to be kind to yourself even if you haven't done your best, even if it wasn't your finest hour, okay? Even if you did lose it and say something you regret or whatever, I still want you to be kind to yourself, and that is important for so many reasons. It's important 'cause it makes it easy to do things in the future. If you know that you are not gonna beat yourself up for messing things up. You can try literally anything. Yeah, if you know you're gonna be kind to yourself, if you do the worst karaoke ever, you can go do a karaoke, happy days. You can try these scary things because you know you'll be nice to yourself afterwards. You know that your self worth doesn't have to be contingent on how it goes, so it makes it unbelievably easier to be brave. It also makes that post meeting period much, much nicer, 'cause you're not gonna spend it beating yourself up. Now will those thoughts still come up? Probably, but. We know that we are not gonna feed them, we're not gonna reinforce them. And we've got other thoughts to divert ourselves to like it went how it went, and I can resolve what I need to resolve, for example. Then we can actually spend much less time beating ourselves up. And then the third reason that's so useful is it makes it so much easier to fix things. If you did screw something up. So, especially people who've got a ADHD got autism, things that mean that maybe sometimes in the moment you don't react the way that you ideally would react. Okay. The way that you want to, it's not from your best self. Okay? Sometimes we get a bit dramatic, a bit reactive, a bit rejection sensitive, whatever it might be. Now, if we are super kind to ourselves afterwards, not saying that that behavior was okay and that we're just gonna do it willy-nilly and people can put up with this, but if we don't tell ourselves that it makes us a terrible person, it is enormously easier to go back the next day and go, yeah, I got a bit worked up there, didn't I? Really sorry, that's not how I want to show up. I hope you understand. How can we move forward, makes it so much easier. Whereas if you are at home telling yourself that you are a terrible person, that everybody hates you forever, so much harder to go and fix it afterwards. To go and have those conversations. To go and be vulnerable. To be vulnerable, you do have to have a sense of psychological safety that actually I've made a mistake. I'm gonna resolve my mistake to the best of my ability, but I don't hate myself for my mistake. So those are your three big clusters of tasks. Understand where all this worry is coming from, what assumptions are you making, what thoughts are you having, and let's whittle it down to stuff that is true and is helpful. Then we're gonna strategize for the meeting. We're gonna plan how we can what we want outta the meeting, come across the way we want to and look after ourselves in the process. And then we are gonna plan for how we're gonna look after ourselves afterwards. That can be pragmatic too. It's not just about what you say to yourself. It can be things like, if you know you are having a difficult meeting, do not expect yourself to come straight out of it and then get on with writing your discussion section. Give yourself some time for the come down. If you are somebody who just needs to sort of get it outta your system. Go to the gym, go for a walk. Plan to meet a friend. Have somebody pick you up so you don't have to drive home. So you've got somebody that you can moan to. Think about how you can have something afterwards that will help you process the emotions that you've experienced and look after yourself and make it pleasant. Those are my three tips planning for a difficult meeting. If you are not already on my newsletter, get yourself on my newsletter. In fact, if you're not on my wait list yet, why not jump on the wait list for the membership if you're not, message me, find me. I'm on Instagram, I you can respond to my newsletter, all that stuff. Lemme know what it is that's preventing you from wanting to join the membership because I think, and I am biased, but I think that all PhD students should be in my membership. So if you don't think it's for you, just lemme know why. Okay? It's a deal. And then I might try and persuade you why I think it actually is, but it would also just be super useful feedback for me too. Thank you all so much for listening, I hope you found that useful and I will see you next week. Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach.com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time.
< Today I’m coaching Becci who is writing her final thesis discussion chapter. She told me “I feel like I don't really know what I'm doing and I'm just flailing around in the dark spewing out thousands of words and wondering what my point even is. Up to now, I've found it quite easy to understand what I need to do and what chapters need to look like but this part just feels like a huge and important amorphous blob.” Hear how we worked through these thoughts and came to a plan (and listen to the end of the episode to hear where Becci is now!!) Links I refer to in this episode If you want to hear other people getting coached, sign up here to get a full searchable archive of the podcast - you can filter by “coaching” and find all the episodes! Transcript Vikki: Before this episode starts, I've just got a quick update for you if you're listening to this live. The PhD Life Coach membership is gonna open in three weeks time, which is the 4th of August. That is when we are gonna start taking new members. If you're not on the wait list already, make sure you go there, check it out. Vikki: And join today's episode is a coaching session where I work with a listener, Becky, who is struggling to get her writing done. You'll hear exactly what it's like to be coached by me. This is what we do week, could week out during the membership program. So make sure you check that out and keep listening right to the very end. Vikki: 'cause I also have a little update from Becky at the end of the episode. Thanks for listening. Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast, and this week we have another coaching session. Now, by the time this goes out, there will have been a couple of others in the last sort of six, eight weeks. It's a little bit of a series at the moment. These are all listeners who responded to a bit of a shout out. I did asking for people who had interesting topics that they would like coaching on, and Becci was one of the very kind students who responded. So thank you very much, Becci, for agreeing to come on. Becci: Oh, you're very welcome. Happy to be here. Vikki: So Becci, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you feel like you want some coaching on. Becci: Yeah, so I come from a counseling and psychotherapy background, but also really into the outdoors. So that's what my PhD is all been about. How we can use the outdoors to promote resilience in young women. I'm up to the point where I'm three years in, well, nearly three years in. I have to be finished by October and I'm writing my discussion at the moment, but I'm finding that really challenging. The rest of the time i've kind of felt like a way to write things and there's a structure there already that I can kind of follow and just tweak and think about. But with the discussion, it feels like it's just this blob. Becci: Like it's just bringing everything together and it's like, I have absolutely no clue really what that's supposed to look like. I know there's probably no, like, it's supposed to look like this, but it just feels like a big blob of blah. And it's not that I've got nothing to say, it's just that it's just a mess. So I feel like some coaching would be really valuable for me to get a handle on how to even start looking at this mess and making some sense of it. Vikki: Yeah, for sure. And it's such a common thing, right? That we kind of at the beginning Okay. Do a lit review. Okay. I'm not quite sure what that is, but I can figure that out and stuff. But there is something kind of big and I guess a bit amorphous about, about a discussion. So yeah. I'm sure this is gonna be super useful for so many people. So gimme a little bit more background, the rest of the thesis exists. Is that right? Becci: Yeah, yeah. Vikki: So how long has the discussion been your focus for? Becci: Oh, uh, good question. Probably about six weeks. Vikki: Okay. Cool. So you've been working on it for about six weeks, and if I came and peered over your shoulder now, what would I see on your computer? What sort of exists? Becci: About 20,000 words where I've just like spewed out any old stuff that comes to mind that might be somewhat relevant. Vikki: Okay. So all discussion, but just kind of stream of consciousness. Becci: Yeah. Yeah. And I read, I read through some of it yesterday and was like even, I have no idea what the hell it was on about then, but cool. Vikki: So real kind of brain dump stuff. Becci: Yeah. Vikki: Okay. And was that sort of done like consistently over the last six weeks, or have you sort of had fits and starts? Tell me more about how this six weeks has been for you. Becci: Um, definitely fits and starts. So there's been like some days where I feel like, oh, it's clicked, and I'll write loads of stuff. And then a lot of other times where like I'll write a few words and then be like, I don't know what my point is, and then I go down a rabbit hole of like either looking at other people's discussions in their thesis to try and understand like what that's supposed to look like or just like looking at random research that I think might be vaguely applicable and then being like, oh, I don't even remember why I was looking at this in the first place. So it has been very up and down. Yeah. Um, yeah. Vikki: A lot of starting and then having some thoughts about it. Becci: Yeah. Vikki: And going off in different directions then from there, Becci: yeah. Yeah. And kind of looking and thinking, oh, I think I understand now what I'm supposed to write, and then start to write stuff and then reading it back and going, no, that's not, that doesn't seem right, but we'll just leave it there for now, which I think might be part of the problem perhaps, is that I just leave everything in at the moment. Vikki: Okay. On those days where you think, Ooh, I think I know what I'm meant to be doing now. Mm-hmm. What do you think you're meant to be doing? Becci: Good question. Um, I don't know. It is, I think I get that thought when its like I've written something and they go, yes, that sort of feels right, but I can't quite put my finger on why that feels right. Okay. Which might be why I can't do that consistently. 'cause I don't understand why it is that that feels right in the first place. Vikki: How did it go? So I said at the beginning that often people sort of more intuitively understand what a lit review is and then find the discussion difficult. But let's take you back to that when you wrote your introduction chapter. How did you decide what needed to go in there? Becci: When I was writing my intro, I decided what was gonna go in there because I read a lot. So I would think about like a specific topic that was related to my overall topic or question. I'd read lots and lots of that, and then I'd make lots of notes about what it was I'd read and what felt like it stood out enough that I should write something about that. Becci: And I just wrote, I wrote consistently, but I did like a block of reading, then some writing, then a block of reading, then some writing. I just picked out like the main concepts really. So I found that quite straightforward to do. Vikki: And how did you decide what order to present that in and how to structure it and stuff? Becci: I think I went with like what feels like the most important concept that I need to talk about first. So, because mine is a lot about resilience. That was like, I need to talk about that first, because that's like what underpins all of this. And then I thought, okay, so what's the next most important thing? Okay, so outdoor adventure activities, so now I need to write about that. So I think I just sort of went down what are the most important things? And then also thinking about like, what was my rationale for actually choosing to research that topic in the way that I was researching it. Vikki: Okay. So you had some notion of what needed to be in an introduction. Becci: Yeah. Vikki: And you made some decisions about what order to present in. Because you know, as with anything, there's no right way you chose that. I'll start with this central concept and then do that concept. You could have done that in a different order and it would've been fine too, but you made some decisions about that kind of makes sense. And then once you had a, like a first draft say of your intro, did it mostly stay like that? Did you do dramatic rewrites? Did you restructure? Take me through how that process was. Becci: Yeah. I didn't do any like dramatic rewrites. Um, although I did put in like an extra section recently because it just helped to structure my other chapters if like there was certain information that was in the Vikki: Yeah. Perfect. Becci: Yeah. So that was like one of the bigger changes. And then it has been sort of restructured because when I read through it more recently, I was like the way that I presented certain theories didn't run sort of chronologically, so then it didn't really make sense. They sort of jumped around. So I moved those about, but I didn't do any like major, oh, I really need to rewrite that section. 'cause it's totally like gobbledy gook Vikki: so you'd sort of made some decision, I wanna talk about this stuff and then that stuff. But then within the, this stuff, the stuff about resilience, when you then edited it, you thought actually there's a, people on YouTube can see me gesturing wildly with my hands. But you can see, you sort of like, oh, actually it would make sense to talk about this resilience theory before I talk about that one. So move those around. Okay. Tell me how the discussion feels different to that. Becci: It feels less straightforward. It feels like there aren't specific concepts that I definitely need to discuss. Even though that is, is probably not true, but that's what it feels like. It's like it, it's much less specific in that I can't just go Right. Well it is this, this is really important to my research, this concept. This is really important to my research. Write about those. Um, and also, Vikki: I mean, can't you? Becci: Probably, but I think that's part of my issue maybe, is like trying to pick out what those important concepts are. Because I feel like I'm getting lost in the fact that there's lots of them. Vikki: Why does it feel like there's more concepts in the discussion than in the introduction? Becci: Um, because throughout my thesis have been like building up theory, and now these theories feel very complex. And have lots of different elements to them. And so then it feels like I have to unpick all of those, but that feels like an impossible task to do in a limited amount of words and time. So it feels like what I'm trying to do is like pick out the key concepts, but then I'm like, but then I'm missing all this other stuff, which is also really relevant. Why isn't that as important as this thing over here? Then I like perhaps trying to include absolutely everything, and then there's things outside of my theories as well that I'm like, oh, I should be talking about that. It feels like, because it feels like that's a big important part of it, but I, there's no space for that. Vikki: So are you trying to combine, you say you are developing theories and stuff. Are you trying to combine those theories into some sort of unifying framework or are they distinct from each other, sort of covering different elements of this? Becci: Uh, a bit of both. So I've got like 13 theories that are like very specific. And then I'm hoping to combine all of those into one sort of three framework. There's a bit more usable really for practitioners. But all those individual theories are also important. Vikki: Have you developed that framework yet? Becci: I've developed a version of that keeps changing every five minutes based on whatever idea I've had about what my discussions should look like that day. Vikki: And is your discussion where you're presenting your unified framework? Becci: Yeah. Vikki: Okay. So. What makes the unified framework keep moving? Becci: My ideas about how much I should include and what is useful to include, and then when I think I've got a handle on that, I then think about the type of methodology I'm using and that I should be focusing on this other thing that's not actually in there anymore because I thought it wasn't maybe that useful for people. So it kind of moves around depending on what perspective I'm looking at it from, I guess. Vikki: Mm-hmm. Okay. So the reason just for everyone listening, the reason I'm kind of, burrowing in on this is I think you've actually got two different tasks here. I think you've got the task of deciding your unified framework. Becci: Yeah. Vikki: And you've got the task of writing your discussion. And I think part of the problem is you're trying to do them both at once. Becci: Yeah. Vikki: And I don't think that's necessarily a problem in the sense of, you know, some of the drafting of the discussion might help shape your thoughts about the framework. But at some point the framework needs to be solidified so that you can finish the discussion. Becci: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense actually. And I do wonder whether, part of the problem that I have with this at the minute is that it feels like a big, like a massive part of my thesis and that I don't want to just. If I settle on an idea and go, yes, that's, that's what I'm using, then I want that to be like, right, for want of a better word. I know there'll be no right or wrong, really, but I want that. I like, I want to be really happy with that and certain that like that's how I want it to be. And I think maybe because it feels so important and so big, it's like I can't settle on it because. Maybe looking for like this perfection that isn't ever going to materialize. Vikki: Because what would a right and perfect theory look like? How would you know it's right and perfect? Becci: Um, I dunno, to be honest, and I, I think, yeah, well, I, I am aware that that doesn't really exist. Um. So it's probably a bit, um, pointless sort of trying to look for that. I guess what I'm hoping for I think is like just a feeling of, 'cause I'm quite intuitive about stuff and I can kind of go, yeah, that's, that feels right. And I just feel like I don't have that with this at all. I just constantly going, no, it can't be yet done. Vikki: What do you think makes it hard to declare it done? Becci: Um, maybe like a fear of getting it wrong and it not just not being what I want it to be. Vikki: Yeah. And why would that be bad? Becci: Uh, because at the end of the day, I have to defend it. And if in like a few months time, I'm like, yeah, no, I don't think that's actually right anymore. Then I guess I'm maybe worried about having to defend something that I no longer believe to be true. Vikki: I mean, is that what you would do in the Viva? Becci: Uh, that's what I feel like I had to do. Whether I would actually do that, I'm not really sure. Um, 'cause I haven't really thought about what I would do if that happened. I think, 'cause I've been so focused on not letting that happen. Vikki: and what does defending it mean to you? Becci: Oh, um, what does defending it mean to me? Like, being able to say why I think that is the case and the evidence that I've got to back that up. Yeah. Vikki: The only thing we have to tweak there slightly is just the tense. So defending this in your Viva is explaining why you did it the way you did it. That has no resemblance to whether you still think that is the best way to do it. Becci: Yeah. Vikki: This is why I chose to do it the way it's presented in front of you. And then to some extent you get to see how the conversation goes. Right? Because if they start saying, well actually, why didn't you combine those ones together and have that as a separate element? And at that point you can go, you know what? I've been thinking the same thing since I wrote it. I actually think it might make more sense. That is something I'd love to hear more what you're thinking, you know, and have a conversation about that. Vikki: Because you can make changes after your viva, right? That's, yeah. That's how this stuff works. You get corrections. Now, I'm not saying you necessarily like launch into, by the way, I think everything I wrote is wrong. I've changed my mind. But you can still explain why you did it the way you did it. Yeah. Wait and see what they say. Becci: Yeah, I hadn't really thought about it like that. Yeah, because I guess I, I, ideas change all the time, don't they? And as long as you can explain why you did what you did at the point that they've read it at. Vikki: Yeah. Becci: Then I guess, yeah, that's maybe what the discussion bit is about and yeah, I never really, I think, 'cause I, I acknowledge that I'm gonna have corrections. 'Cause like I hear that pretty much everybody has corrections, so that's like, yeah, there's, things are gonna change in it, but I think i've very much been thinking along the lines of, well, it has to be as close to perfect as I can get it by the time I submit it. Vikki: Um, it has to be defensible. Becci: Yeah. And then, yeah, not really thinking that actually it did change my mind about something and that then came out in the viva, then I can change it and that would be fine. Vikki: So I actually think, I think this is really interesting one, because for a lot of people, their kind of main propositions, I guess, are made in the results chapters, right? And they share their findings in the results chapters, and then in the discussion chapter, they're really kind of contextualizing that to other literature, explaining what it means and things like that. Vikki: Whereas actually there's an element to which for you, your discussion is a little bit resulty in the sense that you are presenting this framework. Becci: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Vikki: And I think that does make it a slightly different thing. And I think part of the issue here is I think you're not distinguishing that that's slightly different than your average, you know, if you've done a big qualitative study. Here's all my themes and whatever. Here's this da, da, da. And then you, you're not presenting a new framework. You're just talking about what this means for outdoor education in the future or whatever. Yeah. Then it's a little different. So I have a question that might help clarify some of this stuff. Vikki: So once you've presented this framework in your discussion, what would be the next steps for either you as a researcher or for people who've read your work in the future, who want to build on your work in the future, to take that framework and do things with it? What would be the next things that people might want to do with a theoretical framework? Becci: Um, applying it to interventions. Which I sort of did in one of my other, well, I did do in one of my other chapters, before I like refined the theories. But yeah. So there'd be, it would be, yeah, applying that to interventions, and perhaps on a, a larger scale than what I've already done within my thesis. Vikki: Um, so they'd be testing it essentially. Becci: Yeah. Yeah. Vikki: I think that is also really important because the next steps of changing a framework or adopting a framework, depending on what happens, is to test it in some sort of intervention way or in some other way, and then to decide from there whether it stands up to that next test or whether it needs modifying or whatever. Becci: Yeah. Yeah. Vikki: Is that fair? Becci: Yeah. Yeah, that's absolutely fair. Yeah. It also makes me think of something that I've not actually considered is that because I've taken a realist approach, a like from a realist perspective, no theory is ever like perfect there. It is gonna be fallible and it constantly should be being revised. So kind of missing the point by trying to do something that's like a perfect theory 'cause that doesn't exist and isn't supposed to. Vikki: Hmm. How does that feel? Noticing that? Becci: Uh, kind of freeing 'cause it's like, I do what I can do at this point with the knowledge that I've got now and actually the point is that it would be yeah, tested and refined further anyway. Or tested and adopted depending on what happened. So yeah, it feels, yeah, freeing, I think. Vikki: And that means you could potentially change things as part of your corrections if it comes up in the viva or the defense as it's known elsewhere in the world , but it also means that you've got the option to write this up as a moment in time, essentially, that at this point, without more data, without this being used in a different context or tested in some other way, here's a pretty good representation of what I think this theory is. Becci: Yeah. Yeah. That's actually really helpful. Um, 'cause it's just thinking about it in that slightly different way, isn't it? This is what I think right now, but yeah, there's limitations to that. I had already thought about the limitations and kind of put that, but then not really, I don't know, viewing the work really through that lens. I think maybe I was like, when it is a limitation 'cause it felt like I should, instead of understanding like that actually is a limitation. Vikki: Yeah. Hmm. I was talking to some, in fact, it might even have been when I was recording another podcast this week, somebody I was coaching this week anyway. We were talking about how it can sometimes be really freeing and inspiring to remember that the end of your thesis is the beginning of somebody else's. Becci: Hmm. Yeah, I like that. Vikki: Somebody else will read your thesis or will read the papers that come from your thesis and we'll go, oh, that's really interesting. But I can see a gap. Becci: Yeah. Vikki: And that gap's where I'm gonna write my PhD. Becci: Yeah. Vikki: I'm gonna take this and apply it in children, or I'm gonna take this and apply it in dance instead of outdoor ed or whatever. 'Cause that's what we've done, right? You've read people's research, you've found it fascinating. You've spotted stuff they haven't done, that in no way undermines the work that they did. Becci: Yeah. It's different. Vikki: And now you build on that. Becci: Yeah. Yeah. I never really thought about it like that before. That's a, a really nice way to think about it. Quick interjection. If you are finding this episode helpful, but you are driving, walking the dog or doing dishes, just remember this. When you're done, head to the PhD life coach.com and sign up for my newsletter. We've all listened to a podcast and thought this is great. I should do something with it, and that didn't. That's where I created the newsletter to help you actually apply the stuff that you hear. Each week you'll get a short summary, some reflective questions on one simple action that you can take right away. You'll also get access to a searchable archive of all the past episodes so you can find the exact one that you need to help with your current challenges. Plus all newsletter subscribers get a free webinar every single month on a topic that affects all PhD students and academics, and you'll always be the first to hear for when my membership opens to new members. So once you're done listening, or even right now, go sign up for my newsletter and make sure you don't miss out. Vikki: So let's go back to a couple of practicalities. As far as you are aware, what bits need to be in your thesis. So in your introduction, it sounds as though you kind of went with, um, sort of concepts like, you know, I need resilience, I need outdoor ed, da da da. Yeah. In the discussion what sort of, almost what jobs need doing. I need a block that does this job. I need a block that does that job. Let's have a brainstorm about what that is. Becci: Yeah. I need a block. I'll start easy. That summarizes what I've done so far and like the main, the main outputs of that. Vikki: Yes. Good. So we need a relatively brief summary of the main outputs. Perfect. What else? What other blocks do we need? Becci: Um, for me, I need a block about how these refined versions of the theories came to be. Vikki: Okay. Becci: Because I haven't covered that elsewhere. Vikki: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So we need a block about how they came to be. What else? Becci: A block about what they are. Vikki: Yeah. A block presenting the framework essentially. Becci: Yeah. Vikki: I am proposing this framework for these reasons. Becci: Yeah. Vikki: Okay. What else? Becci: And then it gets trickier because I think then I'm not really sure. Vikki: Think about other people. So if it's hard to think about for yours, let's put yours to one side. You said that sometimes you procrastinate by looking at other people's chapters. That's great. Love it. What blocks do other people put in their discussions? Becci: I think what struck me about other people's discussions is they're all so different. So it's really hard to say, what they had in the, I guess, there's always something about the like, um, like bigger theories that underpin what they've found. Like essentially why might I have found what I've found based on the theory. Vikki: So something that recontextualizes it back into the literature, whether that's back into the theory, whether it's back into other empirical data. Have you ever seen the, the funnel? that describes. this describes both articles and thesises. Those of you on a podcast listening to this audio, I'm gonna try and explain what I'm drawing. If you're on video, you can see the picture. So essentially, if you imagine like a bow tie on its side, like a funnel with a narrow bit in the middle, and then a funnel back out again. A research article or a thesis should roughly be shaped like this. We start nice and wide, so I'm gonna guess your introduction starts. Something about why lack of resilience is a problem, and blah, blah, what issues it causes for mental health, things like that. Then it probably goes into something about how outdoor ed has been demonstrated as a environment in which resilience can be found. Vikki: So we're getting a little bit more narrow 'cause we're not just talking about resilience, we're talking about resilience and outdoor ed. Then probably go through some theories of resilience or theories of how it, you know, evidence that it can be changed in outdoor ed, da da da. And then you get all the way down at the end of your introduction. Vikki: And obviously with a full thesis, this is a bit more complex than I'm doing here, but in an article, usually you then have a final paragraph that says something like, therefore the current study will blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay? And that's the end of this first bit of the funnel. And then your research is this very narrow bit in between the what I did and what I find is the very specific to you, very narrow. Vikki: And then in your discussion you usually start with the current study found, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like you said, bit of a summary and then it starts getting wider again. It starts recontextualizing it back out into the world. Okay. And then there's a couple of chunks in here, which I'll talk about in a second that you definitely need, and then by the end, you finish with some sort of conclusion that brings it back out to its widest thing. Probably relates back to where you started the introduction. That just sort of zooms right back out again and says therefore this theoretical framework has the potential to improve the way that we build resilience in young women with this benefit or whatever. Yeah. So we start wide. We come on narrow, narrow and narrow. And narrow and narrow. We do our thing, we build it back out again, and there we are. And the nice thing, if you can imagine two of those sat on top of each other, this bottom of your funnel becomes the top of somebody else's funnel and they start coming back in again for their piece of research. Becci: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Vikki: Okay, so we definitely want stuff summarizing. We definitely for you like presenting the theory and how it fits with other theories, how it kind of helps explain things we've seen in the literature. Da, da, da. Can you think of any other chunks that need to go any discussion? Becci: Uh, yeah. Strengths and limitations. Vikki: A hundred percent. Yep. So we're gonna have a strengths and limitations bit. Becci: Um, um, recommendations and future research. Vikki: Future research. Beautiful. And then we're gonna finish. Okay. Becci: Simple as that. Vikki: But I want you to notice, and when you listen to this podcast, you'll be able to go back and listen to this for yourself. And it was certainly true in the email that you sent me. I want you to notice how much you were telling yourself. I've got no idea. Becci: Yeah. Vikki: I've got no clue. It's a mystery. I could even pull up. I won't bully you. Let's see. Here we go. Here's the email. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm flailing around in the dark, wondering, spewing out thousands of words and wondering what my point even is. Becci: Yeah, it sounds about right. Vikki: But it's not true. Becci: No, it's not true Vikki: because you've just told me all the bits that a discussion needs. Becci: Yeah. Yeah. Vikki: The trouble is, I'm sure it feels like that. I'm not undermining the fact that inside here it feels like you're flailing around in the dark. A hundred percent get that, but it's really important you don't tell yourself that's true. Because it might feel like you are spinning outta control, but you know what chunks this needs. Becci: Yeah. I do apparently. Vikki: And when we tell ourselves we don't, it becomes this impossible. I just can't. It's like, have you ever seen the videos online where there's like a little kid and he looks like he's drowning? He's like flailing and flailing. And panicking and panicking, and then the mum goes. Put your feet down. He's, oh, I can't swim. Put your feet down. Can't swim. I can't swim. And then he puts his feet down and he stands up and the water's up to about his chest. He's like, put your feet down. You're fine. And that's not to say his panics not real. Becci: Yeah. Vikki: But it's a little bit like that now, I think that you're, I can't do it. I can't do it. I even know what's involved. I have no idea. I'm just flailing around. It's like, put your feet down for a second. Just put your feet on the floor. Becci: Yeah. Vikki: You know, some of the bits that this needs. Becci: Yeah, yeah. And I think I just keep telling myself that same story, don't I? Of like, I don't know. I don't know. I'm confused. I dunno what I'm supposed to be doing, but I'm writing something so I must have some inkling of what's supposed to be going in. Yeah. And also, yeah, I've been able to say what sort of sections need to go in it, so I do. Yeah. I must have some idea. Vikki: Now, when you think about this 20,000 words or whatever that you've written. And you think about, if we think about those sections that you just came up with as buckets. Becci: Yeah. Vikki: Do you have a feel either off the top of your head or if you went and looked at it for which bits would get thrown into which bucket? Becci: Uh, yeah. Yeah, I think so. Like I'd have to go back and read parts of it to understand where they fit, but, um, for the most part, yeah. Vikki: And do you feel like there are some buckets that you've written loads for that's a bit of a mess, and some buckets that you haven't written for? Or do you feel like you'd have bits in all of them, or, Becci: uh, I think there's definitely like ones that I'd have quite a lot in um, and ones that would be quite sparse. Or maybe not sparse, but like just very descriptive. Which I know just isn't, yeah. It means just isn't finished, basically. Vikki: Yeah. So I think that's a useful exercise to do is to almost give yourself Word documents that are your buckets. Start chucking them out in to the different bits. The other thing I want to really, we'll come back to this thing about decisions in a second, but the other thing I want you and everyone listening to be really clear on is writing is many different things and it has many different purposes, and I think often PhD students get this mixed up. Because usually we think of writing as a way of generating the end product. Becci: Yeah. Vikki: Yeah. Writing is how we are creating the thesis that we hand in, which is absolutely true. You have to do that bit of writing, but writing is also a way of thinking. And a way of understanding what's in your brain, understanding what you don't understand very well. Testing ways of saying things, testing ideas to see if they make sense when you write them down. And that's a beautiful thing. That's a really good way of thinking. But what we often end up doing, and I wonder whether this is what you are doing, you can tell me, is we end up, we are doing that, really we're using writing to think, but we are beating ourselves up that it doesn't look like an end product. Becci: Yeah. I think I, because I do do a lot of like writing to think intentionally, so I've got lots of other documents of just like process notes essentially. Um, and then I think. I just think that the other document that has the title discussion chapter Vikki: Yeah. Becci: Is supposed to look like whatever a discussion chapter is supposed to look like. And when it doesn't, I'm like, ah, that means I don't dunno what I'm doing. Yeah. But yeah, perhaps I am just doing more of the thinking just on a document with a different name. Vikki: I think so. Becci: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Vikki: So how do you go from, at what point do you transition and how, from writing as thinking to creating a piece of writing as an end product. Becci: Um, think about like what makes me then open up a document to name it, like whatever chapter, instead of just like processing it. It would be, usually it would be having some idea of what it is I want to say, and understanding what the structure of that needs to look like to get that message across. Becci: I think what might have happened with my discussion chapter is like getting a bit impatient and just going, yes, I'll figure that out as I go along, but then being confused about why I haven't already figured it out before I've started, if that makes sense. Vikki: Yeah. Now I don't know that it's necessarily impatience, and we'll talk about that in a sec, but I think that a lack of clarity as to whether you are writing the discussion that you will hand in or whether you are still writing to understand the points you want to make. Yeah, I think you've told yourself, you are writing the discussion as an end product. But because you haven't yet decided exactly what your point is or what the structure should be, you are actually writing as thinking, which is absolutely fine. There's no problems with that. Becci: Yeah. Vikki: Other than you're expecting it to somehow end up as a discussion that you can hand in. Becci: Yeah. Vikki: When that's not what you are doing, you're just thinking on a piece of paper. Becci: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think that's exactly what's happened. Vikki: So. In order to get, you said, in order to start writing as an actual product? You want to know the points you're trying to make and remember, that doesn't have to be the point you're trying to make for the entire discussion, but for each of those sections we're talking about, you need to know the point you're trying to make and a first attempt at a structure. Vikki: We're obviously gonna restructure things if we want to as we go through, but a first attempt at a structure. What makes it difficult to go from your kind of writing as thinking thoughts on a piece of paper stuff to deciding what you're gonna say and having an approximation of a structure. Becci: I think having lots of ideas and not being able to discern which ones feel like they hold the most weight. Um, because then it's like, I'm just trying to make too many points. So then I don't make any of them in any particular depth or very well, I just, they're just loads of ideas. Um, and then the structure, I think, again, like if I understood what I was trying to say a bit better, I'd then be able to structure it fine, because I'd be like, well, this is this idea and this is this idea. Becci: But because it's like just all these ideas and I don't really know which ones should hold more weight than others. Vikki: The structure problems comes from the other bit a hundred percent. This is exactly the same as anybody who like me believed that the solution to being able to do everything was to find the right planner and jam it all in when actually the problem was you're putting in too many things, or the people out there who think that the key to making your house less cluttered is to go and buy new plastic boxes, to put things in. Vikki: It's the same thing, if you all got too many ideas, there is no structure that's gonna make all of those ideas come together and make sense. Becci: Yeah. Vikki: So what makes it hard to pick one or to pick a key idea that you want to focus on or a key framework? Becci: Um, I think, again, it's like what we were saying earlier on about trying to decide upon when is my overall framework done? Um, it's just, yeah, not wanting to make a decision because not being totally convinced that any of them are a hundred percent right, but that's 'cause that doesn't exist. And so then I'm like reluctant to get rid of anything. 'cause that might be the one that turns out to be correct. For want of a better word. Vikki: Yeah, a hundred percent. This is, and we, we talk about this in our membership a lot with my clients. This is not a don't know problem. This is an I haven't decided problem. Becci: Yeah. Yeah. Vikki: There is no knowing. There is no. I'm confused. I'm not sure which it should be. This is a, I haven't decided what this framework looks like yet. yeah, and there's lots of reasons for that, right? It feel, especially at the end of a PhD, it feels like a really big deal to like put the capital letters on your theoretical framework and say, yep, this is, this is the framework I'm putting out into the world. I'm hanging my hat on that. It feels like a massive deal. So I don't wanna like undermine that that feels scary. But this isn't that. You don't know. You're just avoiding the emotions that might come with picking one of the versions. Becci: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that extends out to like deciding what points I want to make within the rest of my discussion. 'Cause it's like I, yeah, I don't wanna make a decision about it rather than, it is not like I've got not got any ideas. I've got 20,000 words worth of ideas. Yes, but I just can't decide which ones I want to stick with. Vikki: You are choosing not to decide. Becci: Yeah Vikki: not can't. You're perfectly capable of deciding. If I said, I've got a million pounds in a box for you over here, if you can email me a version of your theoretical framework in the next half an hour. Yeah, I reckon you'd pick. Becci: Oh yeah Vikki: you are more than capable. Becci: I absolutely would. Vikki: You are more than capable of picking. You just haven't chosen that you are going to yet. Becci: Mm yeah. I think that is very true Vikki: and now with small things, it's easy to go. Just pick. It's fine. It doesn't matter. You can make either work. It's fine. With something like this though, where you know you wanna have your best shot at this, what I would really encourage you to do is go, okay. I haven't made a decision about this yet. What process do I want to go through in order to decide? So it's like if you were buying a car, okay, that can be really overwhelming, right? There's so many options. It's a stressful decision, it's a lot of money, blah, blah, blah. You say, okay, my process is. I'm gonna go to these three garages. I'm gonna narrow it down to price range this, features that, whatever else, color, who knows? Um, and then I'll narrow it down to four cars. And on the basis of that, I'm gonna do this. And my priority, when push comes to shove is gonna be price, say. Okay. That's not necessarily a right way of doing it. Everyone would have a different version of that, but that's what I want you to think about for your framework, and it's something you can discuss with your supervisor is what options have I got? Like realistically, how many different ways could this framework look? Becci: Yeah. Vikki: And I have no idea whether there's like 40 ways this could look or whether actually you are picking between two or three nuanced versions. Becci: Yeah. Vikki: What are my options and what process do I need to go through in order to pick? Becci: Mm-hmm. Vikki: Because then you decide, okay, and then I pick, and then I look after the emotions I've got about that decision. Becci: Yeah Vikki: because you will have emotions. You will have these, or what if I pick the wrong thing, or I really like that bit, that was really good. Or whatever, you will. But the truth is there's a whole load of emotions as you've learned around not making decisions too. Becci: Yeah. Vikki: And they feel rubbish. Becci: Yeah. You don't get anything done either. Yeah. Vikki: This can sound like a strange question. Are you going to hand in your thesis? Becci: Yeah. Yeah. Vikki: Yeah? A hundred percent. Becci: Yeah. Yeah. Vikki: So you are gonna make this decision at some point? Becci: Yeah, I am. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Vikki: Because you are going to hand it in, and even if you know one option is that you only vaguely make a decision and so you hand in something vague and that is your decision. Or you are gonna pick one version of this a bit more concretely, and that's what hand in Yeah. You are gonna choose this, so you get to pick when you're gonna choose this. Becci: Yeah. It is what's that process, isn't it? To go through, to pick stuff? And I've had to pick lots of things along the way. So I obviously have ways of doing that. I'm trying to think what my ways of doing that have been because I, yeah, I must have done that. I think what I did right at the very beginning, I had to like pick between, basically my, like my initial theories and ideas that I had about why things work, and I had like probably about a hundred different ones and I had the same thing there of like, how do I narrow that down to being just like, I don't know, less than 10 and I remember going through a process of printing everything off. Cutting them all up and sitting on the floor at my mom and dad's house when I was looking after the cat, and just like organizing them into like different piles and then deciding what I thought about them. Becci: And I don't know how I would do something similar here. And I don't really know how I then decided between the piles, but there must have been some way of doing that. But I'm wondering if I could do a similar sort of thing. Vikki: Yeah. Whether there's some mechanical way of actually, you know, almost drawing. I've got this version of a framework. I've got that version, I've got that version and drawing as many versions as you've got. Yeah, because it's a bit like, you know when you're clearing out your wardrobe or something, right? You are like, oh, but I do wear that sometimes I do quite like it, so yeah, I'll keep it or whatever. But then when you go to your wardrobe to put something on, I bet there are things that with all the gray sweatshirts, I usually pick this one or whatever. Becci: Yeah Vikki: you get to do that. Even with theoretical frameworks and things, it's like between those two, this one just makes more sense to me because X, Y, Z. Okay, cool. Well what about this one up against that one? Well, actually Yeah, I kind of like that one a bit more, and then you think, are there ways I can combine what I like of both of those into some sort of other version, but so, so to holding each, you know, two, rather than being like, how do I pick out of these 10 versions? Picking two? Which make more sense outta these two. That one can go over there. That's the charity shop pile for now, right? Compare this to another one. Which would I pick out of those? Pick two other ones, which, right, and we bring it down to three or four, and then from there we're like, right. What characterizes that one? What characterizes that one? Yeah, and there isn't a right way of picking. You can pick which one fits my data the best, which one fits my philosophical beliefs the best, and which any of those are perfectly legitimate. You just have to be able to explain it. Becci: Yeah. Yeah. And I think I've been trying to, like, I've not been comparing stuff. I've just been thinking about them in silo. So then it's like, well, they've all got some kind of merit, otherwise I wouldn't have done them in the first place. But yeah, that might actually be really helpful to compare them to each other and then decide. Becci: And I wonder if that is what I did right back at the beginning when I had my initial ones, is like I looked through them and compared them and thought about which ones fit the best. Rather than just staring at the same ones and going, well, yes, that's true. And then looking at another one going, yeah, that's probably true as well. So yeah, that comparing them might actually be really helpful. Vikki: Amazing. So do you feel like you've got some next steps that you can take to kind of tackle this? Becci: Yeah. Yeah. I definitely need to firm up my ideas about the theory and the framework before I try and like actually put the, because essentially my discussion is discussing the ideas within that. So it's, if my ideas about that, they're all over the place. And of course the ideas on my document are all over the place. Vikki: Yeah. I wouldn't do any more discussion work until you've fixed on a framework. Because even the limitations, and some of the limitations will be generic because they'll be about the methods that you used and things, but any limitations to do with the interpretation and stuff is gonna depend which framework you're talking about. Future directions will depend which version you're talking about. So, and it sounds as though you've already got a load of text that you can draw on when you're ready to start writing. But yeah, getting that bit really pinned down and knowing that that's a decision. It's not a solution. It's a decision. Becci: Yeah. I think that'll really help to then be able to actually write something. Um, for sure. Vikki: Yeah. You're not in the dark. No. You're not flailing around. You've made complex decisions before. You're gonna make a decision about this one 'cause you are handing it in. Becci: Yeah. And when I do hand it in, it doesn't have to be, this is perfect and my ideas can't change about it ever 'cause that's the point. Vikki: A hundred percent. That's your postdoc work or somebody else's PhD or whatever it might be. Yeah, yeah. Research is the end of one story and the beginning of the next, always. If no one ever did any work to follow up your research, that's pretty boring. Becci: Yes. It's a waste of time, isn't it? Vikki: That's the key. We don't, that's the thing is often, especially as PhD students, we want our thesis to be like the final word on a topic like ta-da. Actually, that's the most depressing thing in the world. No one wants to be the final word in a topic. We want to inspire a whole load more people to be like, oh my goodness, that's so interesting. What a fascinating framework. We could use that in this context. I wonder whether that would work just as well in this context or using this measure instead of that measure or whatever. That's why we want people to take it. Becci: Yeah. That's what I want, is I want it to be, yeah, used in the future, not just sat there looking nice. There's no point in that, is there? Vikki: Exactly. Amazing. Well thank you so much for agreeing to come on, Becci. I know this is something that lots of the listeners will be struggling with too, or will be even anticipating struggling with if they're not at that stage. So thank you for being so open and honest. And thank you everyone for listening and I will see you next week. Vikki: So I mentioned there'd be a sneaky update at the end of the episode, and that's because a few weeks after I recorded this episode with Becci, I got an email from her just updating me. She said, I'm just getting in touch with a quick update. I've now finished my discussion chapter and sent it to my supervisors for comments. Yippee! I know it is far from perfect and I'm okay with that. I'm just looking forward to hearing what my team think. The coaching really helped me to understand. What was in my way and how I could think about it all a bit differently. So thank you. I've also been shortlisted for PhD Student of the year and got a job since we last spoke, so it is celebrations all round at the moment. Vikki: This is obviously a gorgeous message to receive and it shows how much, just a little bit of coaching, a little bit of thought work can really help you take huge steps forward. Vikki: So, massive congratulations, Becci. And hope to see lots of you who are inspired by this on the wait list for the membership soon. Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics time.
< Today we’re thinking about the relationships we have with our supervisors/advisors. These are one of the most complex and important elements of your PhD experience yet we rarely consider the nature of the relationships. In this episode, we think about how power is distributed in these relationships and how this affects how we each behave. This episode is relevant for PhD students AND supervisors, even if you think you have a great relationship! Links I refer to in this episode You might also find these episodes on managing your supervisory relationships useful. How to have a great relationship with your supervisor What to do if you have a toxic relationship with your supervisor Transcript Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. I'm Dr. Vikki Wright, ex professor and certified life coach. And if you were listening last week, you will have heard me, slightly before I intended to announce some important stuff about my membership. But I thought this week what I would do before we get into the main topic, which I'll tell you about in a sec, there's a whole load of new people now listening. I wanted to remind you all about what I'm talking about when I mean the membership. So I provide a whole bunch of stuff completely for free for all of you for the podcast and one workshop a month that you can all attend with no expectations, no strings. It's there for the PhD in academic community completely free, so that if you can never afford to buy anything from me, you will always get that input and support. But if you want more intensive support and you're in a position to spend a little bit of money on that, then I have my membership program. This is for PhD students, now masters. I do have some master's students that come along in, you have very similar issues, postdocs. That's fine. I draw the line, if you are an academic who's supervising other PhD students and things like that, then it's not for you. But if you are essentially an early career researcher, it is absolutely for you. And we run on a quarterly basis. Now, I'm not gonna give you the full rundown. You can look it up on my website, the PhD life coach.com, but we run on a quarterly basis. It's a three month membership, you get access to group coaching, you get access to like mini teachings. You get access to a whole bunch of self-paced materials. You get community, the community organized co-working sessions. I organize a few. It's a wonderful, wonderful place. You are gonna hear more about it over the next few weeks because my next quarter starts at the beginning of August, which means it is going to go on sale at the end of July. So this is going out at the beginning of July. We are gonna open at the end of July. The waiting list is already open. The waiting list has no obligation, but if you're on the waiting list, it makes sure you get sent all the information and it makes sure that you get any of the freebies that I'm gonna give away over the next few weeks. So make sure you sign up on that. The bit that I announced earlier last week than I was intending to announce, but there we are. I was excited, was the theme of the quarter. So every quarter we cover stuff to do with the PhD experience. We have open coaching sessions where you can bring anything you're struggling with at the moment, but each quarter also has a distinct flavor to it. So quarter one, we looked at building your time and task management systems. Quarter two, we've worked on procrastination focus and motivation. And quarter three, we are gonna be working on academic relationships. How to improve things with your supervisor, how to build the communities that you need, how to network, and kind of get to know people in your discipline. Okay, so we are really getting into the interpersonal this time. Now, if you are listening and going, oh my goodness, the other stuff sounds really good though. I kind of need that too. Even better because when you join in quarter three, you get access to all the materials from quarter one and two, and we can obviously still coach on that stuff too. So make sure you check it out. I'm not gonna be one of those coaches that hides the prices. It costs 149 pounds per quarter, so it's about 50 a month. Okay, that's Great British pounds. Translate it out. It, it does it internationally. So take, translate it out to whatever works for you. If you have questions, make sure you're on my newsletter so that you can ask them. But I wanted to make sure that all of you were up to speed. You'll get loads more details over the next few weeks. The topic of today's call, though, is inspired by that theme and actually comes from some supervisor training that I did a while ago. So I designed a bespoke supervisor training, and one of the things that I was really keen to think about was the nature of power in supervisory relationships and the implications that has for the ways we behave. And so that's what we're gonna think about today. We're gonna think about where does the power sit in a supervisory relationship? In what ways does the supervisor have power? In what ways does the student have power? And from there, think about how that affects how we work with each other, what we will say, what we won't say, what we believe about the other person and we'll help you draw some lessons there to help you improve that relationship. So let's get into it. I think the PhD supervisor student relationship is one of the weirdest relationships that exists. Now, don't get me wrong, I actually had a really good relationship with my supervisor. I had really good super relationship with my students, although they differed from each other quite dramatically. But it's still a very weird relationship because it's sort of hierarchical, right? Your supervisor is more senior to you. Uh, they are supporting you, helping you to learn and develop and build your career and all that good stuff. But on the other hand, they're not your direct boss. They're not intended to tell you exactly what you must do because there's this whole thing of independence and coming up with your own research and all of that. So you've got this weird thing where the supervisor is senior, but you are expected to take autonomy and make the final decisions about the content. But sometimes your PhD might be attached to an existing project, particularly in the sciences and engineering and things, if it's attached to a grant. When a lot of the content will have been fixed, and other times you've got complete control over it. So you imagine the other extreme might be like a self-funded arts PhD, for example, where you've picked the topic and just found someone who can support you. So that's a very strange balance. You've then got the balance that because PhD students come from all walks of life and all stages of life sometimes. The two are the same age as each other. Sometimes there's an age difference, a dramatic age difference in both directions, right? You could have a relatively new academic, supervising somebody who's come back to do the PhD in their retirement years. You could have a professor who's right towards the end of their career supervising someone that came straight out of their masters. Or you can have people supervising each other who are the same age as each other. There's then also very blurry lines as to how collegiate collaborative slash friendly you would be with your supervisor. Some people maintain a very kind of, I don't wanna say distant, but like formal relationships. Some people don't see each other that much. Some people only see each other in those supervisory official meetings. Others have a much more collaborative experience all the way through to almost acting like friends or maybe even acting like friends, you know, going to the pub together, going, you know, traveling to conferences together, all those sorts of things. And so that can make it a bit weird and blurry too. Across the podcast for the next few months, and within the membership specifically, we are gonna dive into all of that a lot more and how these different characteristics can really make a difference in that supervisory relationship and how to manage it. But the bit I want to think about today is power. So we are thinking here in terms of where does one person hold influence over the other? So let's think first about the supervisor. In what ways do supervisors have power over their students? And I know people listening, you will either be PhD students or supervisors. Sometimes you might even be both supervising undergraduates while also doing your PhD. But put yourself in that position and think what power does the supervisor have over the students? And the answer is generally quite a lot. The supervisor might have power over the physical resources that the student has access to, whether that's laboratory space or archives or money for travel, or any of those sorts of things. You may have access to all of those and be able to control the extent to which the student is able to get to them. You are likely to have access to what I'm calling community resources here, so access to other experts, access to opportunities, whether that's publishing or reviewing or grant applications or any of those sorts of things. You also have some softer power, so students often perceive that their supervisor's opinion on their work is like king, is the most important thing. If their supervisor thinks they've made enough progress, then they've made enough progress. And if their supervisor doesn't think they've made enough progress, then they haven't. And so supervisors have probably more power than they sometimes realize over the extent to which the student thinks they're making good progress, whether they are a good student or not. Similarly, students often get their sense of whether their work is of high quality or not from what their supervisor says about it. Now in the membership, we work a lot on learning to evaluate your own work and getting your own kind of sense of reassurance from yourself so you're not so dependent on that external validation, but in reality, a lot of students are dependent on the supervisor reassuring them that what they have done is good enough. The extent to which the supervisor has power over what is done varies massively, depending on the discipline, the stage of career of the supervisor, and kind of their own personal perspectives. People who have a more kind of functional approach to supervision where the job is to get the student through a project may actually take quite a lot of power over saying, no, no, you should do this study, and then this study, and then this study. And yeah, the nuances are up to the student and the way it's written up, it's up to the student, but the actual direction of the project may well be quite dictated by the supervisor all the way through to others of you who'll be sitting this now. I have no influence over that at all. It's entirely up to them. So that's one that can vary a bit, but it's a place where supervisors can have lots of power in certain situations. Supervisors also potentially have power over their student's future. And I say potentially because I think sometimes students think their supervisors have more power than they actually do. But there is certainly the perception that supervisors have a lot of power over what they're gonna write in your reference in the future, who they'll introduce you to, what they'll kind of push you forwards into. That if your supervisor likes you and if your supervisor thinks you are worthy of opportunities, they potentially have power to put you in places, introduce you to people, give you recommendations that will give you more opportunities in the future. And then finally, the supervisor also has power over all the kind of implicit knowledge that academics tend to know or figure out or assume that often PhD students, particularly PhD students who come from backgrounds where their families and their friends haven't done PhDs before, where they don't necessarily know kind of what's acceptable, what's the norm, what's the way of doing things around here, all that stuff. And supervisors have a lot of power. Again, often not recognized by the supervisor, but the supervisors have a lot of power as to how much of that stuff they actually stop and think about explaining to the student or checking at least that they understand. Can you think of anything that I've forgotten? Do let me know. Those are the kind of areas that I can see where supervisors have considerable power over their students, and so what implications does that have? Quick interjection. If you are finding this episode helpful, but you are driving, walking the dog or doing dishes, just remember this. When you're done, head to the PhD life coach.com and sign up for my newsletter. We've all listened to a podcast and thought this is great. I should do something with it, and that didn't. That's where I created the newsletter to help you actually apply the stuff that you hear. Each week you'll get a short summary, some reflective questions on one simple action that you can take right away. You'll also get access to a searchable archive of all the past episodes so you can find the exact one that you need to help with your current challenges. Plus all newsletter subscribers get a free webinar every single month on a topic that affects all PhD students and academics, and you'll always be the first to hear for when my membership opens to new members. So once you're done listening, or even right now, go sign up for my newsletter and make sure you don't miss out. Well, I see the implications that it has with my members all the time, so students who are scared to contact their supervisors at an early stage because they're worried that the supervisor will think that the work's not good enough, and that they'll therefore tell them that they're not good enough and so they won't contact them with early drafts, for example. They won't risk making mistakes because if they make a mistake and the supervisor sees that it may risk the supervisor's perception of them, which may then shut down future opportunities. May then affect the personal sense of quality of the work. That if the supervisor doesn't think I'm good enough, then I definitely can't think I'm good enough. So it really impacts communication and the ways that people interact with you. That perceived power can also really influence what a student says they're willing to do. So often a supervisor will assume that if a student. Agrees to a particular project or agrees to working particular hours or agrees to any of these decisions, then they're agreeing because they agree, right? Otherwise, why would they agree? Where actually often students are agreeing simply to manage that relationship. So a supervisor asks them to help out on another project in the lab. The student says, yes, the supervisor assumes that's 'cause they're happy with it. Whereas in reality, the student didn't feel they had the power to say no to that. They were worried about managing their supervisor's emotions and so they didn't feel that it was actually a free question that they had to say. Yes. And for those of you who are out there going, you know, oh no, but I'm a really nice supervisor. I always tell people that it's okay. They don't have to do it if they don't want to. They don't believe you often. I know I'm making sweepy statements here. There's nuance, but please remember that even if you are the Lovingest Squishiest gorgeous supervisor in the world, you still have power over your students. Your students still perceive the power that you have over them. And for all the time that you say it's okay, you can always be honest with me. They might believe you and they might try that. And if you then respond in the ways you intend and you have good interactions, then that might carry on. But the students still perceives that power. And I want you to be particularly careful with this, where your supervisees, where students are professionals, you know, they're part-time PhD students. They're professionals in another field where they're the same age as you or older as the supervisor, it's really easy to forget that there is even a power differential there. 'Cause as far as it feels, often you're talking to a peer. Those students often perceive the power differential even more markedly than junior students. And the reason for that is that whilst these part-time students are experts in their professional field, a lot of the time, that often makes them feel particularly novice as academics. Whereas our full-time students, they may feel novice as a student, but that's kind of their norm. That's their reality. The comparison of how confident and how knowledgeable and professional they feel in one context for part-time students really emphasizes how novice and how junior they are in the academic field. If you are a part-time student listening to this, I know I have lots of you, so, hi. Um, I want you to know what you think of that. Is that something you recognize in yourself? I want you to really reflect on it. It's something I have seen a lot in the people that I coach. These things also get even more blurred if you have quite a collaborative relationship, you have quite a friendly relationship, perhaps even a social relationship. Again, it can lead to this situation where the supervisor thinks there's not too much hierarchy there. The supervisor thinks it's quite an equitable partnership when in reality, often the PhD students don't perceive it that way. So thinking about how it affects how you interact with each other, how it affects what the student is willing to tell you, and how it encourages the student to sometimes say things that they don't mean, that they consider to be the right answer. If you are the student, think about how it affects you. How do you behave differently because of the power that you know your supervisor has over you. Now, this episode is mostly about awareness. We are not gonna leap into tons and tons of solutions to this. That's something that we'll talk about in the membership in a lot more detail, but even the awareness on both sides can help even with no other tactics in place. Because once we're aware of this power differential and we're aware of how it's potentially affecting how each of us are behaving, then we can decide whether we are intentionally choosing that. We can ask ourselves question like, is it true they have power over this? Is it true that me saying these things may involve a withdrawal of influence or withdrawal of resources or withdrawal of approval, or whatever it might be. So we get to query whether the assumptions we are making are true. And if they are true, we also then get to decide what do we want to do with that information? How do we want to behave? And sometimes it may be that you decide, you know what? Recognizing the power differential, it's accurate. It is. There is a real threat there that I might lose access to some of these things. And you know what? The way I'm behaving is exactly right. Happy days. That's fine. Let's keep going in that direction. But for a lot of you, you will be avoiding academic honesty in the sense of saying what you mean, admitting when you don't know things and things like that as an attempt to kind of manage the power in that relationship, manage the extent to which the supervisor thinks you're good, and I want you to ask yourself whether that's really helping or not. I get why you're doing it. The power makes it really, really hard. I want you to consider, in what ways would being honest about your perceptions of the research, being honest about what you don't understand, being honest about your opinions about what you wanna do next might actually improve the relationship rather than take away from it. So be aware of how power manifests here. Now we have to remember that there is power going the other direction too. And I think this is something that students are often very not aware of and supervisors are very aware of. And it can impact how all of us engage with each other. So ways that students have power over supervisors are things like if the supervisor is invested in your data, for example. So again, I think this is more common in the sciences and engineering where there's more team approach often, um, and where you're more likely to be working on part of a bigger trial. Um, but often the supervisor needs the data that you are collecting because they will use it for a future grant application. Okay. Often the supervisor needs the data you're collecting because they need a certain number of publications for whatever assessment they've got coming up. And so they could really do with a PhD student coming through with publications to help them on those missions. It's not quite the same in arts and humanities where there's more of a tendency towards single author monographs, single author papers. But it's certainly the case across the more sort of science end of things. Whatever discipline you're in, the supervisor may well be invested in you completing successfully. Often things like promotions and so on are contingent on having PhD students finished. Students not finishing can sometimes be seen as going against the supervisor's record. Now that varies a bit, the extent to which that's true, but there can be a, certainly a perception of that. Sometimes supervisors get really invested in their students continuing in academia. I have known people who are really, really invested in the future careers of their students. And that sounds lovely and supportive until such as a point that you realize that if you don't take the path that they think you should take, that they withdraw support. And I've seen that happen in a variety of different settings. And so sometimes supervisors are really invested in you progressing in academia that might be so that you stay on in their laboratory so that you can continue to contribute to their work. I see that a lot supervisors who encourage their students to stay because you've just trained them up, right? And they're really useful and your lab runs better because they're there and then they encourage them to stay. Sometimes it can be because supervisors take really seriously the notion of sort of being grandparents and great-grandparents out into the academic world. So your student goes off to some prestigious laboratory and then they have PhD students. And then those PhD students go to a prestigious laboratory and do the same again. And like your influence and your network are out there in the field. There's a lot of supervisors that get a real kick outta that. And sounds great, but if you then don't fit their expectations, that can have a negative impact on both sides. So let's think a bit about how that affects how the two of you interact with each other. That the student's got this power, that the supervisor really needs you to do this work and really needs you to complete often. And at the same time, they can't do it for you. At the same time they feel like you have to earn your PhD, but there is some pressure on them as a supervisor to ensure that you do. How does that influence the relationship? One of the ways I've seen is that some supervisors can get a bit controlling. Some supervisors as they start to lose faith or as they start to feel stressed for their own reasons, they start to take more control. They start to get a bit more dictatorial about exactly what needs to happen and things. And sometimes that can be useful, but sometimes that can make the student feel like they're losing control. Right. Sometimes it comes across in a more nuanced way that the supervisor is just a bit stressed about it all that the supervisor's just getting a bit time urgent, is getting a bit pressuring, those sorts of things. So they're not like making the decisions or anything, but they're sort of really saying, you know, you've gotta get on with this client, you've gotta get on with this. And the trouble is that certainly in my experience, the problem with the vast majority of PhD students is not that they don't register that time's getting short and that they've got a lot to do, it's that they really, really register that time is short and that they've got a lot to do. And that is in many ways paralyzing them because of the emotions they're sort coming up in that. So one of the ways that the power that students have gets sort of visualized in a relationship is the supervisor getting really stressed about the things they're outta control of and that negatively affecting the supervisor and their experience, but it also then having this knock on effect and influencing the students too. And that's when it then becomes reciprocal, right? Because the supervisor starts getting stressed because of the things that they're outta control of, that have influence of over them. So the power the student has, but then because the supervisor gets stressed and the supervisor is the one that's higher in the hierarchy, that has the more power, has the influence over all the things that we've discussed. That stress then gets passed back down to the student, and it can lead to a really high pressure environment where communication is really challenging and it is all coming from these perceptions of power, these perceptions of who holds which power, and then these sort of misguided again, I guess, attempts to manage that power. As I say, not loads and loads of solutions for you today, but I want you to think about this in relation to your specific supervisory relationships, whichever side of it you are on, and in the newsletter that you can all sign up to get there'll be a couple of reflective questions as usual that will help you work through. Where you think power is sitting at the moment in your relationship and what impact that has? Awareness with all the things we talk about is the absolute first step towards understanding, interpretation and strategic change. So have a think. Let me know. You can always reply to my newsletters and tell me what you've been thinking. Ask any questions As you'll have heard last week, I do answer listener questions on the podcast from time to time. So get those sent on in. Have a ponder. Where's the power in all your relationships and what impact is it having at the moment? Thank you all so much for listening, and I'll see you next week. Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics time.
< Today I’m answering listener questions! We hear from people who are feeling pulled in different directions for a variety of reasons, a student who feels she lacks academic role models, and another feeling pressured by a publish or perish culture. I give some words of advice and thoughts to consider to help navigate these challenges. Remember – if you have questions you want answered, join my newsletter and send them over and I’ll answer them in a future episode! Links I refer to in this episode You can hear me answer other listener questions here and here . Transcript As you know, I've covered about a hundred million topics on the PhD Life Cage podcast. Possibly an exaggeration, but I've covered a lot. And often when you are experiencing particular challenges, you are gonna be able to look back at the podcast and find exactly the episode you need. In fact, if you sign up for my newsletter, I'll send you a searchable archive where you can find out exactly what I have covered and find the perfect one for you. But sometimes I will concede, there are times where you have questions that I haven't answered yet, and people on my newsletter also have the opportunity then to tell me that, to email me, say, Vikki, I haven't seen you answer this yet. What advice would you give me in this situation? And then I will answer the questions on the podcast. And that is what today's episode is. I've had three listeners send me questions that I think are applicable to so many people, and which I have so much to say about, and we're gonna answer those questions today. So settle in, get ready for three completely different topics, and make sure you're on the newsletter so that you can ask me your questions too. Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. I'm Dr. Vikki Wright, ex- professor and certified life coach, and I wanna try and help you make your PhD and academic experience a whole lot calmer and more fun than it feels at the moment. And there is no better way to do that than to answer three. Specific questions from some of you lovely listeners. So we are gonna be thinking about task switching, moving between the different bits of your PhD that you need to do. We are gonna be thinking about role models and what happens if you don't have ones around you that you actually wanna emulate and we're gonna be thinking about the publish or parish culture that exists in so many of our academic communities, how we can survive and even thrive within that sort of pressure. So let's get going. The first question came from Marie and she says, I'm realizing I'm at the point of my PhD where I'm struggling with context switching. I know that doing a PhD means keeping multiple things going all at the same time. As there's more to hold, argument and material, the switch between tasks or large pieces of work feels more difficult. For context, I'm wrapping up my third chapter, thinking through Ideas, questions, data gathering for my fourth, and also writing grant applications to secure additional funds to get me through until submission. I'm trying to factor in rest days or transition periods where I can create intentional pauses, but it doesn't seem to be very effective. I think this is a great question and one that a lot of people will struggle with, particularly towards the end of a PhD, where you are working often on multiple projects at once and thinking about what happens afterwards. So where do we start? I would always start from recognizing that the thing you are finding difficult is quite a complex ask of yourself. Often at these stages, what we do is we go, I'm finding this difficult, but I have to do it, so I just need to get on with it. And that's the kind of feedback that we give ourselves, right? Sort of acknowledging that it's hard to switch, but not seeing any way around that. And so being almost dismissive of those problems going, oh, well, I've just got to do it. I've just gotta suck it up. Other people seem to be able to. And the problem is as usual, that's not that compassionate. And also it takes away all of our problem solving. It takes away that creativity that will enable us to go, okay, what could we do about this? So the first thing to say here is that you are right when you are doing hard cognitive work in the form of writing a discussion for one chapter to then switch over and write a grant application for something else, or to switch over and do your teaching or whatever constraints you've got, that's a difficult thing to do. Transitions can be tough for the best of times and transitions between two different cognitively demanding tasks is hard. And so if we start from the place of it's difficult, other people find it difficult too. How can we then think, right, how can I make this easier? Now, I do have a whole episode about why transitions can be difficult, so do go check that one out. The three things that I really wanna emphasize here are how can we reduce the need for transitions? How can we make transitions feel easier? And how can we beat ourselves up less for finding it difficult? And to be honest, you can apply those three things to most challenges that you have. How can I do it less often? How can I make it easier? How can I make it less painful, essentially? So how do you make it happen less often if we recognize that we struggle to transition between two different tasks that are sort of cognitively challenging, then when we are doing our weekly planning, especially if you use role-based time blocking, I want you to look at how you can minimize those transitions. Now, it's not always possible, but often we can decide that I'm going to do this cognitively challenging task on these days, and I'm gonna do this other cognitively challenging task on these other days. And so I'm reducing the amount of times that I'm switching backwards and forwards. Now, you may say that's not possible. 'cause I have meetings, I have commitments on particular days. That means that's not always possible and I accept it is not always possible. But you can, for example, transition. If you decide to focus on one major cognitive task on a Tuesday, say you can then transition into other tasks that need doing, but that aren't as cognitively demanding. And then on the Wednesday you work on the other big cognitive task and then transition into things that aren't as cognitively demanding. So we're reducing our need to actually come outta one thing that's difficult and move straight into something else that's difficult. So I want you to look for any opportunity where you can cluster things like that. Often the problem comes from us telling ourselves that we need to be working on all things simultaneously because all things are important, but often working on all things simultaneously is not the most efficient way of doing it. So really test your assumptions there. Really ask yourself, actually, am I gonna move all of these things this week? Or could I say that this week is discussion week? Plus administrative bits and bobs, and next week is grant application, week plus bits and bobs. Okay, so we're gonna reduce the number of changes we need to make. Now let's think about how we can make some of those transitions easier when we do have to make them. The first way is allowing yourself a bit of time for that transition, and we can try and mark that in an intentional way. So maybe you do have to switch from one cognitively demanding thing from another one. Let's not expect ourselves to close one document, open the next document and dive straight in. What can you do in between that kind of marks that transition process? Perhaps it's as simple as going, getting a glass of water, getting a cup of tea, whatever it is, coming back to your desk, sitting for a moment. Maybe you introduce something that's a little bit more of a ritual where you light a particular candle, if that's your vibe, or you play a particular music as almost like the advert break between two different things. When you are thinking about what that in-between task is I want you to try and think of something that doesn't use your brain. Now I'm talking to myself here as well. 'Cause this is one of my habits that I don't particularly love. I'm not consciously working on at the moment, but I know it's something I do need to work on. Which is these days, there's a real tendency when we are transitioning from one task to another to go on our phones one way or another, whether you are watching tv, whether you're scrolling, whatever it is, there's a real tendency to stop doing one thing, shove your brain full of a load of other things, and then expect yourself to go into something else. And that actually really cognitively demanding. It might feel as though you're kind of distracting yourself, turning your brain off, whatever. But actually we are just firing more information into our brains. So when you are thinking about what you are gonna do in that break, I want you to think about what is actually good for your clear mind, for your healthy body. How can you introduce something that is calming, fun, energizing. There's a real difference to spending that time having a potter around your garden or wandering off to your kitchen while letting your brain just do its little thing than turning your phones on and going off again. One way of realizing the opinions you have of your own practice is thinking, what would I think if kids were doing this? So as an example, I said, I have a tendency that in between tasks I will scroll on my phone and if the school that my step kids went to policy was that when you finish one lesson, they could scroll on their phones until the next lesson starts. I would not be a happy step mommy. That would not be a school that I would be sending my kids to, but it's what I do to myself. And so asking yourself actually what would I expect kids to do here? I'd expect 'em to get a drink, go to the toilet, go outside, chill out a bit, blow off some steam, whatever it might be, and come back feeling refreshed. How can we instigate that into our lives too? Maybe you try and work in different places on different projects. So that sort of being in the cafe signifies that you're working on the grant application. Being at home, in your office, being at home, on your kitchen table signifies something, a different project. Okay? So think about using your environment to demarcate them out like that a little bit more. The other way, and I can't remember whether I've done an episode about this before or not, but I've definitely talked about it, is parking on the downhill. So this is make it as easy for yourself to transition back into whatever task it is as possible. So this means finishing a task with a clear instructions as to where you're up to and what you need to do next. So almost thinking about future you when you finish one task so that when you pick it back up, you've got almost like shift handover notes. Okay, so if you imagine somebody else was taking over this task, what information would you need to give them? And what we are doing there is we are reducing the cognitive load of starting the new thing by making it super clear where we're gonna start. I said there were three things. Third one, as usual is don't beat yourself up if you're finding it difficult. If you find yourself in a position where you have to transition more than you'd like, where you've tried to make it easier and you're still finding it difficult, that's okay. It's fine. You're a human being. We can't just switch. Even my computer's not that good at switching straight outta one program into another program all the time. It's okay. We're at capacity. It's all good. Let's just start the next one a little bit slowly. It's all good. Let's have some compassion for ourselves. Marie, let me know whether that was helpful for everybody else. Let me know how, what you think too and let's move on to the second question. Quick interjection. If you are finding this episode helpful, but you are driving, walking the dog or doing dishes, just remember this. When you're done, head to the PhD life coach.com and sign up for my newsletter. We've all listened to a podcast and thought this is great. I should do something with it, and that didn't. That's where I created the newsletter to help you actually apply the stuff that you hear. Each week you'll get a short summary, some reflective questions on one simple action that you can take right away. You'll also get access to a searchable archive of all the past episodes so you can find the exact one that you need to help with your current challenges. Plus all newsletter subscribers get a free webinar every single month on a topic that affects all PhD students and academics, and you'll always be the first to hear for when my membership opens to new members. So once you're done listening, or even right now, go sign up for my newsletter and make sure you don't miss out. The second question is anonymous. I know their name, but they've asked me not to share it for reasons that I think will become clear when I'm reading out what they said they said. What do you think about the importance of role models for becoming your own version of an independent researcher, which aligns with how you want to be and how this relates? To motivation during your PhD? I recently realized I was missing a key role model of what a good researcher is to me. They then went into some details where they shared that they'd been to another university, experienced working with somebody who was much more aligned with their priorities and are now finding it difficult to go back to their supervisor. They share that they've lost a bit of confidence in their supervisor and they've definitely realized that they don't want to emulate their supervisor in the future. I think this is a great, great question and I think often we assume that we will end up with a supervisor that we aspire to be like, and I think supervisors often assume that students will aspire to be like them, and it's often not the case. There are many, many different ways of being an academic. There are many different ways of organizing your career and of prioritizing and looking after yourself during that time. And sometimes we will find that the supervisors that we end up working for actually end up not to be the role models that we thought they were gonna be and not to have lives that we want to have. So same as with Marie. First thing is don't beat yourself up about this. This is pretty common and certainly doesn't indicate any problem with you pursuing careers in academia or any sort of inherent weakness on either of your part. It is a mismatch in what your supervisor wants from academia and who they want to be in academia and who you want to be and what you want from academia. So what do we do about it? I think the first thing is not to write off your supervisor. We can learn an awful lot from people who are doing academia in a way that we never want to do it. It can help us better understand our priorities. It can help us better understand what we definitely don't want, but there may also be things that we can learn from the way they're doing it. Even if you don't want to be like your supervisor, you don't want their lives, they may still, they probably do have elements that you could use and apply in your own way. So really avoid that kind of black and white thinking of, oh, I've realized they're not a role model, therefore I've got nothing to learn from them. If we can look at it in a slightly more nuanced way and be like, okay. I don't want those bits and I don't appreciate those characteristics, but they are pretty good at getting grants or you know, raising their profile or whatever it might be. I wonder what I can learn. I wonder what I can adjust, twist shape to my own approach that would also be quite effective. Because when we completely write them off, we to lose that opportunity to learn and twist and adapt the skills that they have to apply in our own way. Now, one of the reasons that's difficult is often if your supervisor doesn't end up to be the role model that you want them to be, that can be super disappointing, right? Super frustrating. And so we've often got all these emotions around it, and often we either respond to that by saying, oh, well, I obviously don't like belong here, I can't do this. Or by like turning it all the way around and casting your supervisor into like super baddie role where we are like, we hate them and we won't have anything to do with them and we'll do the bare minimum and blah, blah, blah. But there is a place in between where we look after our own emotions. It's okay to be disappointed, it's okay to be frustrated. We get to look after those emotions. And at the same time, deciding how and to what extent we want to engage with and learn from our supervisors. What we then get to do is recognize that our supervisors are only one opportunity to get good role models in academia. And there is a whole world of academics out there who are doing this in a whole variety of ways. And this is where networking is so important. And now any of you who have just gone, Ugh, networking, I get it. Don't worry. And. I wasn't gonna announce this today. This was not part of the plan, but I'm gonna, if that was your immediate gut reaction was like, oh, I know I should do that, but it's awful. I hate it. Networking sounds so transactional. It sounds so gross. I'm so bad at it. You need to make sure you're definitely on my newsletter because Hot Off the press quarter three of the PhD Life Coach membership is going to focus on academic relationships, dah dah. It's gonna focus on improving your relationship with your supervisor, improving the community that you have around you, feeling part of a community. Extending your networking reach and doing it in a way that doesn't feel horrible and feels authentic and true to you instead. So if that's something you struggle with, make sure you are at least on my newsletter, if not on my wait list, because this is gonna be the quarter for you anyway. There wasn't gonna be an official announcement today, but turns out it was. So there you go. Surprise. I told my members this week, but I wasn't gonna say it on the podcast. There you go. So networking though is an opportunity to identify and spend time with people who may be doing academia differently. And this doesn't mean going and schmoozing round conferences in a kind of self-promotional way, but it means recognizing that there's a bunch of people in your departments, in your universities, in your discipline, but at other universities who are doing this differently and who you may well be able to be in contact with and to learn from. So where do we start and how do you learn? I am a big fan of starting with your peers, so people who have different supervisors to you, whether that's within your immediate vicinity or further afield. Spending time talking to them about what their supervisors are like. Okay, how do they behave? What do they prioritize? Are they good role models? Snoop around with the other PhD students, getting to know them and getting to know more about their supervisors. Often if we've got good supervisors, we take it for granted, right? And it's not until other people are asking that you sometimes realize what you have actually got. That can be a great way of identifying people who have got more of the sorts of qualities that you are looking to emulate and follow in your own life. And from there, once you identify people, you can kind of find out a little bit more about them. What is it? What do they do with their students that makes their students feel welcomed, feel, you know, to succeed whatever it is that you are, you are wanting from them. So we get to sort of explore a little bit, get curious about it, and then at some point you also have the opportunity to reach out to these people. Now am I gonna say that any academic you reach out to is absolutely going to answer you? No. Academics are notoriously behind with their emails, through a combination of just generally being overworked, overwhelmed, and avoiding it just like the best of us. But there are many ways that you can reach out to somebody. Attending departmental seminars and having a chat at the drinks afterwards. Approaching somebody at a conference, just asking them questions about their lives and how they got to where they are can be a really nice way of doing it. We are not trying to get anything out of them. We're not trying to ask them to be your supervisor or ask them to be your mentor or anything like that. We're trying to get to know people to learn more about them and about their priorities and their paths. And when we see it like that, we see it as a sort of exploratory process where we are interested in people and how they do academia. You'll often find that people are very, very interested in having those conversations. People like to reflect on their own careers. Generally speaking. They like people to be interested in what they believe and how they do things. So if you are feeling like your supervisor isn't the role model that you wish they were, let's go find the people that might be. My third question came from Anique and she says, I had a question about the publish or perish pressure. I constantly feel this urgency at the back of my mind to do more things and to do them faster. My PhD is by publication, and I basically quantify my progress by how many papers I still have to publish, but it never feels like I'm doing it fast enough. And she said, is there an existing episode to address this? And I had to think about it, and I think I touch on it a little bit, but I thought it deserved its own answer. And the first thing to say here, I feel like I start all of these by like validating the the comment, but the first thing to say here is you are right. Academic environments are weird hierarchical places where we try and quantify stuff in ways that may not be helpful to the pursuit of good research and certainly are not helpful to the pursuit of good mental health. So the fact that you feel like this isn't a sign that you don't deserve to be in academia, or that you're not strong enough, or more not resilient enough to be here, academia can just be a bit of a weird place. And it is a conversation for another day as to whether it has been purposefully and intentionally created that way in order to exclude people or whether it has kind of evolved that way through competition for resources and a sort of inevitable response to more people wanting to do it than there are spaces that is a conversation for another day. Or they send me your views if you want, but either way. Feeling like you're in a very pressured environment where there are certain criteria you need to hit is completely valid. And for some of you, the criteria might be lots of papers. People who are in arts and humanities, it might be the big monograph at the end of your thesis or whatever it is. So translate this out to different, whatever the kind of hardcore marker that you see in your field is . However, what you get to do is reassure yourself as usual, that's always one of them. It's normal. This is not a marker of you. Second thing to ask yourself, is it true that you should be moving faster? Because sometimes we are under this pressure and we are not where we want to be, but we shouldn't be there yet anyway. So if you are partway through your PhD and you know, the expectation is for you to produce X number of papers, how many should you have produced by now? And I'm putting inverted commas around should as usual. Sometimes we actually are on track, but we're sort of stressing that we are not, and often that's because we are anticipating feeling better once we hit that goal. Let me explain more what I mean. If we're in a situation where we are meant to be producing papers and we know that, and we are moving along that path, we are doing the things we need to do, but we haven't yet reached that point where we can say, I have enough papers, but we are not meant to have reached that point yet 'cause we haven't finished our PhD. I want you to ask yourself, how am I expecting myself to feel once I have enough? Whatever that means. Papers at the end of my PhD. Am I expecting that that will make me confident. Am I expecting that that will make me feel calm? Am I expecting that? That will make me feel secure if you are looking to the achievement of those goals to give yourself emotions Then you are going to feel stressed for the rest of your academic career. I'm really sorry. Because those things are very unlikely to give you lasting emotions. We don't get lasting emotions from changing in circumstances, and this has been shown in loads of different research. It's been shown in research about academia, but it's also been research in things like lottery winners. You think that winning the lottery is gonna make you happy forever, but in reality it makes you happy for a little while and then people usually go back to roughly their baseline level of happiness. Their environment may have changed, but their actual emotions stay remarkably consistent. Now what this means is we get to ask ourselves, firstly, if I expect that I will feel confident, calm, and secure, when I reach my target, how can I induce those emotions in myself now. How can I induce those emotions in myself on the way? And you might said, well, I don't need to. I just need to get there. And then I will. But once you get there, I promise, other goals are gonna come up. Then you're gonna want your secure academic job, then you're gonna want your first grant, then you're gonna want your first PhD student to have finished. Then you're gonna want your first promotion, B blah, blah, blah, blah. And all the time you'll be telling yourself you'll feel better once you reach that next milestone. We need to identify what those emotions are gonna be that we think we're gonna get when we achieve that goal, when we've published enough and we need to think about how we can induce them now. And the way we induce them now is the thoughts we tell ourselves, is the beliefs that we instill in ourselves is the way that we speak to ourselves, okay? Publishing papers is not gonna make the pressure go away, I promise. The second thing you can do is set your own markers of success. If you dislike the markers of success that are routinely used in the environment around you, yes, you absolutely need to jump through their hoops potentially in order to finish PhD, secure jobs, all those things, but you get to decide what your markers of success are and that can be a whole variety of things. That can be around enjoying your work. That can be around what time you finish on a Friday, that can be around doing meaningful work that's changing people's lives, you, that can be around doing work that other people think is interesting and that you can share more widely. You get to pick your own markers of success and focus on those. So you're in an environment that only in your mind respects, publishing as the marker of success. But you can pick other ones too, and we can focus on and celebrate our ability to hit those. The third thing is you also get to put your own boundaries around this too. You get to decide, okay, I'm in an environment that values this. I value these other things. I'm interested in that, but really these are the things I value. This is how hard I am willing to work. This is the hours I'm willing to put in to reach the things that I believe are success markers, jump through their hoops to whatever extent I can, and this is how much I'm willing to put in. If it takes more than that, I'm not willing to do it, and the consequences will be what the consequences are. You get to decide what those boundaries are because if you burn yourself out as a PhD student, hating the publish or parish culture, but forcing yourself to try and adhere to it. Your reward is going to be going into an academic environment where exactly the same is true, and then you get to do it again, and that's not fun. Now, this is not in any way saying therefore you're not cut out for a career in academia. No, a hundred percent no. What you get to do instead is you get to decide. I at the moment, would like a career in academia as long as I can try and focus on these things as well as jumping through your hoops, and I can do it within this amount of effort. And then you get to succeed as far as you can. I have seen people succeed all the way up to professor with that mindset, with the, this is how much I'm willing to give. If it's enough, it's enough. If it's not, I'll do other things or I will choose to walk away, whatever that might be. But you get to decide those markers of success, decide those boundaries. It can feel really hard. It gets easier as you become more senior. It's really hard as a PhD student to put that to one side. I absolutely get that. And it's completely normal for you to feel pressured. But let's talk to ourselves in a way that already helps us feel more confident, already helps us feel calm, already helps us feel more secure. And then we work at the pace we're working to the within the boundaries that we set for ourselves, and we do the best we can. If you don't know how to do that, if you are struggling with how to even speak to yourself to induce those emotions, to take the pressure off, then do make sure you're on my newsletter. Over the next month, I am gonna be starting to tell people more about the membership 'cause we open at the end of July. I'll be telling you more about how I support clients and the transformations that I'm already seeing in the students that are going through that process. So if you're listening to this going, sounds nice, but dunno how I'd ever do that. Make sure you're listening so that you can hear more about the membership in due course. Thank you all so much for listening. I really hope that you found that useful. People on my newsletter, and if you're not on my newsletter, why not? People on my newsletter send me more questions, I'm gonna do another one of these in five, six weeks time. I'd love to be accumulating more questions for it, so drop 'em to me and I'll answer 'em for you. In the meantime, if you have other ones, you're not sure whether I've done a podcast on it before, make sure you check the PhD Life coach archive. Make sure that you search generically. So I've had some questions from people saying, oh, I don't think you've talked about how to do a lit review. I find it really overwhelming. If that's you, I want you to look for overwhelming. Rather than for lit review. I'll occasionally do episodes where I talk about a specific activity like writing or reading, but usually I will be talking about the kind of thoughts and feelings that underpin that. So search for too much to do, search for overwhelm, search for procrastinating, all those sorts of things, and you'll find a ton of episodes. Thank you all so much for listening, and I'll see you next week. Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics time.
< Today you get to hear a real coaching session with a listener, Ruth, who is considering not finishing her PhD. We talk through the reasons and I take her through a process to help her make a decision that works for her. This is a great episode for you if you ever doubt your own abilities to finish your PhD or if you have any big decisions to make. Transcript Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. And for the first time in quite a while, this is going to be one of my coaching episodes where I get a real life listener to come and talk about something they're finding challenging at the moment. And so I'm super excited to be joined by Ruth today. Hi, Ruth. Thank you for coming on. Ruth: Thank you for having me. Vikki: No problem. So Ruth contacted me. I did a bit of a shout out. Those of you who aren't on my newsletter, you need to be. 'cause every now and again I do a shout out asking for volunteers and Ruth replied to that with a challenge that, to be honest, I hear more often than you might think. And so I thought it would be a really good fit for the podcast. And so that's why we're here today. So maybe we start Ruth with you telling people a little bit about who you are and what challenge you came to me with. Ruth: Okay. So, i've been doing my PhD for on and off for about 10 years. And I'm now at a point where I'm utterly terrified of it and I'm not quite sure if I wanna carry on or not. That is the problem I wrote to you with. Vikki: Yes, yes. And that's why I said it's a problem that unfortunately I hear too often. This, this challenge of, you know, it's not what I thought it was gonna be. I'm having these really big emotions about it and I dunno what to go from there. So let's start by just getting a bit of backstory. So you say you've been doing it 10 years on and off. Yeah. You don't have to go into lots and lots of detail, but just gimme a little bit of a backstory as to how we got where we are. Ruth: Sure. So, I think I started actually in 2016, so it's not quite 10 years. I was working in the education sector at the time. I was in a full-time role. So I think the, you know, mistake number one was probably, you know, trying to work full-time in quite a stressful job with the PhD. My two children were quite young at that point. Ruth: That's how it got started. So the PhD's in education, so it sort of fitted in that sense. I took some leave of absences in that time and as I'm sure you can imagine over such a, quite a long period of time, I've have had some supervisory changes, which have all been fine in terms of the supervisors and their support. Ruth: But every time you have a supervisor change, it was almost like taking another step back, you know, this sort of another six months added, having to rebuild those relationships. And then I got to a point where I needed to leave the education sector. I was working in further education and it's quite a, a stressful and an intense sector to work in, as I'm sure lots of sectors are. So I took a bit of a break, started doing some other jobs, so that I could just be a bit home at the more, a bit more and theoretically give me a bit more time to work on my PhD. I did all right at that for a couple of years and then I basically did my data collection, which was interviews, got to the end of that, and that's when this struggle hit. I am running perilously close towards my end date. Vikki: Okay. So you've got all your data and you are part through your analysis. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: Is anything written? Ruth: I've got a draft lit review that will need reviewing. Of course. I've got half an introduction. I've got the methodology chapter, and then I think that's it in terms of the structure itself. Yeah. I've got tons of other stuff that probably won't ever make it in, but I've got, you know, there's quite a body of work there, if that makes sense. Vikki: Yeah. And then it would be a results, analysis chapter. A discussion, conclusion. A little mini conclusion. Yeah. And that would be the, the structure. Ruth: That would be it, yeah. Vikki: Okay, cool. It's always just useful to get a kind of handle on exactly where we're at with things. Yeah. Now tell me more about what you are thinking about your PhD at the moment. Ruth: So it's a really, if I take this subject and the research question I've got, it's actually really important to me. It's a question that it has always been important to me, throughout my career in education but also, so what I've done is I've collected life histories um, and actually the whole process of, making those connections with the people that were willing to give me their time and their stories that's probably my biggest driver now to completing it because they've given me this, you know, gift, I suppose and I don't want to just abandon that, that feels really, I'm not sure the word is dishonest, but that feels, I don't know, there's a bit of integrity there that I have in myself that I would like to take that forward with them. Vikki: And what's making that feel difficult at the moment? Ruth: I don't know whether it's because I've stepped out of education but also working independently in quite a remote place in the country, it's quite isolating. There's not much networking. I'm distant from my university, and I feel quite stupid sometimes. Ruth: Like I've lost those sparks that you get from conversations from being around other people that are doing this sort of thing. So I feel very alone in it, and I think that means that I rely really, really heavily on good interactions within supervisory meetings. Yeah. And the minute my confidence gets knocked, then I'm like, oh, I'm just really stupid and my, I actually can't do this. I actually can't do it. I don't have the capacity to do it. Vikki: Yeah. And how does that feel telling yourself that ? Ruth: Awful? It feels awful. It feels like I'm really heart wrenchingly sad, really sad. Vikki: Let's drill into it a little bit. Okay. Okay. If you can sit with the sad at the moment. Yeah, yeah. What do you think you mean when you say you don't think you can do it? Ruth: I wonder if I'm clever enough. I get hijacked by big things. So like, you know, this is, I'll be working on the data analysis and then suddenly I think, oh, but what if somebody asks me this, you know, in the Viva or whatever. And then I'll be like, oh, I don't know. And I haven't read enough and I'm not gonna have time to read enough and I'm gonna look really silly. And they're gonna say, oh, wow. What are you doing all of this time? And then I'll think, oh, I can't do it, then I can't do it. Um, so yeah, I, I get easily hijacked by things that, you know, are quite far down the line, I suppose. Ruth: And I have a worry and anxiety about being told that I'm wrong, or I should have done it this, or I should have done it. And then I think, well, why am I doing it? Oh, no! I've created these scenarios in my head. I understand that. Um, yeah. Vikki: So why, and this might sound like a strange one, but go with me. Okay. Why does it feel like a problem to be told that you are wrong or that you could have done something differently? Ruth: That is a good question. There's definitely something about imposter syndrome in there and that fear of being caught out. I remember that definitely when I was working in education,, I kept getting promoted and there was always that, oh no, they're gonna find me out this time. They're gonna find me out this time. And I think that, um, you know, when you've had a poor experience with the delivery of feedback, and then that makes you not want to get feedback. There is a bit of that as well. Vikki: Yeah, no, definitely. And without going into the details of how it was delivered or anything like that, how did that feel for you? Ruth: Okay, so I've had a couple of experiences where that's happened and I think I cried for about a month after one of them. Um, and that was a verbal sort of feedback thing. There was another incident which was delivered via email and it was an interesting one because the feedback within the email was, um, awful. It was dreadful. It made me feel about this, this big. Um, but then when I read through the comments within the body of work, they weren't actually that bad. So it, I was like, I can't marry this up because had I received the document, I would've been able to take that very constructively and worked with that. Ruth: But having it topped with a very, I guess, patronizing type email, really threw me. I don't need people saying, oh no, you're doing a really good job all the time. I'm not saying that I can't take, I can take constructive criticism. As well as a PhD student, I'm a writer and writers get rejection all the time. Right? So I can live with that and I can work with that, but in this case it really, really bothers me. Vikki: Okay. Right. I want us to get a little bit more specific 'cause this something I see with my clients in the membership all the time is that we criticize ourselves for really big things. I am not clever enough to do a PhD. I'm not smart enough to be here. I can't do it. Whatever it is. Yeah. And one of the things I always encourage people to do, and I'd like to support you to do now, is to actually try and narrow that down a little bit. Vikki: Okay. Because a PhD is made up of a whole bunch of different activities, a whole bunch of different skills and stuff like that. And I think it's useful just to be a little bit more specific about what we're criticizing ourselves for. Okay. So tell me a bit more, which bits of this do you think you are not good enough at? Ruth: Okay. I think the thing that I don't think I'm gonna be good at is around the discussion. So if I flip that question on its head a little bit, the thing that I have been good at and really enjoyed was the development of the research questions. Really getting down to what it is that I was doing and then finding the methodology that best fit that. And then doing that so that all was brilliant. I'm even okay with the data analysis. I like that and I can enjoy that, but the deeper I got into that, the more I started thinking, this is all great, but I'm very concerned now about how I write this up as a discussion. Ruth: That is a very different skill, isn't it? And that, that bit, that bit frightens me. I got frightened during the lit review in the sense that I was worried constantly that I was missing something and therefore continually trying to read more and make it perfect and perfect and perfect. Ruth: And I think that that experience, I'm sort of pulling into the discussion in advance and thinking, I'm not going to be able to do this. Vikki: Okay. How does it feel getting a bit more specific about it? Ruth: Better, better, better. Because it becomes less nebulous, doesn't it? . And if, I guess it's, you know, if you can pick bits off and just go, okay, actually maybe it's not the whole PhD, maybe it's just this bit of it. That's makes it a bit more tangible and something you can hold. Vikki: And let's get specific on the other part because, so at the moment we've narrowed it down that actually, you know, you had a bit of some struggles with your lit review. Mostly the kind of, sounds to me, reasonably normal kind of perfectionism that people have when they're writing that sort of thing for the first time. You loved formulating the question, you loved picking your design, you designed it, you carried it out. So there's a huge chunk of this that you actually really enjoyed and felt that you were pretty good at. Ruth: Yes. Vikki: And so now we've got to more specific about which bit of the PhD is the discussion that feels really challenging. Now I wanna get more specific about you. So, rather than saying I am not good enough to write a discussion, what specifically are you concerned that you can't do for that discussion? Ruth: I think I guess the easiest way to explain this would be to be writing the discussion and maybe even the conclusion and thinking that you've added something to the body of literature only for, to then discover that actually everybody already knew it. There's definitely that, and that I will, perhaps because I'm not immersed in that world anymore, that I will miss something really, really obvious and therefore by avoiding it, I won't miss it. Vikki: So we're most concerned that you'll miss something Ruth: Yes. Vikki: And that that'll mean something bad if you do. Ruth: Yes. Vikki: So does that mean you think you can write a discussion, it just might miss something? Ruth: I'm concerned I will write it wrong, that I won't understand how it should be written and therefore write it wrong. That probably sounds really silly, doesn't it? Given that you can, and I have read, you know, other people's PhD thesis in, you know, not just in this area, but in lots of different areas, just to get a, you know, a flavor for, you know, structure and language, et cetera. But I, I am concerned about that. I'm afraid of that. Vikki: What would wrong mean though? Because again, we are back to using very general phrases. What does wrong mean? Ruth: I guess, if I imagine a scenario where I send a chunk of work to my supervisors to have a look at, for them to come back and go. No, no, this is not how you do it. And that sounds really daft when I say it out loud, because actually, if you're only a few pages in then actually knowing that at that point, it's quite helpful. It's really interesting because like when I, when I say that to you, that sounds a really silly thing because I'm not gonna get it right first time. Vikki: I mean, I'm not even sure what right means in this context. Ruth: Okay. So really, really wrong. Like, if they were saying, this is not a PhD. What are you doing? Vikki: But this is what's really, really useful for anybody who is generically criticizing themselves. Ruth: Okay. Vikki: Is the more specific we get. Yeah. Either we hit on something that's solvable. Yeah. Like it's learnable or we realize there's not much substance to this. Ruth: Yeah. Okay. Vikki: Because if what you are really worried about is that you end up writing a discussion that is just in no way the shape of a discussion should have. Bear in mind, that could be a whole variety of things, right? Depending on the discipline, depending on the approach you take and whatever, then you get to go, well, how would that happen? Because remember, we are not talking about first drafts. We're not talking about, 'cause if you hand in a few thousand words and your supervisors say, this is no idea what you've been doing, Ruth, this is rubbish , then that don't feel good. Right? But that's not the end of this line. That's not a pass fail issue. That's a, okay, I need to do this again in a different way with some more information from them. But if we are talking about, I'm not capable of doing this, as in the version you submit gets that response from your examiners, then we get to go, really, are we really believing that you are gonna write a discussion? Somehow get it past your supervisors and submit it that your examiner is gonna go, this just isn't even a discussion. Ruth: Yeah, yeah. I can see that. I can, I can see that. That's an unlikely scenario to get to, isn't it? Vikki: And so what, then we get to backpedal a little bit. We say, okay, that's probably unlikely. Okay. I don't want you to call it silly 'cause this stuff all comes from somewhere and it is, it feels so, so true and so, so dangerous. I get that. But we get to just backpedal a little bit. So it's like, okay, what am I actually worried they might say? What is it a little bit more plausible that they might critique me for? Ruth: Hmm. Yeah, because all I can, all that goes on in my head when you say that is that they'll go, you are wrong, you are wrong, you've got this all wrong. But then you'll say, well, what does wrong mean? And I guess I'm worried that what, that they will prob that they could say, if we don't think you're actually up to this, Vikki: but up to what? Ruth: Finishing, Vikki: but, but which bit? Because a viva is not a test of whether you are good enough to have a PhD. A Viva is a defense of a piece of work. Ruth: I, I do understand that, like on paper, but I do feel, I do get a bit hijacked by the thought that actually, even though that's the process, that that's secretly what people might be doing, Vikki: I can't say it never is. Right? I have looked after people in the past. I have coached people who have had viva experiences that I don't think are appropriate. Okay. So I'm not gonna say that that never happens, but it happens way less than people fear It will happen. And it's almost always resolvable, even when that happens. A thesis has to be sufficient work. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: Can be defended in a viva. And what happens when we start getting more specific is we start going, okay, well what are they gonna pick holes in in my discussion? Maybe they'll say they don't agree with the argument I'm making based on my data. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: Maybe they'll say, I don't give sufficient areas for future work. Maybe they'll suggest that I don't acknowledge a key limitation of my work. Ruth: I am worried that they will say, but you've completely ignored the work of Joe Blogs in 2021 or something. Yeah. That's the sort of like, you know, detail that I worry about. That they'll just be like, you know, where have you been? You know, all this stuff's been happening. I am worried about that. Vikki: How do we deal with that? Ruth: I don't know. I don't know. because my approach to that particular concern in the past has been to then basically start trying to rewrite my l review over and over and over again to, and that, that doesn't work because that just sends me back into my little loop of doom. Yeah. Vikki: So the people who were listening on the podcast, you will not have seen me shaking my head. If you're on YouTube, you'll have seen me. No, we don't. We deal with that by saying, yeah. There might be stuff I've missed. I have done systematic, whether it's actually an official systematic review or I have just been systematic in how I've looked at things. I've selected the literature that I wanna include in my thesis. Is there stuff I could have included? Probably. Does it mean my thesis is wrong? No. If the examiners feel strongly about it, I'll add it in my corrections. Ruth: Right. Okay. That does sound a much better approach. Vikki: Now, obviously, I'm not saying, any supervisors listening. I'm not saying, oh, just do a crappy lit review. No one cares, but if you have genuinely put due diligence into your lit review, you've done your best. You know, there's infinite literature out there. We all have to put boundaries around what theoretical frameworks we're gonna talk about, what past literature we're gonna talk about, da, da, da. Vikki: Right. You can check you've made it clear where those boundaries are. I'm including these sorts of studies, but not those sorts of studies. Yeah. I've taken this theoretical approach or this methodological approach because of A, B, C. Yeah. Okay. You can be clear around why you've done that. Yeah. And then there people are allowed to debate it. Yes. That's literally the point of research. Ruth: Yes. Vikki: So at the time of recording last week's podcast, with Dr. Ilana Horwitz, who wrote the Entrepreneurial Scholar, and one of the things she talks about in there is that a thesis isn't the end of a conversation, it's the beginning of one. That theses and research articles are put out there to start conversations and some of those conversations will be, I wonder why Ruth didn't include the whatever method. Yeah. And that's okay. Someone can use that method. You will be someone else's gap. Okay, Ruth did this but never did that. Therefore I'm gonna do that. Ruth: Okay. That's helpful. Very helpful. Very helpful. Vikki: I'm leaving space for somebody else to, to write their PhD in. Ruth: I like that. That's nice. That's a really lovely way of framing it. Vikki: Yeah. It's what we are doing. Right? We look at other people's research and go, oh, a limitation of the Vikki et al study is that she never did X, and that seems important to me, so let's go try. Ruth: Yeah. Okay. Doing it. Yeah. Vikki: We're not saying that they're rubbish and they should never have got a PhD because they didn't do this thing. No, we're saying, oh, look at us finding a gap. Aren't we clever? Ruth: Yeah. Okay. I like that a lot. Yeah. Vikki: Now I know we haven't actually got on to talking about whether you should finish this or not and I think we should get to that. The reason I wanted to do this stuff first is because sometimes we have a whole bunch of stories that are clouding that decision in the first place. Yeah. And it sounds as though you have your fair share of those. Right. It sounds as though there's a whole bunch of stuff in terms of some of the interactions you've had, which we won't go into but stuff around some very, very general criticisms that you're giving yourself. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: That once we start sort of scratching at them a little bit are perhaps not quite as robust criticisms of yourself as they could be. Ruth: Yeah. Okay. Vikki: And the reason that's useful is because as we decide, you could believe all the things I just said and decide not to finish your PhD. Vikki: And that is absolutely fine too. But what we wanna be trying to do is make any decision about whether you are gonna do this from a place where you are essentially thinking you could be fine either way. Ruth: Okay. Vikki: I could choose to do my PhD and I can believe that I could be fine while doing it. I don't have to burn myself out further to do it. I don't have to beat myself up. This doesn't have to be this awful torture. I can believe that I'm capable of doing the next bit and that I'll figure out the bit after that and we'll keep doing that until the thing's done and handed in. Or I believe I can be fine putting this to bed, saying I'm not doing it. Feeling whatever emotions I feel about that, but not making it mean loads of things about myself. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: Okay. Yeah. So let's go to that side now. Okay. How would it feel to decide not to do your PhD? Ruth: I think there would be a very short term relief. But I would probably, I don't wanna jump to the word regret, but I would wonder, I probably for the quite a long time about whether I'd just done that out of fear. It. It does make me sad to think of that. Vikki: Mm-hmm. But that's okay. Sad is okay. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: Sad is a really pure emotion. It would be slightly odd for you to decide not to do something that you decided 10 years ago you wanted to do. Yeah. And you've put all this work. It would be slightly odd not to be sad about that. We don't have to avoid sad. Ruth: No. Okay. Vikki: Yeah. Sad feels rubbish. But it's because you care about it. It's fine. Yeah. We can look after you through sad if needs be. Ruth: Mm-hmm. Vikki: The bit about regret though is optional. Ruth: Yeah. Okay. Vikki: And this is why understanding your process of decision making is so important because if you can make sure that you are making decisions for reasons that you love. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: Then anytime the regretful thoughts come up in future, you remind us, I made this decision for reasons I love. Ruth: Okay. Vikki: And I stand by the version of me that made that decision. Ruth: Okay. Vikki: Tell me what you're thinking. Ruth: Yeah. I am thinking, because there's, when I have considered that option, there's, my immediate thought was, yeah, but how would I explain that to the people that gave me their time as you know, participants. How would I explain that? What would my answer be? And honestly, at the moment, my honest answer to them would have to be, well, I just got really overwhelmed and afraid of it. Ruth: And that doesn't feel like a good reason. That doesn't. If you feel, you feel overwhelmed and you know, you, you take a break and see if you feel better in a, you know, a month or so. Right. You don't just give it up because it keeps you awake at night Vikki: don't you? Ruth: I don't know. That just feels, somebody asked me the other day, I live in a small town. And quite innocently they said, why are you doing it? Are you doing it for your ego? No, they, they weren't being like, you know, funny with me. I really like them, but it was such a good question and I was like, I don't think so because I'm not in that sort of place anymore where, you know, you are sort of bumping into people at conferences. But the equally where I was going with that is there is a part of my ego that doesn't wanna let go of it because, you know, ego's still important. You know, I'm not saying like, ooh, you know, Vikki: but what would it mean about you if you didn't do it? Ruth: I was a quitter. Okay. Quitter gave up because it got hard. Vikki: Okay. For people not on YouTube. You can't see the face that Ruth is pulling right now. Whatcha thinking about the fact that you just said that? Ruth: Uh, I've just started laughing, I think, but I'm not sure if I'm laughing hysterically or not. I don't know. Vikki: Because that's optional too? Telling yourself you're a quitter and the quitting things is a bad thing is completely optional too. Ruth: There's one thing that , so basically when I left my job, right, that was a massive decision. That was a massive, huge decision because it was a, you know, it was a good salary, it was a good position, but I gave time to that decision and I was so confident that it was the right thing, and because of that, I don't regret it. Ruth: So I think that's what you're talking a little bit about. Yeah. If you have confidence in that decision, then actually the, you know, the fact that I gave up a really good position and a really good salary, et cetera, and I'm really happy with that. And I've embraced this, you know, slightly strange new life. Ruth: And I've loved it and grown from it. I, despite the months that I've been thinking about this decision, I don't have that confidence and I almost want that feeling again before I make that decision. Vikki: Why did you have the confidence in that one, do you think? Ruth: I almost don't know because on paper it was a really bad one. Like, you know, I had some really funny looks from that one. Not from my immediate family or anything like that, but you know, from people within that circuit. I think because I, when we were talking about it, and when I came sort of right close to that decision, everything just started to feel right. Everything just started to go, okay, okay. And that, and that, and the decision making process itself brought peace. Ruth: But before I sort of, you know, made that decision and, you know, handed in my notice, I was already feeling better and I have not got that this time. There was something in the whole process last time that felt right. Whereas this time, I keep coming back to that word that it would be quitting. It would be, you know, I know there's the whole thing about, you know, grit and, you know, you carry on but for this one, it just, it's not there. I, I think I'd probably hide in shame a little bit. I feel really ashamed. Vikki: So it's no wonder it's making it a hard decision. No. If one of the options in some ways is tempting and in other ways is shrouded in a load of shame, it's not a surprise. It feels like a really hard decision. Ruth: No. Vikki: I want you to think about ways, and this is not me persuading you to quit your PhD. I genuinely believe you can be absolutely fine either way. Yeah. And I think that is the best starting point for a decision like this. I want you to think about how could it be a great decision to not continue? How would that mean wonderful things about you instead of bad things about you? Ruth: I will be really honest at this like, like point in time I cannot think of a single thing. Vikki: That I am someone who prioritizes her mental health. I, yes, I'm someone who has other options that they can reengage with that are just as meaningful. I'm someone who knows they don't have to finish something just because they started it 10 years ago. Mm-hmm. I'm someone who can make difficult decisions. I'm someone who can look after myself when I'm sad because it didn't go the way I wanted it to. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: I'm someone who trusts that I can be Okay anyway. I am someone and you can, it sounds as though this is true, so I'm gonna make some assumptions. I'm someone who's surrounded by people who will support me regardless of what I decide. Ruth: Yeah, that is true. That is true. Yeah. Vikki: I think that's a bunch of it is things that it could mean about you. Ruth: Yeah, I, I take those, it would never have come up Vikki: It's something I wanted to do once and it didn't work out the way I wanted it to work out and that's a bummer. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: I'm someone who knows when to cut their losses. I. Ruth: Okay. Vikki: And what I would then encourage you to do is then think about the other side, the continuing to do it. But not to think about it with anything that undermines those reasons , because it would be very easy to create a narrative. I'm someone who always finishes what they start. I'm someone who has grit and resilience, da, da, da, all that stuff. But that undermines the other stuff. Yeah. We want both sides to feel true and both sides to feel. Okay. Ruth: Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Vikki: So on that side we might have things like, I'm someone who can work through things one step at a time. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: I'm someone who can look after themselves when they find something difficult. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: That sort of thing. Ruth: Yeah. Okay. Vikki: Okay. Because if over here we like hold up as amazing, the I'm someone who can finish things, then it makes this side a bit sticky. Ruth: Yeah. Okay. I can, I see that and I can see how easy it would just to just do that. Vikki: The other thing I wanna check in before we finish is I think there are ways you could think of honoring the work of the people who contributed to your studies either way. Ruth: Do you? Because I couldn't, I couldn't think of any because I just thought that, you know, everything that they contributed to and everything I've got is all, you know, obviously it's super wrapped up in, you know, protected by the appropriate processes at the university. So I always just assumed that once that book got closed, if you like, then it would just be gone, deleted. Vikki: I mean, you'd need to check with your university. Yeah. But as the pi you can write up for publication one assumes if you wanted to. Ruth: Okay. Vikki: Without submitting it for your thesis. I don't see why. Okay. It would be important to check that there's no regulations to prevent that happening. You'd probably need your supervisor's consent. Ruth: Okay. Okay. That's good to know. That's good to think about. Vikki: There's stuff around informal feedback to participants. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: Stuff around, look, this is the situation. These are the reasons I've made the decisions that I'm making. However, I have done preliminary analysis. These are the sorts of things that are coming out. I've written you a bit of a report that kind of summarizes what I did and what I found so that you can see the sorts of things that came out of it. Ruth: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Vikki: As a kind of non-published, but just for you so you can see that, you know, some love and care and thought did go into this. Yeah. And I think there's some interesting things here. Ruth: Okay. That's really important to me. So yeah, Vikki: we can present at a conference and then never write it up. Ruth: Okay. Vikki: You've shared it publicly. People are aware work has been done. Ruth: Okay. Vikki: You can write a book chapter, there's, there's many, many routes. You can just explain to them the situation and be okay with that too. Ruth: Yeah, yeah. Okay. That is really important for me to think about. Vikki: Because those are sort of what I would call like sticky thoughts. Because when you're trying to make a decision, if you've got a sticky thought in your head, like, I would be letting down my participants. Particularly something where it's really important to you. It's an important part of your sort of sense of self that you are not letting them down. Whatever that would mean. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: Then that sort of sticky thought is important to resolve before you try and make the decision. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: 'Cause otherwise it just sits really heavy on the side of, I've gotta finish this thing. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: Now taking that sticky one away doesn't mean you have to not finish or you have to finish. It means neither, but it just cleans it up a little bit. Ruth: Yep. Vikki: Yeah. And so I think for me, the two thoughts I want you to really clean up before you make any decisions are that this would mean something bad for my participants and this would mean something bad about me. Because neither of those things are true and they're kinda unfair, sticky thoughts. Once you can, you know, we're never gonna make them completely go away, but once you can sort of process those a bit, decide that those are not necessarily just strictly true thoughts. And there's different ways of you being okay and it meaning lots of positive things about you and it not necessarily meaning that you've let them down in any meaningful way. Once we can kind of tidy that up a bit, then we can get to what do I actually just want to do? Yeah. Because you allowed to just pick what you want to do. Ruth: Are you? Vikki: You could just pick for no other reason than it's what you want to do. Okay. Why didn't you finish your PhD? Didn't want to in the end. Why did you finish your PhD when it looked like it was being super hard? 'cause I wanted to. Either's fine and it doesn't have to have more explanation than that. Vikki: Okay. Yeah. And there's gonna be some self-coaching on either side. Yeah. 'cause if you choose to carry on, there's gonna be a load of self-coaching around supporting yourself while you do things that are not just magically not gonna feel hard anymore. No. There's gonna be a bunch of coaching on that side and there's gonna be a bunch of self-coaching on the site if you decide not to. Yeah. 'cause whilst you can believe and tell yourself that you're not gonna beat yourself up for it, you're not gonna have regrets,. Those things are gonna come up 'cause our brains are fishy like that. So there's gonna be coaching, like self coaching on yourself either. Ruth: Yeah. Vikki: How are you feeling? Ruth: Um, I was gonna I feel much better. I feel much better, um, because that the whole, I think it's just been, yeah, I'm probably just gonna have to like go and lie in a dark room for a minute. Vikki: Yeah. It's a lot to take in. Ruth: It is a lot to take in. Vikki: It's the joy for doing it for the podcast is you get to listen to it again. Ruth: I know. Yeah, definitely. Um, yeah. The joy for everybody listening to on the podcast is that they haven't seen all of the ridiculous faces I've been making through Vikki: While they could go to YouTube and check them out there, but quite seriously though. Yes, there'll be so many people listening who are empathizing with this, who have either had these doubts or having these doubts, are making these decisions now. Vikki: And I think just hearing somebody else talk them through, hearing where they've got options, I think will, will help a lot of people. So thank you so much for being so, so open and honest about it all. It's important. Ruth: I, I am so pleased that you have picked me to come and talk about it because I think there is, you know, there will be people out there like me. I know there are, and it's, it's scary and it's. You know, it's, you don't really wanna admit it. And I get particularly not to supervisors, so it's, you know, that's not, you know, something you really wanna do. Is it? So actually, yeah. Yeah. Well, I hope that it encourages other people to be brave. Vikki: Definitely. Ruth: Whatever that means. Vikki: I'm sure you have inspired them. Thank you so much, and thank you everyone for listening, and I will see you next week.
< In this episode, I’m joined by Jess Dineen, who is both a PhD student and a neurodivergent consultant, speaker, coach, and founder of NeuroNatives. We discuss the strengths and challenges of being in academia with autism, how autistic people can support and advocate for themselves, and how individuals and universities can better support neurodivergent people. Whether you are autistic yourself, or you want to be more inclusive and supportive of your autistic colleagues, Jess shares both lived experiences and evidence based strategies that will help. Links I refer to in this episode Connect with Jess on LinkedIn and find out more about her business Neuronatives . Transcript Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast, and this week I have another special guest with me. This week I am joined by Jess Dineen, who is the CEO and founder of Neuronatives. So, hi Jess. Jess: Hi Vikki. Great to be here. Great to be on the podcast today. Vikki: I'm so excited to have you here. Why don't we start off as usual people, just tell people a little bit about who you are and what Neuronatives even is. Jess: Sure. So, Neuronatives is a consultancy training company to raise awareness, and make workplaces more neuro inclusive. The whole idea of the business is very much to back what we're saying with science. So really using journal articles, research papers to support what we're talking about. And also backing it with lived experience as well. So I myself late diagnosed autistic and A DHD , and so a lot of what I talk about is based on my lived experience and also kind of client's experience as well. Vikki: Yeah. And what do you aim to do with the organization? Jess: The aim eventually is to run tailored consultancy. So starting off, you know, right at the top, kind of strategy, getting workplace, companies being more neuroinclusive. So thinking about their long-term vision, their hiring policies, you know, everything from recruitment to retention to then how you are managing your team. Um, thinking about your workplace policies, and then down to individual manager training. So how to get the most out of your employees and support them. 'cause the stats are there, you know, the more inclusive your workplace is, the more productive your workplace is, and the higher retention rates it's gonna be. Jess: So that's the aim. And also alongside that we hope to offer more coaching as well. We're quite a small business and we're right at the beginning of the journey but taking very much a tailored approach and not just framework, not a tick box exercise, to make real change for neurodivergent individuals. Vikki: For sure. Yeah. And why does that feel so important for you right now? Jess: I think being late diagnosed myself and the amount of. Kind of effort that I had to go to advocate for myself. And even at the start of the journey, getting diagnosis, getting the forms done but then also in the workplace what I needed. Jess: When I asked for adjustments, you know, to go from working five days in the office to a few days in the office, I cried 'cause I was acknowledging that I needed that support and that that was okay. I don't want other people to have to take all that time to figure that stuff out. I want to be able to it already be in place. Jess: And I think also the amount of stress employees have who are neurodivergent around, you know, advocating themselves, having these conversations, knowing where to start. It should already be happening at recruitment or even hiring stage, um, these conversations as to how to work with me or, you know, what best practice looks like. Jess: So neurodivergent individuals are often already tired just by living life. So to have to advocate for themselves and then advocate for themselves in work, is just another layer of, of complexity and stress, especially if you are autistic. From my personal experience, the kind of social nuances and, how you perform or how you're masking at work is another barrier I guess. So I'm trying to remove barriers, I guess is my, is my, long and short of it. Vikki: Perfect. And as you know, but just for the listeners, we are gonna mostly focus on autism today. So I know you have expertise across both autism and A DHD, but we've had an episode with Dr. Alex Conner on before. So we've talked about A DHD quite a bit and because of my own proclivities, it tends to come up quite regularly throughout the episodes. Vikki: Yeah. And, but I wanted to really get somebody in who has expertise in, in autism specifically. Sure. Yeah. Obviously everything you talk about will apply to both and don't feel like you can't talk about ADHD stuff, but I'm really excited to have somebody with specific expertise and experience in autism, to talk about it. Yeah. So maybe let's start there actually, for people who are less familiar. What actually is autism? Jess: So autism. So it depends which lens we look through. So you might look through the medical model. So if you go to the DSM, so the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders, a word I hate is very much called a neurodevelopmental condition. Jess: So usually diagnosed in childhood, hence neurodevelopmental during the developmental period. Um, and it's where, um, so this is all kind of the clinical terms, not necessarily reflecting my opinion, how it should be viewed. But where someone might have challenges, significant challenges in social interaction, communication, and that could be also difficulties and communication skills, social behaviors that significantly impair daily functioning. Jess: And they do vary from one person to the next, so they might have kind of special interests or all sorts of different things. There's different areas in which you can be diagnosed, but often it looks and presents differently between males and females, and a lot of women are being diagnosed later due to a kind of broadening of the criteria, but also more visibility of what it looks like in women. Jess: The word kind of deficit disorder is something that I do not agree with. I'm very much against the medical model , but as if you wanted to look for kind of a diagnosis that, that is what it, you would find in the kind of clinical literature. Vikki: And how would you prefer to define it? Jess: I definitely would prefer to define it as kind of differences in communication styles, differences in social interactions and behaviors. I wouldn't say I am deficit. I would just think I'm maybe more, for me personally, more direct, more assertive. I hate small talk. I do it because I know that that's what I'm supposed to do, but I don't like it. I think it's also remiss not to say that everyone is unique. So all autistic individuals are different. So you might find someone like myself who, you know, reasonably social and you know, can have a conversation and make eye contact, but it does time me out. Jess: So I guess, older, older kind of literature would say, I'm high functioning and then the older literature might also say someone's low functioning if they're not able to do those things. I think it's, I'm just functioning. You don't see me on the days where I'm not talking and I'm burnt out and I don't leave my bed. Jess: So I think I definitely have challenges. But I would say there are more differences in communication styles and some people love my approach and love my style. Vikki: Perfect. And I know you work across a whole range of different companies and organizations, but thinking specifically about academia, I know you are doing a PhD yourself. Yeah. What challenges do you see autistic people having when doing PhDs and in academia more generally? Jess: I'm actually in my second year of doing a PhD now, so I think I've managed to see a bit of what I've experienced and then others around me and those I've worked with and I think the kind of number one challenge is communication, and expectations. I think in academia we have all sorts of tools. We have email, we have teams or Zoom, you know, whichever the university uses . And I think it's really good at the beginning to start off with, you know, what communication style does your supervisor like? Is it an email, is it teams message or a teams meeting? Jess: Is it a face-to-face meeting? And what are the expectations? I think challenges that I've come across is what are the expectations in terms of communication? What is their role? And some supervisors may be very clear and some may not be. And so I've had to learn the hard way as to what is expected of me and what methods work for my supervisors. But I think also in academia, there's quite a lot of unwritten rules and unwritten kind of structure and hierarchy that is not necessarily apparent to autistic individuals, especially, you know, someone like myself. It's very easy to make those mistakes. So I think it's being aware of those and if you're able to ask someone in the team or if you're able to get that awareness that's really important. Jess: So that's the one. I think second is again, expectations, but more in a kind of deadlines, you know, what's expected of you by when, and agreements as to what that looks like. Sudden changes or sudden like, you know, asked to do a presentation or something really unexpectedly or things like that are very uncomfortable, very, very stressful for those in my experience who have autism. So knowing what the semester looks like, knowing, you know, if you are on a scholarship, what you're teaching, having advanced notice of when you're teaching it, what content you're teaching, not getting it, you know, like three days beforehand. Vikki: I was really interested in you talking about the sort of unwritten rules. Yeah. And I think some of the stuff around how seriously to take particular comments I've seen , people with autism struggle with in academia mm-hmm. Where supervisors make a sort of slightly throwaway comment about, oh, it might be good to add that analysis or whatever. Yes, yes. Um, and to be honest, it's confusing for all students when that happens. I agree. I agree. But if you particularly struggle with sort of the unwritten side of things as it were, yeah then figuring out, does that mean I should do it? Was that an idea? Was that an order, was that a suggestion? What, what did they mean by that? I've certainly seen people come unstuck with that sort of thing where, and you can tell me whether this is something that's accurate or just sort of what I've seen with my clients, but I see that, that my clients with autism tend to fall on the side of taking it as an actual instruction and definitely doing it. Jess: Yeah. That's a really great point. Vikki: Rather than a Did they mean that, I dunno. Kind of, yeah. Jess: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And I think the one thing that I've learned from that is thinking about having a summary of what was discussed in the meeting and what are the action points. So then you can kind of nail down like what you know. The supervisor said this, did they actually mean that? 'cause they have to sign that form and get it back to the senior team, whatever. So a challenge would be, like you said, is taking what they're saying is gospel or literally, then doing a lot of work. And actually that wasn't needed or what wasn't the case. , I remember back when I did my master's, me and my supervisor, and we had to publish the paper actually but she'd asked me to go and look at some journals that might be suitable. So I went away and did a table, the impact factor, the name of the journal, the submission diff, like how it all worked, the, maybe the referencing style. Jess: And I think she just meant a cursory glance. But I had gone and done an Excel table and when we had our next meeting, I was like, this is the table what you asked for. And she was like, oh, and she didn't mean that. And so it was just quite amusing 'cause I was like, okay, like I really need to kind of double check with her and, you know, she does that with me now, is double check what we've agreed to. Vikki: Yeah, for sure. I guess the other one that I've seen a little bit is, and again, I've seen this with people who don't have autism too, but where people get quite fixed on this is how I want to do this study. Mm. And then I think it's an interesting balance between how you sort of, um, what's the word? How you sort of respect and honor the fact that it's their PhD and that this is, this is what they want to do. And sort of understand the fact that there might be less cognitive flexibility in terms of looking at other options and seeing that different ways could work. Vikki: Yeah. Versus your kind of supervisory responsibility For sure. Sort of advice. Yeah. That might work. I'm not sure, but it's high risk or it's not angled at the journal I thought we were going for. Or I wonder if you me, whether that's something you've experienced or seen. Jess: Yes, yes. I think, task switching is challenging for both, you know, those with autism who might have mono tropic interest, where they're focusing on one thing at a time or where those who have ADHD kind of, this is what I wanna do, I'm not, so what I'm doing right now and this is my hyper focus, don't you dare shift my attention. And so I think. For sure. I think that has definitely come, come up with me and clients where you've set up, but this is my intention, this is the gap in the research. This is where I'm going and this is what I'm doing and I'm gonna answer this question. But then whether it's miscommunication or new things come to light where there's a change needed. Jess: And I've recently gone through one where I've gone from doing a systematic review to now, including many more studies in my systematic review. So from 18 to now 41, to then being like, oh, let's, let's do a meta analysis, which will create much, you know, richer research, rich insights. However, it's kind of, for me personally, it's been really hard 'cause I dug everything, you know, dug deep and, and kind of really went down and got all the information and spent almost a year on the systematic review to then be like, actually this isn't right. Jess: This, we need to change. And I think. It's really difficult. And I think that's the first thing is I would for any, you know, anyone who's listening, like it's as a student or whether you're a supervisor who's looking to help their supervisee is thinking about acknowledging that it's difficult and acknowledging that change is hard. Jess: And it is down to the, the PhD student at the end of the day, like, this is their choice and their PhD. However, you have a supervisor for a reason, right? You have a supervisor who has experience, who has guidance and can help you , hopefully to success, you know, to, to completing your doctorate. So that's something that is, has been important for me to remember is I don't know what I'm doing. Jess: The supervisor might not either, but it's really important to, to remember that as how challenging it is you want to create your best work. And if that is the best work, then that's important to go on and do. And that's something with clients, it's, it's having that conversation of. Yes, it's difficult and let's, let's hash it out and let's get through it and talk about it but what outcome do you want to have? And where do you want to be and how do you get there? And, and don't get me wrong, that kind of wrestling and that, you know, changing topic and changing direction can bring up all sorts of emotions, anger, fear, frustration , all sorts , lots of procrastination 'cause I don't wanna start with new task, new topic. Um, yeah. And, and kind of strategies that I've kind of gone with is to say, okay, let's look at this kind of big ugly mess and how do we break it down? Like what are the tasks, you know? Okay. First we'll read about meta-analysis. Look at the couple of different kinds of meta-analysis. Think about the different, you know, whether it's random effects or fixed effects, for example, and this is when you're going granular, but, and then breaking down, like, okay, so let's look at all the studies. What kind of analysis did they do? But like breaking it down into steps. And I think that's something that both, I, I guess someone who has a ADHD and autism for myself, I need to break things down into chunks, otherwise it feels massive and I can't get anywhere. So something that has helped me working with clients to say, okay, with your supervisor, if you can get a check-in point, even if it's 15 minutes, every two weeks, have some goals and these breakdown steps and check in. Jess: And that way you don't have to wait till the, you know, monthly or bimonthly supervisor meeting where you haven't got to where you said you'd get because you're so overwhelmed. So it's realizing that I guess one size doesn't fit all when you're supervising. For the students who are neurodivergent, they will need different things. Um, but on the flip side, your students may be bounds and leaps ahead with the right guidance because they're like, oh yeah, no, I'm know what I'm doing now. Like, I'm, I'm focused and I'm interested and, you know, I can get a loads more done than perhaps, you know, a neurotypical student might do. Jess: I think it's really important to remember that you are, as an autistic individual, you may have strengths that are, you know, way above and beyond, you know, a neurotypical person. There is such a thing as that call, a spiky profile that you may have come across, where you know your executive function, you know your different skills, whether it's organization, memory, time management, you may have, you know, uh, drops, you know, where it's maybe not so good but then huge peaks where your skills outnumber, you know, the neurotypicals on your team. So be very much looking like a, a spiky profile. Um. And, there's quite a few occupational psychologists who do a lot of work in that area around neurodiversity as well, that I recommend looking into Almuth McDowall and Nancy Doyle, and many more names, but they focus a lot on kind of strengths-based coaching. What are the person's strengths? What are they really good at? Some clients it might be attention to detail, so really researching to the nth degree on one area and knowing all about it and being able to tell, you know, the supervisor or teach a topic, whether it's a class, all about that specific area and bring so much passion to the topic because they're so interested in it. Jess: But then also you are coming at something with a different angle, a different perspective, because your brain looks different. There are studies that show the brain looks different under an FMRI scan. So the different parts of the brain are, I don't wanna say different again, but look visibly different. And so remembering that your brain works differently and often your perspective is different, is a huge strength. Jess: So another strength that I've come across with clients I work with, but also within myself is often those with autism, have experienced an awful lot of difficulties, in which case they often have a deep level of empathy and understanding, and can really relate to a lot of people in many different ways. Jess: And these are just the things off the top of my head from my experience and my work. But, you can find lots of different strengths of all the different neurodivergent types, on national Institute of Care guidelines or whether you wanna look at the NHS but then there's an also lot of research papers that talk about the strengths of neurodivergent employees. For example, dyslexia the British Dyslexia Association has masses on the strengths of both dyspraxia and dyslexia. but yeah, I could go on about those all day. But if it's so important when you are working with students or supervisor, your supervisees to think about yes, the challenges, what are their strengths? Jess: How can I encourage them and empower them to not feel, oh, just because I have a, a hidden disability, or I'm neuro divergent that I'm behind or I'm worse off than everyone else, which is not the case. Quick interjection. If you are finding this episode helpful, but you are driving, walking the dog or doing dishes, just remember this. When you're done, head to the PhD life coach.com and sign up for my newsletter. We've all listened to a podcast and thought this is great. I should do something with it, and that didn't. That's where I created the newsletter to help you actually apply the stuff that you hear. Each week you'll get a short summary, some reflective questions on one simple action that you can take right away. You'll also get access to a searchable archive of all the past episodes so you can find the exact one that you need to help with your current challenges. Plus all newsletter subscribers get a free webinar every single month on a topic that affects all PhD students and academics, and you'll always be the first to hear for when my membership opens to new members. So once you're done listening, or even right now, go sign up for my newsletter and make sure you don't miss out. Vikki: So important and I love, I think that notion of the spiky profile and thinking about both at the same time is really useful because I've certainly seen with supervisors, and remember, and we'll talk about this later, listeners, you know, supervisors might have autism too. Vikki: This is not just about PhD students having autism, but certainly if you are a neurotypical supervisor and you have a neurodivergent student, sometimes it can be really confusing, right? Because you're like, Jess is brilliant, she knows her stuff so well. She's so on top of everything. I don't understand why she's having a freakout about talking at a research group meeting or whatever. Vikki: She knows this stuff back to front, inside out. I can't shut her up about it in meetings. This makes no sense. I don't get it. And so I think really recognize, because if you don't understand that, it can be so confusing to understand why someone's having such strong emotions about something. Yeah. That you know they're perfectly capable of 'cause they're so good at that other Jess: Mm. Absolutely. And I think that's the kind of misconception of, especially from my experience, women who are late diagnosis, that they've learn to mask and they've learn to manage all of this. And it gets to a point of burnout and significantly impaired, daily functioning where women just can't, basically can't manage anymore. Jess: And I think that's really important is having that curiosity and that open communication to say, these are my strengths and these are the areas that I find difficult and this is what happens. And I think having a psychologically safe environment, even though it's an overused term, but somewhere where you can say, Hey, this is really difficult, or this is causing me a lot of anxiety. And being real and honest I think super important to be able to acknowledge it and hit get it out in the open and move on. Because I think the supervisory role isn't always an easy one 'cause you're both, you know, an academic and you're pushing the student further ahead, but then you're also acting in some sort of pastoral capacity, whether you have officially given that term or not, but you are meeting the student, you know, most regularly compared to anyone else. Jess: So you will see that kind of ups and downs. So, it's really important to have that kind of open conversation and that also then takes awareness of both the supervisor and the PhD student. I think that would be my recommendation is reflecting a lot and thinking about what you want to share, but, and explaining why. Jess: 'Cause I think the supervisor's not there to fix everything 'cause it's very much a independent journey, but they want you to do your best. So you're trying to helping them understand how you can get there. Vikki: Yeah. I've done a few episodes recently where we've talked about mental health, we've talked about doing challenging research. We've talked about doing PhD with chronic illness and other disabilities and that sort of thing. And in all of them I try and find this balance between what can you do as an individual so you've got something that's kind of a bit empowering, that I can grasp hold of this and change my own situation. Vikki: Yeah. Whilst also at the same time recognizing that you are not responsible for the environment, that universities have a duty of care to support students with different needs. Yes. So I wanna kind of talk with you about both of those. So let's start with the individual students. So if there's a people listening, which I know they a hundred percent are, so people in my audience who have autism themselves, both students and academics, what can they be doing that can improve their own situations? Jess: Yeah, that is a really great question. I think first and foremost, acknowledging that you are neurodivergent and you are not neurotypical and getting rid of neurotypical expectations of yourself, knowing that you will not necessarily work nine till five. You will not sit down at your desk, nine till five. Jess: You may do, but you most likely won't. And so it's not acknowledging that, you know, some days you may have, you know, this kind of idea of a spoon theory where, you know, your maximum number of spoons might be five and some days it might just be one spoon. And this is really difficult to do. But acknowledging today, I have one spoon, so I'm gonna do one little bit. Jess: If I have five spoons, I'm gonna crack on and maybe do a lot more. So first of all, neurotypical expectations. Get rid of them. Secondly, I would be very careful about your environment. What is draining and what is, you know, not draining is probably the better way of saying it. So if you're studying or if you kind of force yourself to work in an area that is really draining, whether it's sensitivity to noise, to light, kind of comfort, you know, the chair you're sitting on your workspace, you know, be really careful about like where you put yourself. Jess: 'Cause as, as an autistic female myself, I'm very sensitive to light, to noise, to my surroundings. I can't work if people are in the area and that they might be watching me work and they might not be, I don't do well in a shared office, in a shared environment. I don't get anything done 'cause I'm too worried about like, oh, how, how does my face appear? Jess: Do I look friendly? Do I look grumpy? Am I like fiddling with my feet? 'cause I'm trying to concentrate, you know, that's not socially acceptable. So finding an area where you can be comfortable, I think is that you are in charge of that. Whether that is, you know, in the floor of the library or whether that's a home in your bedroom or whether that's your kitchen table, that's something that, a practical nature is useful. Jess: One other thing you can do is, and I know it can be tricky, but applying for disabled students allowance. So if you are diagnosed, you can then use that, and get support, whether that's physical support. So in terms of, you know, clearly laptop or kind of software that can help you, it might be you're able to access coaching, or you're able to have, you know, a new desk and chair that's more comfortable. Jess: And that works on an annual basis, so you're able to get that each year as a student. And if you are a supervisor listening, you should be able to get access to work. So your access to work through the government enables you to, the government's hope is to stay and work and to keep you employed. Go check it out 'cause it is really useful and it also works for those who are self-employed as well and you're able to get access to that. Vikki: Um, and again, and obviously just for listeners listening, this is kind of UK centric in the specific Jess: Yes. Apologies. Vikki: All good. But just to clarify that for my many listeners who are not in the UK Yeah, most places will have similar versions of that. Jess: Yeah. So that would be, get someone to help you to sort that out if it's difficult for you to do. So I think in the last one is probably being kind to yourself. 'cause I kind of mentioned at the beginning, I think especially if you have a late diagnosis or you are entering, you're just starting academia again, it's watching what you say to yourself in your head and which is very much easier said than done. Jess: Um, but often it's thinking about, you know, the shoulds I should have, could have, you know, and you talk to yourself the most. So it's trying to be kind and, and look at what you have managed to achieve. Jess: Having goals each week on things that you can try and meet, um, realistic goals are really helpful when you have days that you are not achieving or you are not completing something and due to maybe your energy levels. Jess: The last one would be just keeping an eye on yourself and looking after yourself. So it's easier said than done of course, but eating well, trying to get as much sleep, rest, exercise as the usual. Jess: I took myself out for a short walk earlier today 'cause I was stressed out and overwhelmed and that really helped getting out in the sunshine, seeing, seeing some nature. Yeah, I'm not great at it, but trying to put in these routines, um, it does help as well. Vikki: Definitely. Here's something that I've always found difficult in both when I was supervising, but also now with with clients sometimes as well. How do you find the balance between accepting things are the way they are and there, there are some things that you are never going to change and mm-hmm versus the things that with support and development, you could learn to do, if you see what I mean. I know we never, I'm not talking like we're gonna develop a way autism and we wouldn't want to, that's not what I mean. Vikki: But like I see some students who have autism being quite like, I can't do any of those things. Yeah. I have autism. I can't do them. And I see others being a bit more like, okay, if you want me to do a presentation, I'm gonna need this, this, and this in order to make that possible and I need some padding either side of it to allow me to decompress and blah, blah, blah. Vikki: Where do you find, especially, you know, maybe I'm just thinking about it as a supervisor again, but where do you find that balance between encouraging somebody to consider ways they could be supported to try something versus not pushing them to do something that's not what their brain yeah. is set up for, or whatever? Jess: Yeah. I think it's a tricky one. My initial answer would be it really depends on the individual and it depends on whether it's a matter of confidence and, you know, believing in themselves or whether they will most likely have a meltdown or a shutdown down as a result of that experience. Jess: You've got to be very careful understanding the difference, I think. And it might be that they are able to build up small steps so that they then avoid a shutdown or avoid a meltdown, or it may be that that's not possible. And I guess it depends on the individual and what their goals are. Jess: I think, you know, as students come to you for coaching, it's like what are their goals and finding realistic goals and where they want to get to and what those small steps in between look like as kind of wins. And in terms of accepting, there may be some things that they may always get really tired in social environments that may never change, but it's can we minimize which social environments they go to? Jess: Can they join lectures online? Can they get the support in terms of maybe more counseling from the university to talk through things or kind of like you said, like what buffering and what padding can be put in to help them. Jess: Or it may be that might not be something that they'll ever grow in and that might stay. Just like someone who's maybe nonverbal, may never be verbal, may always, use for example Makaton or another sign language to express what they're saying. Jess: So it's very unique to the individual. It's not a hard and fast rule. I think it's as a supervisor, as as a coach, it's thinking about, I guess what is the goal for them? Where do they want to get to and how, what, maybe working together, what are achievable steps to get there? Because only they will know themselves and what they're capable and what they're really just saying. No, I can't do it, but actually they can. Vikki: Yeah, and that's the difficult bit, isn't it? I think sometimes, especially if you're late diagnosed and you've spent time telling yourself you should be different and things, I think sometimes the person doesn't necessarily know which it is either. 'Cause I can see it happening both ways round, right? Mm-hmm. Vikki: That, especially somebody late diagnosed being like, no, no, I can, I can learn how to do this. I can handle this, da, da da. 'cause they don't wanna accept that they can't. Yeah. Yeah. But then on the other hand, people being quite fixed at, no, I definitely can't when actually it's sometimes, not always. Yeah. Sometimes the lack of confidence that you talked about. Yeah. Actually with the good support they could. And so I think that makes it kind of extra complicated 'cause it's not like the person with autism has this absolutely clear perspective Of exactly where their boundary sits with that. Jess: True. Yeah. That's true. I'm afraid, I don't have the hard and fast rule with that. It is a unique and engaging on the person, how much you can push them and encourage them. And you're very much saying it from a place of, I think you have this capacity, can we try it together? Jess: And they might say no. Or they might say, actually no, Vikki, I'm gonna take a shot. Let's, let's try this or like four sessions later, they might say, actually Vikki, I realized I said no to this, but actually I think I might try it. And it might just be building that trust with you to find that they might try that again. Vikki: I really like this sort of figuring it out together, having that kind of, whether it's a supervisory relationship or coaching relationship or wherever this sort of help, let's figure this out. Let's think about what that would look like, what might make that possible. One of the qualities, so I talk about being your own best boss quite a lot, and one of the qualities that we talk about a lot in that is curiosity alongside compassion. Curiosity, coming from a compassionate perspective, but being like, oh, I wonder if this would help, or I wonder if we'd be better off just saying, we are not doing those things for a while. For sure. Yeah. Or having that kind of thing of let's figure things out. Let's be open and honest and see what we can do here. Jess: Yeah. I think you quite right. It, it's a relationship, you know, it's a professional relationship, but it's still a relationship and it's one way you can kind of explore things and think, okay, what is possible? Jess: You know, what, what happens if we try this? What, you know, hypothetically, what would that look like or what would come up or maybe where have you done this before? Vikki: So we sort of started there talking not only about what people can do for themselves, but also how supervisors can support students with autism. Yeah. Um, let's, let's build on that a little bit more so how can anybody who is neurotypical in the university environment so this, whether you're a student or a supervisor, how can they support and make the most of working with people with autism. Jess: Yeah. That's really great. And I think even the fact that the supervisors are asking, you know, how can I make the most of this? How can I empower or support my supervisee is the first step you really want. Jess: But I think what I would kind of initially say is, you know, if the university has any sort of neurodiversity awareness training, go to them, you know, learn, I think is the key thing is to learn, you know, what might it might look like. Jess: And then secondly, acknowledging that each person's experience and diagnosis looks different or, or you know, that how they are neurodivergent looks different. So I'm autistic, but you know, you might meet somebody else who's also autistic and we may come across differently. And I think in the reason I'm saying is that it's important for a supervisor to think about, maybe starting like a How to work with me document. Jess: And that might look like, you know, preferred communication styles. So again, talking back to what we said before, like shall we have an email chain or shall we have an email with a summary and then we have a teams meeting and maybe we have videos off or videos on. They have may be transcription if transcription's allowed to kind of record what's being said or allowing note takers into the meeting. Jess: So it's that kind of thing would be included in the how to Work with me document and then setting clear expectations as to this is how often we'll meet, this is what we're gonna be covering. This is my remit of what, you know, I don't want, maybe either doesn't want to talk about anything personal. Jess: They might not want to be asked, you know, what they got up to the weekend. That's okay. So those kind of I guess rules of engagement is the maybe a nice way of putting it. And then also being prepared to continually reflect on what's working and what's not working as well and trying to create a space where that can happen. And all this is best practice and, you know, in an ideal world, and it's understanding that supervisors are usually squashed into their other lecturer duties and head of whatever they're doing. So it's trying to create something that's simple and effective rather than an extra burden of time and energy. Vikki: Yeah, definitely. And I think it's really important to recognize that the environment in which people are supervising is, is not always easy. But I also think that. You know, this stuff should make everyone's life easier. In fact, so much of what you said today just really strikes me as just universal good practice, right? Yes. And I know that's kind of the principles of universal design and all that, that most of the things that are set out for people with disabilities or neuro divergences, um, will, it will benefit anybody. Vikki: One that we haven't really talked about that I think is quite useful is thinking about sort of giving space for somebody to have an initial reaction. 'Cause one of the things, especially, we were talking about changing stuff mm-hmm Before, yeah. One of the things that I've noticed, both in supervision and in coaching, is that sometimes somebody with autism will have quite a strong initial reaction to a change. Vikki: Yeah. But that if you, as the person who's either suggested the change or that supervising that situation or whatever, can manage your own emotions about their reaction. And stay kind of calm and present. Then often with some time, and the amount of time can vary hugely. Right. Vikki: Whether they need to go away and come back tomorrow, or whether it's a five minute, have glass of water and go stretch your legs or whatever. But learning to manage your own emotions in that moment and not feel apologetic or defensive or all of those things, and just kind of giving it space for a second. Jess: Yeah. Vikki: I think can then really allow that person to have their legitimate reaction. But then also afterwards to choose what their actual response is. Jess: Mm-hmm. I mean, yeah. And I think that that then comes back to the how to Work with me document as to if there are changes. Because, you know, in an ideal world, PhDs go to plan. Everything follows, you know, step one, step two, step three. Best chapters are written up, done. But you know, nine times out of 10, that's not the case. Whether the data collect was incorrect or whether, you know, the systematic review turned into systematic review and a meta analysis. Jess: But I think it's then saying, okay, if changes are made, how would you like 'them communicated? Yeah. Would you prefer 'them over an email and then we'll discuss in a meeting? Or would you prefer me to bring up in a meeting at the end? And then you can go and we can discuss it. And again, we're not gonna be able to cover every eventuality in a how to work with me document, but acknowledging that part of being autistic is you may not cope with change or you may not manage that in a neurotypical way. Just as if you are excited about something, you may impulsively say something that's great or you may say something that wasn't very helpful and you need to apologize. I think it's acknowledging that, that that impulsivity is part of an ADHD diagnosis. And that it's not someone just being rude or, you know, having lack of self-control 'cause it's a legitimate executive function. Like it's, it's something that's not, it doesn't go so great always. Jess: Um. I think it's, uh, those things are important to consider. Vikki: Yeah. And that's where I think, so I do supervisor training, not specifically on this area. That's way beyond my scope of practice, but general supervisor training. And one of the things that we talk about a lot in that is not projecting your own reasoning for behaviors onto other people's behavior. Vikki: 'Because often if somebody is late for a deadline, say if the supervisor's, somebody who take deadlines very seriously, they assume that means Jess isn't taking this seriously. Or whereas we know that regardless where you've got, ADHD, autism, or nothing at all, sometimes you miss deadlines even when you are taking it very seriously. Vikki: And similarly, I think, you know, like with the impulsive thing, sometimes somebody who's very neurotypical, quite reserved. All those things might, well, I would only say that if I was being really rude and disliked the person. And so one of the things we spend quite a bit of time thinking about is how you can almost have that kind of flexibility to recognize that there's a likely, especially if you know that they've got diagnoses, there's likely to be a bunch of reasons why they just said the thing that that came out grumpy. Jess: Yeah, sure. Vikki: And it's hard, right? It is. Even if you're neurotypical, you're tired and you're busy and all those things, it's hard to always do that. But even if you can do it in retrospect Yeah. Vikki: Where afterwards you're like, yeah, that might have been impulse rather than anything else or whatever. I think it would really help. Jess: And I think, you know, as, as I said, I'm doing a PhD and I'm still learning and I'm still, you know, getting things wrong and, and, you know, apologizing or, you know, saying things and being like, should anyone, is anyone bothered by that? Like, I don't know. Should I send an email? Jess: Should I send a teams message? Am I overthinking it? And this is where it's, it's great if you have, you know, a couple of supervisors and perhaps they all have maybe different roles or different strengths. You know, that some might be more pastoral and some might be more academic. Jess: And maybe you have the opportunity to sense check with maybe the pastoral type supervisor, you know, how did that go? What do you think? And, you know, this is all an ideal world, but, it can be quite nice when the team is a bit more blended and even if, you know, someone might not be necessarily that pastoral focused, it might have someone else in the team that can support. Jess: And yeah, it also, that added layer of complexity is if perhaps, your supervisory team, someone is neurodivergent and maybe very different, you know, in how you work. Um. So, yeah. Vikki: Or very similar, right? And this happens personality wise as well as neuro divergent wise, is there's, there's obvious challenges if you've got someone who's neurotypical and somebody who's got autism, for example, they may have misunderstandings. But I do think there is also, I have been personally in situations, not with PhD students, but with like undergrads and that sort of thing where I, there's me and my enthusiastic non-diagnosed ADHD self and they've actually got ADHD and every meeting, it's just like, we could do this. Jess: Oh yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So many ideas. Vikki: And if you haven't got awareness around that, and similarly, you could have two people who are autistic that are just absolutely fixed on this is how we are doing this, this do, do, do, do. And then something comes along and no one's got the kind of capacity to be flexible about it. Vikki: So I think. It's not always when you're different. I think there's danger in similarities too sometimes. Jess: And I think your supervisor training, it sounds really important because I think a lot of, from my understanding, a lot of supervisors, and this is just my experience, I don't think they have a lot of training and I don't think that's provided. Jess: So it's very much they have to figure out as they go along. And, you know, they want their PhD student to finish within the allotted frame of time and they want them to meet the goals. There's a lot of pressure on them to help the student get there. So I think it's not the easiest role for them either. Jess: And I think often the student doesn't, if they've not been around the university set, they may not know that or appreciate that. So it's another thing to bear in mind and say, this supervisor may only have, you know, five hours a month to actually support you if that. Vikki: In my experience, most supervisory training focuses on procedures, right? It's like, what forms do you need to fill in, when, what requirements of you, what's the minimum rules of engagement, right? The you have to meet once a month and blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. Vikki: And some universities do provide others, as I say, I, I provide much more detailed supervision, which really gets into how your thoughts and emotions influence the way you supervise and how expectations of supervision can be so different between different people. Vikki: Yeah. Not just with neurodivergences but also with people who come from different countries who have different experiences with their own supervisor previously as to what they expect a supervisor would provide. Um, yeah, I think it's a huge issue and I think it's something that invite universities should really be investing a lot more in than they do. Jess: Yeah, absolutely. And the thing is, I'm, I can only speak for the clients that I've had and the clients I'm working with, but then also for myself, you know, I'm, you know, a heterosexual white woman, I don't have that kind of intersectional lens. I'm not able to talk from that. And I think that's something that is, is also huge in understanding, you know, and listening to autistic voices from an intersectional lens, whether that be, you know, gender identity or whether that is race. And that's something that I'm painfully aware of when I do my training is, you know, there's only so much published research as well from those different intersectional lenses. So, that's really important to think about and consider, um, as well. Vikki: And probably I assume variations in diagnoses rates as well. I mean, you mentioned gender differences in diagnosis, but I would be amazed if there weren't differences in diagnosis rates amongst different ethnicities and races. There are with most things. Jess: Yeah. Mainly also due to stigma and understanding, and how it looks maybe as well. We're so far behind in that sense. And that I mean, they've only just decided that you can be diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. I think it was like 2012 that, that was possible. And then to have a combined diagnosis. Just there's so much progress still yet to be done. Vikki: And we obviously wanna, we wanna avoid, 'cause I do think there is a tendency for people who have a kind of passing interest in this stuff to sort of notionally diagnose the people around. And I don't think that's helpful either. No. I'm a big believer that if you self identify as having any of these things, then I'm down 'cause you know Yeah. You, if you identify, you know, you Yeah. You know yourself. There's a lot of barriers to getting officially diagnosed, but for sure different to diagnosing someone else. Vikki: Yeah. But one of the questions that I encourage people to think about is how would I behave if I knew they were autistic, for example. And asking yourself, are there ways you can just do that now anyway? I would give them really clear instructions after a meeting and I would make sure I pre warned them if there was something coming up that might be surprising. Vikki: You could just do that for everybody without ever mentioning the A word. Yeah. You know? Oh, definitely Never telling them your suspicions, but instead of just assuming that they're stubborn or whatever. Just do those things and Jess: Yeah. And I had that with a client the other week was, I had people coming up to me after the training I did all during one of the breaks, and their question was, you know, what do I do if they're not diagnosed or I suspect they are, how, what do I do? And I'm like if you are managing someone, you will understand what the strengths and challenges are of all your employees and who you're working with, and then you will help them play to those strengths and support them in their challenges. Jess: So how to work with me guide and I keep talking about it, but it is just a what works for that person and it doesn't matter if they have a diagnosis or not because from a practical, everyday working style, not necessarily from a legal standing, but it is, it's so important to treat someone as individual. Jess: And if you're not doing that already, start doing it because your team will all work differently regardless of whether they neurodivergent or not. So it's, you get to know your team and like you said, if, if you think that they may be that, that, that way ask and just say, don't say, are you autistic? Say, how does that work for you? Jess: Like, do you enjoy that kind of setup? Does this space work for you? Just from a curiosity, decent human being perspective. It's not always rocket science then I think people can be really worried that, you know, they have to give someone a diagnosis before they can start asking questions. Jess: But it's how you ask the question and it's what kind of questions you're asking in terms of, you know, I noticed that you were quite quiet in the last meeting, you know? I want to make sure all employees voices are heard. You know, if you've got any thoughts, feel free to send me an email with them. And you're not singling someone out in terms of you think they're autistic, but you are, you are just kind of asking them, how did that go? Vikki: Yeah. So you've started touching on this already, but what can people do at a sort of institution level to make things more inclusivefor people with neuro divergencies. Jess: Yeah, so I think a lot of organizations already have like an equality policy, so a DEI policy. And in those policies they include disability, but they don't explicitly talk about hidden disability. So neurodiversity, , to start with having a visible neurodiversity policy on the website, on their job, saying we support, you know, an inclusive and neuro inclusive environment. Jess: Doing training on how to be inclusive in recruitment, how to, support managers, you know, to train them as to how to work with neuro divergent employees. What would be wonderful would be mapping the workplace of all the, you know, campus. You know, what, what areas are quiet, you know, designated space. Jess: Just like often have a prayer space. You know, are there quiet spaces for neurodivergent employees or students? The canteens are an absolute nightmare for me. The lighting is a nightmare for me personally. For many people that I speak to, they can't stand, just the space, they're very sensitive. Jess: It's very draining. For many people I work with, they often have like a watch, like a Garmin or something, and their body, they have a body battery or some sort of thing where if they're on campus, it goes from maybe 90 down to five. And it's all of those things that are intangible that, that really affect. Jess: So having some sort of sensory map as to say these are the areas that are high traffic, these are the areas that are quiet. Even if it's color coded would be useful and allocating space. What else? Uh, training everyone from, you know, people at reception, you know, there's a lot of sunflower lanyards floating about on campuses now, which is great, but what does that actually mean? Jess: How can you support employees or students, down to maybe the catering teams to, the academic staff that support staff to the librarians, helping everyone understand what that might look like, and do regular ones and mandatory. I think a lot of this kind of stuff, unfortunately, is optional. Jess: But you have, you know, one in five or one in four are neuro divergent, you know, the stats are there. The NHS England and, and NICE guidelines is there, you know, , whether they realize they they're neurodivergent or not, or whether they're disclosing the neurodivergent or not, they need support. Jess: I think it's from, you know, if you talk about the life cycle of an employee starting right, recruitment and kind of advertising, you know, using clear, simple language in the job description, not having, you know, must be a self-starter and must be, you know, all these kind of lingo that might not necessarily be relevant to the job role just copied and pasted on from a previous job role. Jess: And that that will discourage people from applying all the way through to, okay, now you're managing someone. You've never managed someone who's neurodivergent before, what's available to a, the manager and to b the employee? And how can you support them? Can you encourage 'em to apply for access to work? Jess: What is that? Help the employee understand . Start having a conversation as to what reasonable adjustments can we make? That should have also been discussed in that kind of initial period as to what kind of things might they need? Jess: And that's a conversation with HR. The first step is awareness and training. And then after that it's digging deep into kind of strategy and policy to really integrate it across the organization. Vikki: It really resonates with my episode a few weeks ago where I was talking to Kyrstina Francois about doing PhD with physical disabilities and illnesses. And one of the things that she was really talking about is how it's exhausting and often very difficult to have to suggest your own accommodations because especially ...so she has illnesses and conditions that have come on over the last year or two. Vikki: So it's not something she's always lived with or anything like that. And they're like, what do you need? And she's like, I don't know, what can I have? And that strikes me as quite similar to some of the stuff you are saying here, that having almost packages of if you are running a conference you need to do these things for your neurodivergent members. If you are running a module, you need to do these things. If you've got a PhD student, these are the options that you could put out like say for them to choose what might be useful or whatever. Jess: Mm, for sure. And I think what works for some neurodivergent students might not work for others. So for example, if you're dyslexic, using dyslexic fonts or installing a Chrome extension, that makes everything into a dyslexic font as readable. You know, using apps that can make your screen a yellow color and providing high contrast helps you to see better and read better, but all of these things, it's, it's, it's providing that kind of, the training and documentation to, to help, you know, supervisors and, and lecturers and, and also students know that that exists, you know, a lot of this stuff is free. Jess: Inclusive teaching is a huge area that I looked at when I did my fellowship to the Higher Education Acacemy, you know, how can we be more accessible and inclusive. And I think Covid was a, you know, although a horrible experience, it meant that a lot of lectures had to be done online and a lot of things were recorded. And I did my masters during that time, and that was brilliant for me because as someone with ADHD, I was able to get up and walk around and move about whilst listening. I was able to pause things, go back over things. I think it's, knowing that different approaches work for different students. Vikki: Perfect. Now, if people have been interested, engaged, inspired, all of those good things by the stuff you've said today, as I'm sure they will be, where can people follow you and find out more? Jess: Sure. So, I'm quite active on LinkedIn, so you can first head over there and drop me a message or you can follow our company page. We also have a website, neuro natives.com , feel free to contact us there, with any inquiries, whether you want, coaching, whether you want, training and awareness sessions, or whether you want something more tailored, we can do whatever you need. I'm afraid I don't have Instagram, don't have Facebook too distracting , so you'll find me on LinkedIn, and also our website. Vikki: Yeah, perfect. And I will put links to your LinkedIn in the show notes and to your website. Thank you Jess, so much for today. That is super, super important and it was, yeah, wonderful having you here. Jess: Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to talk through all of these things and I hope it's been useful for the audience and yeah, it's lovely chatting to you as well. Vikki: Thank you everyone for listening. I'll see you next week. Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics time.
< One of the most common comments I hear from PhD students is that reading always takes longer than they expect. In this episode, I share four elements that you need to take into account when deciding how much time you are going to give an article, book or other piece of writing. By being more intentional in considering these elements, you can be much more accurate in how long each piece will take to read and often read it in less time. This is crucial for anyone at any stage of their research career – not only will it help you to manage workflow and hit deadlines, it will also improve your understanding of the literature. Transcript This week's topic really came out of a coaching session in my membership. So in the membership, students have the opportunity to come to what we call open coaching, which is where they can bring anything that they're finding challenging at all, and I will coach them on it. And I had a student come who was struggling to know how long it took to read a paper. Okay, and this is something that comes up all the time, and so I thought, you know what? We'd had such a useful discussion about it there in the session that I thought it'd be a great opportunity to share with all of you listeners as well. So when you are planning out what reading you need to do, I want you to think about how you decide how long it'll take to read an article. And in most cases, one of the things I get told more than anything else is I'm really bad at judging how long it takes. And there's a few underpinning beliefs with that statement that I think it's really worth us questioning. So "I don't know how long it will take to read this paper" really has the underlying belief that there is a set amount of time that it will take and that you have very little control over it. And I wanna remind you that neither of those things are true. There isn't a fixed amount of time that it takes to read any particular paper, and you have a huge amount of control over how long it takes. So what I'm gonna do in this episode is explain to you how people usually do it and why I think you'd benefit from doing it in a different way. And the specific suggestions I would make that are gonna massively speed up or at a more kind of complex level, make you much more in control of how long it takes to read a paper. 'cause this also isn't just about speeding up, right? This is about spending time on the right things. So we're gonna make it faster, we're gonna make it more predictable, which it's gonna make it so much easier for you to organize your time and to get stuff done. So let's get started. Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. I am Dr. Vicki Wright, the PhD Life Coach. I'm an ex professor and certified life coach, and I help PhD students and researchers to overcome overwhelm and imposter syndrome so that we can actually get our work done and enjoy the process. We are gonna dig in to how we can take more control over how long it takes to read a paper. And for those of you who are in the more kind of arts and humanities where you're studying from books and archives and all that stuff, this can get extrapolated out to any length of document that you are talking about. So when I say article, just insert whatever word is appropriate for your discipline. Okay. Now I want you to spend a moment just thinking, how do I currently estimate how long something will take? Do I estimate or do I just start reading? Do I decide this is the thing I need to read? Let's go or do you actually try and estimate? A lot of people don't even try and estimate. They start reading. They have two versions of an article. They either haven't read it or they have read it, they don't read it, or they do read it. And that's kind of two binary options. Hint. In this episode today, we're gonna think about how there's a lot of inbetweens there as well. So they either just get reading or they take a rough guess on how long it should, whatever should means take, based usually on two things. I want you to see if these are the same two things for you. What I see with my clients, the two things that usually get taken into account is how long is the article or book? How complex is the article or book? If it's long and complex, we're gonna take a long time to read it. If it's short and simple, we'll take less time to read it. And it sort of feels as though that's intuitively true, right? That has face validity. It kind of makes sense that if something is long and complicated, it's gonna take us a long time to read it. And if it's simple and short, it's gonna take us a short amount of time to read it. I think this is where we're falling down. This is where we're wasting time. This is where we are making it really hard for ourselves to judge how long things take. So I'm gonna share with you four other things that I think we need to think about in order not to work out how long it will take to read this article. But in order to decide how long we are giving this article, okay, I want you to notice the difference in how I described that. On one hand, is this quite passive, sort of, I wonder how long it will take as though there's some truth out there, which is how long it takes. And over here is how long I have decided to give to this article. These are very different. It is much more empowering to think about how much time am I giving to this article than how long will it arbitrarily take? Now in order to decide though, you need to be taking into account the length of the article and the complexity of the article. Definitely. But I'm gonna share with you four other things that I think you need to also take into account so that you really know what options you've got, and you can then make decisions from there. Once you understand those options, you'll often be able to read an article much, much more quickly than you are at the moment. And if it takes as long or even longer than it currently does with my approach, you will know exactly why and you will have chosen that rather than it just ending up taking a long time. The reason that most people think that they're the most important variables is because what most people do when they're reading an article is they start at the beginning and they read all the bits until they get to the end. And they go more quickly through the bits that are simple that they understand and they go more slowly through the bits that are more complex, that need to be taken in more. And therefore, if that's the approach, if that is your definition of reading something, then yes, absolutely. The length and complexity of it will be the main variables that predict the amount of time it takes. And usually what happens is the length of it shouldn't catch a by surprise 'cause hopefully we can see how long it is. Although with electronic versions, that's not always as clear. Um, but the complexity sometimes catches us out. There's more of it that's more complex than we thought. Therefore, we go slower. Now the twist that I want you to make in your thinking that will then open up all these tools that I'm going to share with you is that we don't need to read, in fact, we shouldn't be reading by picking up an article, starting at the beginning, going to the end, and that's it read every time. What we should be doing instead is making a conscious decision about why we are reading that article. So as well as length and complexity, the first of the four things that I want you to take into account is purpose. We need to be thinking about the purpose of us as an individual reading that article at this time point. Okay? And the at this time point is important as well. And I'll get to that. One of the things I get my members to do in our coworking sessions, if they're reading, if that's the task they've turned up to do, is to actually write a sentence before they start reading the article. Write a sentence or two sentences about what it is they're specifically intending to get outta this article. Why that article? What do they want from it? Because think about it, right when you read an article. Sometimes it's because that topic is absolutely central to what you are doing in your thesis and you need to know everything about it. Other times you read it because you are gonna be using a similar method to that person. You know, they were investigating something completely different, but they did the same data analysis strategy that you are going to use. Other times you are looking for something to back up a kind of passing point that you are making in your general introduction. So, as an example, many of you know I used to be an exercise scientist. So kinesiologist, those of you in North America. And so let's think of that as an example. If I'm reading for a exercise intervention that I'm doing to look at the effects of exercise on some biomarker, then some articles will have done exercise interventions on that same biomarker using similar, similar methods to me, and I'm gonna wanna know that paper inside out, back to front, every detail of it. When did they do their measurements? Exactly? How did they measure that biomarker? Absolutely everything. Especially the method and results particularly, I wanna know in absolute depth. However, when I'm writing this up, I'm gonna need a paragraph at the beginning of the introduction. That's going to be something like the generic physical inactivity is associated with a number of adverse our health outcomes, including type two diabetes, reference, obesity, reference, cardiovascular disease reference, and whatever else, right? Reference. And I just need references to fill those in. I'm also potentially gonna read papers where they measured that biomarker, but not in the context of exercise or they did the same exercise intervention as me, but with different markers. Now. I need to reference all of those things. I need a reference for my exercise intervention. I need a reference for how I measured the biomarker. I need a reference for how I analyze the data. I need references for all of this stuff. I need reading for all of this stuff, understanding but how I read each of those articles is gonna be completely different depending on why I'm reading it, which purpose it's having. Now, even if we backtrack in time, maybe I don't know yet exactly what my study's doing, then the purpose is to get a feel for the types of exercise interventions that have been done in relation to this biomarker, or to get a feel for what biomarkers have been shown to be modulated by this intervention, for example. So sometimes it's not as simple as I need to know this specific thing, but my specific reason for reading it might be to familiarize myself with what else has been done in this specific bit of the literature. So our first job always is to know why we are reading it. A valid reason is not background. If you find yourself going, oh, I'm reading it for background. I'm reading it. 'cause I don't know enough, I'm reading it. 'cause I don't understand enough yet. I need a broader understanding. That's too vague. We don't want that. I want you to get as specific as possible. Why is this the article that made it onto your desk, onto your screen? Why is this the article that's on the to-do list for today? I'm reading this article because so and so has a strong reputation in this field, and they're working on a similar population that I'm gonna be working on, and I want to understand better how they justify that decision, for example. Get really, really specific about it, because we cannot judge how long it's gonna take to read this article if we don't know that. Now you may remember, I said at this time point, this is not just about why am I reading this article? It's why am I reading this article at this time point? And the reason I emphasize that is because often what we think when we read something is that we should read it thoroughly enough and make good enough notes that that is our only time reading it. 'cause that's efficient, right? That's the efficient way to do it. Only read it once, get everything you need from it and then you are won't have to read it again. Won't that be efficient? You'll have this wonderful note system. That's not efficient because the problem is every time you read that article, you should and probably are reading it for different reasons to last time and even more complexly you are reading it with a different brain now because when you read an article when you are final year PhD student, those of you who are there already know this. When you read it as a final year student, you read it in a completely different way and with completely different understanding than when you read it for the first time. So we are thinking what is the purpose of reading this for me at this time point with what I am currently trying to do. That's what we mean by purpose, and that is gonna really influence how long we are gonna take over this. Because in my example, if I'm reading this so that I can say physical inactivity is associated with type two diabetes incidence, for example, then I am not spending a long time reading that article. This is not a controversial point. There's about a billion articles that I could reference to do it. I want a nice meta-analysis. I want a nice systematic review. Something like that. We have a quick look. Is it published somewhere good? Does it seem to be methodologically sound? Does it make the point? I want it to make. Boom. It'll do no prizes. Forgetting the absolute perfect one. Do I need to read every single aspect of it? Exact. Every single bit? No. I'm just backing up a point at the beginning of my introduction, okay. The purpose is simply to be able to back that point up. If the purpose is to understand the methodology. Do I need to read all their introduction? No. I need to know what they did and what they found, and then I need to read in detail the method. So I'm gonna direct myself to that bit of it, which means that I've now got a much better way of estimating how long this will take. 'cause if I know I need to understand how they designed their exercise intervention. Translate that out into your discipline, then I'm much better able to guess how long it's gonna take me to figure that out. Whereas if I'm trying to read the introduction or the results and all the discussion and everything as well, and dah, dah, dah, who knows how long it will take? 'cause it depends how much I understand the things they did. Quick interjection. If you are finding this episode helpful, but you are driving, walking the dog or doing dishes, just remember this. When you're done, head to the PhD life coach.com and sign up for my newsletter. We've all listened to a podcast and thought this is great. I should do something with it, and that didn't. That's where I created the newsletter to help you actually apply the stuff that you hear. Each week you'll get a short summary, some reflective questions on one simple action that you can take right away. You'll also get access to a searchable archive of all the past episodes so you can find the exact one that you need to help with your current challenges. Plus all newsletter subscribers get a free webinar every single month on a topic that affects all PhD students and academics, and you'll always be the first to hear for when my membership opens to new members. So once you're done listening, or even right now, go sign up for my newsletter and make sure you don't miss out. So purpose is one of the four. That then relates to the second of the four things I want you to take into account. And the second is centrality. And what I mean in this context by centrality is how fundamental is this article to what I'm doing? Now you may say, how do I work that out? All of them are important. It's not true. If I asked you to write an abstract that sums up your whole thesis and that you were allowed to give me three references that inform your thesis, you would be able to narrow that down. It's tricky, but you would find articles that probably are a very similar topic, a very similar methodology, very similar philosophical underpinnings, dah, dah, dah, and that are very central to why you did what you did. In fact, many of them may be, this is what we know so far. Paper A or whatever, but they left this gap. They uncovered this unknown bit, which is what my thesis is now gonna do. Those articles are super central to your thesis. The articles that are central to why you use that particular method. That's a little bit more peripheral because now they only have the method in common, but they might be different topics, or they might just be a methodological paper or whatever. They're slightly less central. The articles that are just sort of backing up introduction points or providing a bit of extra context or whatever. Those are less central. Those who watching me on YouTube will be able to see. I'm making kind of target type circles in front of my face. So we've got the articles that are right at the bullseye, and then we've got the articles that are further out from the center. We need to be reading the articles that are more central to our work in much more depth and much more detailed understanding than the ones that are much more peripheral. So is this an article that's central to what I do? In which case I'm probably gonna read it slowly. I'm gonna read it many times for many different purposes, and I'm gonna know every bit of it inside out, versus is it much less central or is it simply serving one point, or is it kind of a nice to have but not crucial in which case I'm gonna read it in less depth and I'm gonna read it more quickly. So the purpose, why are we reading it and the centrality of it both are gonna influence how long we are gonna decide to take on this article. The third thing we are gonna take into account is how familiar we are with the type of work we are reading. Because, and this was one of the things that came up in the coaching session, is that many of you will be working at intersections between disciplines. I was super interdisciplinary, so I was often working at the intersection of psychology, neuroendocrinology, immunology, exercise sciences, kind of a smush between those. So as you can imagine, some papers, if you gimme an exercise intervention where it's got some simple biomarkers, I can read that inside out, back to front, understand every bit of it very, very quickly. Not a problem. I am an exercise scientist at heart. If you give me an article where, instead of how it's still an exercise intervention, but instead of being a simple biomarker, they're doing some complex immunological measurements of some description. Gonna take me a little bit longer if you give me a pure, you know, say, 'cause I often was looking at articles where I was looking at the impact of, I don't know, some particular hormone or whatever in vitro on an immune outcome. So a much more pure neuroendocrine immunology study, then I'm gonna be much less familiar. I'm still all right, you know, but I'm st I'm much less familiar with the techniques being used, with what makes a good study versus a weak study, with what controls there should be, da, da, da. My expectations are much blurrier. And the reason we take this into account is because it is reasonable to expect you to take longer to read something that you are less familiar with the topic area than if you are more familiar with it. Now we do always have to remember that purpose though, because sometimes when something's less familiar, we expect ourselves to understand every single word of it. And it may be even if it's quite central to what we are doing. If for example, my purpose is not to replicate their methods, then perhaps I do need to understand exactly why they chose those immune markers, exactly why they chose those hormones, exactly why they manipulated it the way they did. But I probably don't need to fully understand media that they used and why the incubations were the length they were and why they did that wash routine or whatever it is, right? I probably don't need to understand all of that 'cause I'm not doing that. So even where we are less familiar sometimes what we get to do is decide that, you know what, I'm not big on this stuff. That's not my specialty and it is not that central to what I'm doing. So that bit I can skim or that bit I can pull out the key bits that I need, but I don't need all of the detail. So I want you to notice I'm giving you four things, but they all super sort of overlap and interact with each other. So we've got the centrality, the knowing the purpose, we've got how familiar we are with the discipline and the kind of the content of this sort of a paper. And then the fourth one is really about our expectations of ourselves because one of the things that became really clear in the coaching session yesterday is that clever people expect themselves to understand everything. And if you are working at the intersections between disciplines. At the beginnings at least, that may not be realistic. So if you are reading, in my case, an immunology paper, a pure immunology paper that is related to what you are doing is outside of your familiarity and you understand the purpose of it because it's gonna relate to the measures you are taking or whatever. We also have to tell ourselves what level of understanding am I expecting myself to get on this read? Because like I said, we are gonna be reading these articles if they are central, and if we have a key reason to do so, we are gonna be reading these articles more than one time. And it may be that at this time point, it is not reasonable for you to expect yourself to understand every nuanced element of the article, even if you will need to eventually. So this is a bit different from when you decide, you know what? I don't need to know that nuanced stuff. 'cause it's not central. It's not the purpose why I'm reading it. This is a bit different. This is stuff that you probably will need to understand in detail that probably will be central to your work, but you don't have to get yourself to have that 100% understanding of every detail right now. And that's because it's really hard to understand every nuanced detail of something where you don't have pre-knowledge or pre framework in place. When we're reading stuff from within our disciplines, the reason it's faster is because we intuitively know what the words mean. You know, the technical words, we're familiar with them. We don't have to translate them out. We don't have to think about it, and we've got a whole kind of background of knowledge and understanding on which to hang this new information. Whereas when you are reading something that's outta your discipline or in a discipline that you are sort of just going into or collaborating with, you don't have that framework. You don't have that base understanding of what the technical words mean, of where this fits or whatever. And if you try and understand every level of a paper all at once. A, it's super hard, super frustrating, but b, it takes forever because you're trying to hang details on a very wobbly framework. So if you understand, okay, this paper is gonna be central, I understand why I'm reading it at this time point, I'm not very familiar with the topic. Therefore, my expectation for this read is for me to get a superficial understanding of the key main points, for example . That then intersects with our kind of purpose for reading, but we are really saying, you know what? With my current level of familiarity with the current stage I'm at in my PhD, what we're aiming for is a rudimentary understanding and your brain will tell you no, but you need to know it all. No, but what if the examiner asked this? What if you can't back up that? That's okay. We've got time. PhDs are a long journey. We are gonna read this article again, but if on this read through our fundamental purpose and understanding of ourself and our own understanding is that we need to get a sort of overview of the key points. They're making a kind of framework on which to hang the rest of our understanding. That's what we need to focus on this time, and that's where we get to decide, okay, I've got an hour to pull out as much kind of basic understanding as I can. I'm not gonna worry about all these nuanced different definitions. I'm not gonna worry about exactly why they did X, Y, z. I wanna know what did they do? Why did they do it? What did they find, for example? So we're bringing into it a layer of compassion, understanding for ourselves that we can't expect ourselves to understand every single detail on this particular read through. So those are the four things. So we already identified two length, complexity. But we're gonna take into account how central it is to what you're doing, exactly what your purpose is for reading it, how familiar you are with the topic area already, and how much kind of compassion and understanding you're giving yourself as to what level of understanding you're expecting this time. From there, we get to decide rather than find out, 'cause this is an active choice, we get to decide how long we are giving to this article. Now the one bit that then adds on top of all of this is your note taking strategy. Because the thing that takes a lot of time often is not just the reading, it's the note taking. And when you are note taking, you need to take into account all those things I just said, why am I reading it? How central is it? What do I know already? All that stuff you need to be taking into account when you choose what notes you are taking. Often we think that the purpose of notes is to have a shorter summary of that article for us to refer back to later. That is not the purpose of notes. This is why AI note taking will never replace your human brain unless we learn to use it a lot better than we do at the moment. The purpose of your notes is not to have a precised version of the article. The purpose of your notes is twofold. And again, you need to decide which of these you're doing at any one time. One purpose of notes is to focus your attention and help you process your thoughts on paper. This version of notes, you could just bin it after you've read the article. The purpose is not record keeping. The purpose is to help you keep track of what you are thinking about while you are reading that article in order to better understand the article. As an example, I love to draw a flow chart. I love, especially if I'm doing some sort of, it's like an exercise trial or that kind of thing, or even an immunology protocol. Love to draw a little diagram that shows the protocol, the timings, when measures were taken, all that stuff, for example. So one purpose of notes is to just allow you to see your thoughts, to pour them onto the page, to see them, to keep track of what you're reading and to facilitate the reading process. Those are valuable even if you never, ever look at them again. The other form of note taking is to keep a record of what you read that is relevant to the point of why you are reading it this time. It is not to provide a summary of the entire paper. It is when you've decided the purpose of why you are reading it, how central it is to what you're doing. Then the bit of notes that you are gonna actually file somewhere and keep, is only going to be related to the reason you are reading it this time. So if we're reading it this time, because you're working on your methodology, you only need to make notes on your methodology. And I can hear you. I can hear you screaming at your phones or whatever you're listening on this game. Yeah. But that's so inefficient because then I'll have to read it again later when I need the other stuff. Yes, you will. Yes you will. And I promise this is still more efficient. The reason this is still more efficient is because you don't know exactly what you'll need next time when you read this again in three months time. So you are now trying to second guess what it is you might need in the future, which means you are much more likely to over note, to write far too much. You are also much more likely to be noting in order to keep track of what they're saying. Rather than noting to keep track of what you are thinking about what they're saying, which is what notes should be. Even the notes that you are gonna keep. I want your notes to not just be they did this method, using this for these reasons. I want your notes to be, they did this method in this way for these reasons. I'm a bit concerned about why they didn't have a control for whatever, or whether their exercise intervention was long enough, or, I really liked the way they included two baseline measures or whatever, right. So the notes you are taking on the specific bit you are reading for a specific reason that you have identified 'cause you are in control of your PhD. You make notes on that, the intersection between their thinking and your thinking, where that overlaps in that gorgeous Venn diagram. That is what we are noting. Not everything. We are noting the bits we need right now that are what you are thinking about what they've done. When you read this again in the future, you are gonna be reading it with a different brain. So your brain circle is gonna be different shape than it was. You are gonna be reading a different bit of it for different reasons. And so the intersection between their thinking, you are thinking it's gonna be somewhere else, it's gonna be a different place. You can't do it now. That's why these dreams people have of what I need to do is just to get a complete, like library of all my reading with all my notes, and then it'll be super easy to write. No, you, you don't, it's not even desirable. It's definitely not possible. It's not even desirable. You need to be reading the things that you need to read, making notes of the thoughts you are having about the stuff that you need to be reading, how it has implications for your work right now. This also is a little bonus for you, is a massively useful way to transition from writing about the work of others in a kind of narrative reporter way versus writing your thoughts about a field in a thought leader, senior academic sort of a way. If your note taking is always the intersection between your brain and their work and never just a faithful replication of their work, then you are always building that habit of asking, what do I think about this? And from there, that helps. Knowing how you are gonna do your notes helps you inform. How long you're gonna spend on this article, because if you know that what you need is a detailed outline of their methodology, you can have a think about how long that will take for you to write out, for you to pick out, turn into something that you can record. Whereas if you've got to take notes on everything, how long does that take? Who knows? It also is an added, added bonus. This massively helps with overwhelm because one of the worst things about reading is its ability to spiral in 50 directions. You think you're just reading this article, by the time you've read the whole article with a vague kind of, I need to know it purpose and made all your notes. You've got 40 other references that you need to go and look up now, and you're suddenly like, oh my goodness. If every paper I read gives me 10 new references. I'm, how am I ever gonna get through this? This is just gonna extrapolate wildly, Hey, we don't need to do that. Because if we are reading it for its methodology, we don't need to look at all the different background articles. If we are reading it because it works on similar population to us. We don't need to read all the articles about how they did their analytic strategy. Okay. We read for a purpose for reasons that we have chosen, to a level that we have chosen and take notes in a way that enable us to do the thing we're trying to do at the moment. And from there, it's so much easier to decide how long it takes, and then people will say, okay, yeah, I decide how long it takes. And then it takes longer. And my answer sounds so flippant, but hopefully you guys know me well enough to know that I mean it from a good place. Don't. My answer is don't. If you decide you are giving this article an hour, and at the end of the hour you're like, oh, I need more time. Don't. Get it done to the level you are able to get it done in the time you've been given. What that means is if you gave yourself an hour and you decided what you are doing in it, it means you've started reading it in more detail, at a greater depth, at a level of understanding that you don't have, that you've gone off and looked up their references or whatever it is. You've deviated from your plan. Don't. Give yourself the hour and do as much as you can in that hour. You can come back to it another time if you need to. If you need to read it for more depth in a later date. If you need to read it for a different reason at a later date, come back to it. Happy days. But this is how, by taking control of it, identifying exactly what we're doing and deciding how long it takes, that is how we stay on top of our workloads. That is how we actually stick to deadlines. Now, some of you, I'm doing a lot of like objection answering here. I can hear your voices in my head. Some of you might say, oh, but that takes out the joy of lit reviewing that, you know, I love to just immerse myself in the literature. Then that's great. We get to decide that. If you decide, actually, what I wanna do is spend an afternoon, two days, a week, a month, who knows? Immersing myself in the literature with the purpose of having fun, chasing rabbit holes and not having to be intentional. Great, do it, but decide that intentionally, because if your purpose is to dive into the literature, enjoy swimming around, enjoy following rabbit holes, then what you can't do is at the end of that period of time, moan about the fact that you haven't got a structured lit review out of it. Moan about the fact that you haven't "got anywhere". Because that wasn't the purpose. The purpose was the pleasure. The purpose was enjoying following these little trails down through different bits of literature and stuff. So even that. You can still do it. Just choose it as the purpose and therefore focus on enjoying the process 'cause what I see people doing is they tell me I wanna be able to follow the literature. I wanna be able to go down rabbit holes. I really enjoy it. That's why I get to distracted. But they simultaneously beat themselves up for not making enough progress, not being focused, never getting anywhere. You don't get it both ways. You get to decide, am I reading this thing because I'm intentionally trying to develop the method section of my thesis or whatever. Am I reading this thing to generally enjoy swimming around in the literature? Am I reading this thing because I need to learn about this particular approach or this particular argument? Why am I reading it? Use that to decide exactly how you do it. Taking into account the state your brain's at where, what time it is in your PhD, exactly what you're doing, decide how long it's gonna take, and then spend that long on it. I say that like it's easy, your brain is gonna argue with you. Your brain is gonna say, oh, but I should probably write these bits down. Oh, I should probably take a bit longer. Just know that that's gonna happen. And remember, you don't have to listen to that bit of your brain. You can go, yeah, yeah, I know you think that, but this is what I decided. I decided that I'm reading it for this purpose to this level of depth, for this amount of time and making notes on these things. And that's what we're doing. And I know you've got a bunch of concerns about it, but that's what we're doing. I want you to try out this week. Let me know how you get on. If you are not already on my newsletter, why not? You get summaries of all of this stuff and you get access to the PhD Life Coach podcast archive, which is a completely searchable resource that has everything I've ever done in the podcast summaries, take home messages, they're categorized. You can control F and find whatever you are struggling with at the moment. So if you're not already on the newsletter, make sure you head over to the websites. Sign on up. I will send you that and every week you'll get a reminder about the podcast and of course my free monthly webinars as well. Hope to see you all at one of those soon. Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next week. Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at the PhD life coach com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics time.
< In this episode, best selling author Sophie Hannah shares her “Book Ahead” method for managing multiple projects when you already feel behind. Born in the midst of a particularly busy year of writing, the first iteration of the Book Ahead method not only got the job done, it also changed how Sophie felt about herself, her other projects, and one of her long-standing “bad habits”. If you feel like you’ll be behind forever and want a technique that doesn’t just involve simply working more, then this is the episode for you! Links I refer to in this episode About Sophie Hannah and the Dream Author coaching programme Pre-order Sophie’s new book, No One Would Do What the Lamberts Have Done – UK , North America ; available at other good bookshops! Transcript Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast, and I am joined by another guest this week, and I am, I always say I'm excited, but I'm particularly excited because this is a good friend of mine as well, and international bestselling author, Sophie Hannah. Welcome. Sophie: Thank you. Thanks for having me on. I'm very excited to be here. Vikki: It's perfect. So Sophie and I met because we did the same coach training and kind of moved in the same circles for a little while. Sophie has a coaching program for aspiring and current authors called Dream Author. Um, and we'll link to all that stuff in the show notes and well, we were having a conversation right, about how you manage all your different projects 'cause i'll get you to tell the audience a little bit more about yourself in a minute, but you're always juggling so many different writing projects and I just find it fascinating and that's where this whole conversation came about, I guess. Sophie: Yeah. So, last year I was juggling, I am always trying to do too much. Like way too much. I have this. And it's not a bad thing. I think it's actually a good quality. I have this kind of form of extreme optimism where if I want something to be true, then I just decide it is, and then I do everything I can to make it true. Sophie: So if there's lots of things I fancy doing, I just think, well, of course I can do all those things. And I don't often have realistic thoughts about what I'm actually capable of. And in many ways this causes problems. It certainly caused me a few problems and a lot of stress when I've committed to, you know, four things at the same time and then I find I can't deliver on time. Sophie: But actually there is, I have found, and I've only really realized this quite recently, there is also an advantage to assuming you can do too much and committing to do too much. And the advantage is that even though you do often stress yourself out in the process of trying to sort of handle this massive workload, you also train yourself bit by bit to be able to do more. Sophie: And this was a big eureka moment for me just a few days ago because I had got to the point where I thought, right, I'm not going to, in future, take on too much. I'll only take on what I can handle. And then I realized that what I can handle easily now is so much more, such a vastly greater amount of things because I've taken on too much in the past. Sophie: So then I thought, right, I need a middle ground. I need a middle ground between don't take on more than I can handle and sort of don't take on more than I can handle in a way that means I never grow my capacity to handle more. So that's where I'm at with it now, and where I'm at right now is, I do want to take on too much, but deliberately and calmly and without stress and with a plan to not necessarily make it work entirely, but make it work as well as it can work all while feeling no stress. But this is very much a 2025 development and learning, because in 2024 what was happening was I was taking on too much, Not really seeing any advantage that there could be in doing that and just feeling all the stress. Sophie: So I had committed to write three books and write and deliver from start to finish, three books between November the seventh, 2023, and January the 30th, 2025. So on the 7th of November 23, I knew that I had to start and finish three books in 15 months. And that felt quite scary to me because also they had to be good Vikki: and we should probably put in context for everybody as well. I mentioned your dream author coaching program. The books is obviously what you are famous for and you know where you've built your career and all of that stuff, but you are also running a huge coaching program. You are also doing retreats, you are also doing talks for a whole variety of different places. It's not even just writing these books, right? Sophie: Yeah. Oh. Oh, not at all. I mean, my coaching program at any given time contains between 1300 and 1500 people typically. So I am the coach for more than a thousand people now. It works a bit like a gym membership in that if everyone came in to use the cross trainer on the same day, the gym would soon encounter problems. Sophie: Not everyone asked for coaching on the same day. So it's totally manageable, but it's a lot, a lot, a lot of work. So yeah, when I thought I have these three books to write in 15 months. The, the thought in parentheses was as well as all my hours of coaching. So it felt like a lot, and it was a lot. Sophie: And what I found was that in 2024, roundabout, no February, late February, 2024, I was not as far ahead as I knew I needed to be in order to meet that deadline. And I started to feel down about it. Depressed. Uh, not depressed. I mean, I'm, I'm quite a jolly person, so I never feel seriously depressed, but just as though there was this weight of stress and almost like having to accept failure on the doing things on time front. Sophie: And I just kept thinking, I'm behind with this book. I'm behind with this book. And I was taking for granted that because I was behind with that book, which was book one of the three, the first I was gonna write. Because I was behind with that one, I thought, well, obviously I'm then gonna be behind with the next one, and then I'm gonna be about even more behind. Sophie: So I saw it as a kind of domino effect of behind ness and then I was listening to a session with a life coach, an American life coach called Tiffany Han. I was in her program, which was called the Gentle Productivity Club, which was brilliant, and it was all about how to be productive but also not exhaust yourself. Sophie: And she asked a question in this coaching call, which was something along the lines of have a think about what hasn't occurred to you yet. Like what haven't you thought of? What brilliant thing have you not thought of? And maybe you'd never think of it unless you think of it now, I can't remember how she phrased it, but it was just a completely open invitation to kind of say to your own brain, what is it that's not occurring to me? Sophie: That it would just be brilliant if it did occur to me. And what occurred to me as if by magic was the idea that just because I was behind with one book did not mean I had to be behind with any other books and that I could get ahead on the next book while being behind on this book. So I thought, huh, okay, so where are we? Sophie: It's, I think it was March. I had planned to totally finish book one by, let's say end of February. That's right and I had, I had finished it on time, but then it came back with loads and loads of notes and I saw that a massive rewrite was gonna be needed. Vikki: So listen, before you carry on Sophie listeners, I want you to remember that like big ass author here, getting billions of edits, same as we moan about when they come back from our supervisors and stuff happens to the best of us. Sophie: And actually, you know, one does want it to happen because, you know, whenever I get my edit notes and then I reread the book, I think, oh cripes, the first draft really was flawed and it's supposed to be flawed. Sophie: And the edit process is so lovely when you see it as just like, ah, now I get to make it good. First I got to make it just exist. Now I get to make it as brilliant as it can be. So I, I love doing the whole edit process, but I saw that it was gonna take quite a long time, and I had planned to start writing my next book at the beginning of May after a nice break between books. Sophie: And I thought, no, no, no, that ain't gonna happen because this book is gonna take me probably until the end of May now to do all the edits. And then I thought, okay, but what if I could get ahead on the next book while being behind on this one? What might that look like? And I thought, well, I'm still in March. Sophie: I could start the next book a whole month early and start it while I'm still editing the other one. And so not only would that enable me to practically get a bit ahead on the next book, but it would also completely shift the way I thought about myself and where I was at productivity wise, because suddenly just as if by magic, if I did this, what I came to call the ahead and behind method, I realized that I would not be able plausibly to think of myself as someone who's behind with their work, because I wouldn't be only behind, I would also be ahead. Sophie: That would be great. And like being ahead in one way and behind in another way, kind of cancels each other out. And then I could think to myself, well, I'm right on time, really. If I'm ahead, I'm behind. I'm kind of doing okay in terms of deadlines. And unlike almost everything I've tried to implement where normally there's a few teething problems, the minute the second I started trying the ahead and behind approach it just worked at an almost miraculous level. My thoughts and feelings and general kind of vibe in my mind about both books was massively elevated very quickly. Not only did I love getting ahead on the next book, which I will explain how exactly I did that. I loved that process. I was like, here I am. I'm a month ahead. Sophie: Look at all this brilliant stuff I'm doing so early. Aren't I good? Aren't I diligent? But also enjoying that so much had a knock on effect on the behind book, which no longer felt like quite such a burden because I was like, where every time I sat down with the behind book to work on that I was like, well, look, only this morning, I was really enjoying myself with the ahead book. Sophie: So do I really wanna give this book the label, the Behind Book and feel bad about it? Why not just think of it as another book I'm writing and try and enjoy it? So it just worked amazingly well, but it only worked well because I found a way to do the Ahead book that was compatible with doing the Behind book. Sophie: So the Behind Book was my main work of every day, apart from when I was coaching, but you know, when I had my writing time, it was the behind book that I was. Working on writing. And so I was sitting in my usual position with my laptop on my, on a cushion, on my lap, typing away for a certain number of hours. Sophie: And I thought, well, I don't, I can't be doing that with two books at the same time. I just can't. That would feel oppressive and like, uh, I was overloading myself. So I thought, well, okay, how can I do the ahead book in the most different way possible so that it really feels like a different activity in a different part of my day. Sophie: And I can't exactly remember how I came up with it, but it, it felt to me as though, like the answer was just obvious and there, and so what I did was reach for my phone every morning. So the first thing I do every morning is I get my phone, which is charging on the bed side table next to me. I do Wordle, the New York Times game. Sophie: I share my WORDLE scores with my mom and my sister and my son-in-law. And I thought, right instead of them putting my phone down, I will keep it in my hand, open a new notes file and just record myself. 'cause there's a little button you can press if you're in notes, where you just record yourself speaking. Sophie: And I will record myself speaking some words of my ahead book into my phone. And then later on I will look at those notes, type those words up. But that will just be a secretarial task, the writing, the creating is gonna happen in bed before I've even put my glasses on, dictating into my phone, and I'm gonna make it deliberately feel like a fun thing rather than a work thing by choosing an amount of words to aim for every day that feels so easy and doable, that it's just like can't possibly fail. Sophie: So for me, the number I chose was 400 words a day. And I tried it out. The first day I went to my notes file, press record, started speaking a bit of the book, a bit of the ahead book. I'd got to 400 words in no time. Once I'd done a couple of, well, maybe three or four chunky paragraphs, I then copied and pasted those words into something called word counter dot net, and I saw that I'd done like 470 words. Sophie: I was like, great. Done. And it just works so brilliantly. And there's so much more to it than that. But basically the way I was able to do it so effectively was to make the ahead book. I actually now call it the Book Ahead Method, and I'm determined to do it now from now on for every book even when I'm not behind on another book. So I'm, I'm just gonna do the book ahead method 'cause I just loved it so much. But the key, when I did have that other book that I was late with, the key was to do the book ahead book just in completely different way. And it just worked brilliantly. I was able to then do everything, feel great about it, lose the stress, and most importantly just not feel at all behind because there was something very important that I was ahead on. Vikki: I love this and I love the one little gap I'm gonna fill in. 'cause I remember it from when you first told me about this is the, where it came from, because I remember you talking to me about a bad habit that we have in common, which is scrolling on your phone when in bed in the mornings. Vikki: And we had talked before about like, how do I stop doing it? Da, and I remember you saying. I've decided I just like being in bed on my phone and if I'm gonna be in bed on my phone, I might as well do this rather than that. And so I love the way that you were, rather than sort of being like, must be more disciplined, must get up, must go and work at my desk like a proper person or whatever. Vikki: You're like, I keep doing it. I obviously like it, so i'll stay here and I'll do this. I'll write my new book from here in a voice note. And I love that. Sophie: Yeah, and I think one of the reasons this method works so well for me was that, as you say, I attached it. So I, I knew I wanted to do something, which was the 400 words a day, and I deliberately attached it to a firmly ingrained habit. Sophie: So we both know having done our coach training at the Life Coach School, when something is just a firmly ingrained habit, it becomes easy to do, like brushing our teeth or putting our glasses on in the morning. It just happens because we expect it to happen 'cause it's a habit and I knew that. So I thought, okay, this habit that I've always thought should I try to get rid of? Sophie: Because lots of people disapprove of picking up your phone first thing in the morning and not getting straight out of bed, but kind of lounging around. You know, all of those things. You can hear lots of people saying why you shouldn't do them. But I just, you know, having observed myself for 52 years, I just do lie around in bed in the morning and reach for my phone and stay on my phone. So I was like, why not really use that fact? And that firmly ingrained habit to produce something absolutely amazing and have fun in a slightly different way. I also knew that if I incorporated the ahead book writing into my kind of stolen, rebellious time of lying around in bed in the morning then it would make the writing feel like part of the fun bit stolen from my working day, not part of the dutiful, doing the work bit. And I knew that for a contrarian like me, who, if you're familiar with Gretchen Rubin's, the Four Tendencies, which I'm sure lots of your listeners will be, she basically divides everyone up into four categories. Sophie: Upholders, obligers, questioners and rebels. And every time I do a quiz, I come out as a rebel. So I knew that if I did my, you know, it's, I'm writing the book, I shouldn't be writing at the moment, you know, and I'm writing it when I'm lying in bed, when I should have got up. I knew that would add to my enjoyment and motivation, and it really worked. Vikki: I love that. And it also means that it didn't steal time from the other book, right? Because I'm sort of trying to hear what I think the listeners might be thinking and stuff, and one of the things I can imagine is them saying, yeah, but surely you got more behind on the book you are behind on if you are giving time to this book. Yeah. And I think this idea of stealing time that you weren't using for other work is, is hugely important. Sophie: Yeah, that is such a good point. So at no point, not even on a single day, did any time that would otherwise been spent on the Behind book get stolen? All of my ahead book writing happened when I definitely would not have been writing my behind book anyway. Sophie: So lying in bed, I mean, typically before I did the book ahead Method, I'd spend half an hour to an hour lying in bed just looking on Rightmove, Instagram, Facebook, X and BlueSky. Um, at least 20 minutes looking at things people had written that I thought was silly and getting cross about those things in an enjoyable way. Sophie: And I was like, okay, so I can do that for five minutes and spend 15 minutes writing a bit of my ahead book and then I started to branch out. So sometimes I would do my ahead words, uh, when I was walking the dog, or you know, if I was in the hot tub near where I live in Cornwall, there's a hotel with a hot tub that I like to sit about in. Sophie: And sometimes I would just have my phone. I'm such a rebel. I take my phone into hot tubs and my mom outrageous. My mom can't bear it. She's like, whatcha you doing? It might fall in. I'm like, but it fallen and so far it does not fall in. And I would just record my book ahead, words in my phone in the hot tub, and then I get to stare out at the nice view. And you know, so I, but I always made sure it came from time. That wasn't time that belonged to the Behind book. Vikki: And you've touched on this already, but the other thing that kind of really stuck out to me is the impact of changing your self-concept with all of this stuff as well. Because again, often I think in academia, we think about work in quite a, sort of a boxed way, right? Vikki: That I've only got the, I've got these hours to get stuff done, and if I'm doing other things then I'm not. But it sounds as though even within those hours that you are working on the behind book, you were working more effectively and more enjoyably because of the mindset shift. Sophie: Completely because the overall picture and story was no longer a negative one. It wasn't the case that I was behind on Book one and therefore behind on Book two. And no doubt, by the time I got to book three, I'd be even, I'd be so behind, I might as well be, you know, in another time zone. That was no longer the case. The minute I started doing the ahead method and it worked. I was like, I'm, I'm ahead as much as I'm behind, which effectively means. Take all things into consideration. I'm pretty much on time, perfectly on time. What could be better, you know? And, and I just, yeah, it, it changed everything, but it wasn't a kind of hard one. You know, if I make an effort, maybe I can feel, it was like instant. The minute I started, everything just changed completely and even I started not to care or worry or stress if the behind book even got a bit more behind. I was like, yeah, that's fine. That's meant to be the behind. Who cares when that's finished? It'll get finished at some point. But the most important thing is that on my ahead book, I'm way ahead and, and the whole process actually it really did kind of come true. 'Cause what happened was. By the time I finished and handed in the Behind book, I had about 55,000 words of the ahead book. I then read through those 55,000 words 'cause I thought, right, what do I do now? Does do I carry on with my ahead method now that there's no other book taking up my main working day? Sophie: And I thought, well, no. Now I should make this the book I'm writing. I read the 55,000 words and they weren't really. I couldn't have just like said, right there are the first 55,000 words, I'll just write the rest. Because they were fragments and scenes, they weren't stitched together at all. I'll say a bit more about that in a minute 'cause that is quite important. Sophie: But even so, having read them through, I thought, I know this book so well. I know what it's about. I know what all the main things are. I know the characters so well. So I kind of started from scratch writing a first draft of the book, but it didn't feel like a first draft. It really felt like a final draft because all the invention had been happening as I wrote the 55,000 words. Sophie: So to turn that into a coherent book was way less work and effort, and that was a surprise, like when I read through the 55,000 words and thought. Oh, this is not really a book. Like this isn't even three quarters of a book that I just finish off now. This is a load of amazing material that has to be turned into a coherent book. Sophie: And at that point I was like, ah, this is gonna take eons. And it just didn't, it all just fell into place because so much of what was important was there already, and I, I just knew the thing inside out and because I'd had that experience of writing it in such a fun way, turning it into the proper book felt like fun as well. Sophie: And just editing it then felt like, felt like the whole process felt like really good fun. Now, this is where I need to tell you a really important bit of the book ahead method. So, because you want to make it feel like fun and not like your main work that's occupying most of your working day. What you don't wanna do in the book ahead method is allow any perfectionist thinking to creep in. Sophie: You don't wanna think, right how, how best to start this scene. No. The minute you start thinking what's the best way to start? Or you know, what's the best opening for chapter one already you are into serious work thinking. So I just decided that what I was gonna do was that at the beginning of every book ahead writing session, I was gonna think to myself, okay, what is something that definitely has to be in there? Sophie: No matter what else happens. So in the case of my ahead book, which is called No One Would Do What The Lamberts Have Done, it's about a family that does the unthinkable, an ordinary family that does the unthinkable. And I deliberately don't say what the unthinkable is 'cause I want people to read it and find out. Sophie: But I knew. There were certain things that had to be in there. There was, for example, an argument about resemblances that a mom and a son had to have. So I thought, right, there's just no way, no way on earth that book is not gonna contain the resemblances discussion because it's an important clue. So I thought, right, start there. Sophie: So I literally started in the middle of a scene, and it's a mum and son arguing about this, based heavily on an argument that my family actually had where I said, Hey, who does? We were watching a movie and I said, Hey everyone, who does she remind you of? And my son said, no one. I was like, no, no, she does. She does. Look. Look at her. Who does she remind you of? He said, she doesn't remind me of anyone. Mum. I know who you are thinking of. It's so and so. I was like, wait, if you know, I'm thinking of so and so. That has to mean she reminds you of so and so as well. He was like, no, it doesn't, she doesn't remind me of anyone, but I just knew she, it turned into the most absurd argument and that argument had to be in the book. Sophie: So I just started with that argument and then the next day I was like, okay, what else definitely has to be in there. Well, there has to be the bit about the song that the mum sings to the dog. They've got a pet dog who is very important in the story. He's like a member of the family, and he has a day song and a night song that his mom, his human mom sings to him. Sophie: They both have to be in there. So every day it was like, okay, what else is super important and has to be in there. So what I ended up with when I read those 55,000 words was just loads of small bits with no edges, as it were, just centres of scenes almost. But they were all the most important scenes that I ended up with because every morning I think, what's the next most important thing that's definitely going in? Sophie: So actually it's like just a brilliant way, as it turns out, I didn't know it was going to be, I was like, okay, well this'll have to do, but it turned out for me anyway, to be a brilliant way of getting all the essentials down there. And kind of pushing my perfectionist tendency out of the way going, no, no, you don't get to be fussy about grammar and how are we starting this chapter? Sophie: You just get to move aside and we're just going to the heart of something that really matters for the book, and we're just writing from there without any care in the world, and it just really worked. Vikki: Yeah, because I think there's something about that lack of a sort of linear approach that also presumably made it feel more different. Vikki: Than what you were doing in your other book too, because I can imagine if it was like, read what the 500 words I wrote yesterday and write the next 500 words, then it becomes a bit more like, Ooh, what does need to come next? Sophie: Yeah. It was so, not only was it completely different from the behind book approach, it was also completely different from anything I've ever done before. Sophie: And from the kind of person I am, I, I had to just say to myself, there's only one way this is gonna work. And this is if you do, if you approach this in a way that someone like you would just never approach anything. But that was very liberating. Mm. Right. I'm gonna forget, I'm, you know, miss, I am literally Mrs. Linear approach. You know, you can't get more linear than me. Most of the time I'm the kind of person who goes, right, well, before we go to the supermarket, we've got to plan our route and we've got to make our shopping list. You know, I like to get organized, get ahead of myself. And I just thought if I try that with this. I'm just gonna kill it stone dead, because my brain will be like, wait, we've already got all these linear responsibilities over here with this book. That had to feel completely different and fun and more like playing wordle. Like, oh, a fun thing I do in the morning, you know? Let's see. What words appear today? Vikki: How would you, so I've got some ideas for this, but I'm interested in your perspective. So this is a PhD. Podcast as you know. We may well have listeners that write fiction that are like, oh my God, this is amazing, but I wanna translate it through into the sort of work that PhD students and academics are likely to be doing as well. Sophie: Absolutely. And I, and I can do that because my father was an academic, my husband was an academic for many years. My son-in-law has just finished university, so I'm very, very familiar. I've got loads of close friends who are academics, so I, so yeah. Ask me about how it really, so how Vikki: would you envisage if, if people listening are like, okay, right. I'm behind. I, you know, my thesis is due at the end of the year. Um, I am meant to have handed in a draft of the first two chapters. Um, how would I even consider getting ahead on chapter three because it's, you know, I need my references and I need my data. And it's structured. It's not outta my head the way fiction is. Sophie: Yeah. Well, I think from an academic point of view, there's loads of ways you could actually use this. So you could use it in relation to chapter three. If you are behind on chapter one or chapters one and two, but you could also, you know, let's say you are doing a PhD on, um, you know, the philosophy of freedom from versus freedom to which is a big moral philosophy question and that's what your PhD is on. Sophie: But you happen to know that your next brilliant academic work is gonna be on, um, should a dog be allowed to be Prime Minister, let's say. Yeah. There are philosophers who argue all kinds of strange and extreme. I, I know of a politics, a former politics professor who genuinely, seriously believes that six year olds should be given the vote. He argues this in all seriousness and I was inspired by this to decide that dogs should absolutely be allowed to be prime minister because let's face it, what could unite the country more effective? You couldn't, no one could disagree with the dog's policies 'cause dogs aren't able to have policies. Sophie: I mean, fantastic on so many levels. Anyway, let's say that's your next philosophical work that you are planning. You could start doing the ahead method in relation to that. You are like, okay, what might I want my introduction to say and what are my key arguments that I'd want to put forward? Sophie: So whichever feels most useful or inspiring to you, you could do the ahead method with, you could even say, okay, I might only be on chapter one or two of my PhD right now, but one day I am gonna win the Nobel Prize for my academic writing and the book that will seal the deal, my great master work that everyone will read for centuries to come is gonna be on this topic and I'm gonna start doing the ahead method with that. Sophie: So it's whatever feels like it works for you. Now, I'm guessing with a PhD student, You might worry about being behind on chapters three and four more than you'd worry about your great masterwork. So you should choose the thing which, if you got ahead in relation to it, would most effectively offset the feeling of behind in relation to whatever you're behind on, if that makes sense. Sophie: So it's probably more likely to be chapters three and four. But who knows? It's just whatever works, whatever. Whatever changes things so that you think and feel differently about where you are in relation to the work. Vikki: Yeah, no, definitely. The example that jumped into my head is, usually people write the introduction to their thesis and the general discussion of their thesis last, right? Vikki: They have either they write up as a series of papers or they have a more traditional kind of lit review, methodology, and then a series of results, chapters or whatever. I. And one of the things that struck me was that those sections, yes you have to do separate reading for them to some extent, but often those sections are about contextualizing the work that you've done. Vikki: They're about interpreting the work that you've done. And I could definitely see a situation where your kind of current role is writing up one of the results chapters of your thesis. Yeah. But that you started brain dumping bits of text that you might use in your general introduction or your general discussion because like you say, you don't know the exact results you are going to find, but you know you need a section about the limitations of your studies. Vikki: You know, you need a section about possible future directions. You know, you need a section about where your work fits in the context of other people's work. And while some of those things might need you to go away and figure out the actual details of them later, the kind of notional ideas of stuff you need to say often is in your head. Vikki: Yeah. Yeah. Especially if you can, as you say, put aside that perfectionism, being able to say like, you know, I'd need here to refer to the paper by somebody or other whose name I've forgotten, but that's okay. It's the one where they did this. And then keep talking. So as long as you can kind of put aside that perfectionism of actually knowing the exact details. Vikki: 'cause as you say, that's secretarial, that can be added later. Yeah. Um, I think you could get hugely ahead of those chapters. Sophie: Yeah. Yeah. And your ahead writing could be a series of notes and just things to remember. Or it could be, you know, if you think of a particular line you really want to say that, that brilliantly encapsulates an argument you want to make. It can be that as well. Vikki: Yeah. And I think doing this, even if your main body of work at the moment is reading, getting ahead of the writing I think is useful. I mean, I'm a big proponent of writing when you're reading anyway, but having that kind of thing that if the majority of your time at the moment is reviewing the literature, having that time where you wake up in the morning and you just. Vikki: Write stuff verbally about the, what you recall reading yesterday and why it was relevant and why you think it might not be relevant and those sorts of things. I can imagine it also being a really good way to process your thoughts about the stuff that you're reading at the same time. Sophie: Yeah, completely. But I mean, there's so many ways it can work and, and just, we haven't covered this yet, which I think is important in another way, which is just thinking, It's not just this anymore. 'cause I think when you've got a novel that you're working on or a PhD that you're working on, it can start to feel like an oppressive thing. Sophie: Looming over you. That just blocks out everything else. The minute you start doing something else, creative or intellectual that you care about, then that looming scary thing suddenly becomes not the only thing. And it has to kind of take its place in an overall picture that contains other things you're working on. Sophie: And that is so powerful just in and of itself because it's like, oh, what about this over here? You are not the only thing in my life, PhD or novel. And it's very empowering. Vikki: Definitely, and I think you can also make it feel more like what you imagined PhD might be like too, because I think often people come to their PhDs, especially people that come to their PhDs not straight after their masters. Vikki: They've made kind of a conscious decision to come back to it. It's a topic they love. They sometimes have a slightly romanticized view of what that's gonna be look like, right? Or, you know, I'm gonna be doing this intellectual work and waning around thinking high thoughts and dah, dah, dah. And suddenly their supervisors are saying, can you gimme a Gantt chart? And you're like, what? That wasn't what I envisaged. And I feel like you could create some of that, that sense of it being what you envisaged. Sophie: If your main work project at any given time is say, a Gantt chart, then you can use your ahead writing time to do the kind of writing or PhD work that you looked forward to doing, but just in relation to a different bit of your PhD. Vikki: Yeah, and that's where I want everyone to be really clear. We are not saying that this has to invo involve voice notes in bed in the morning. 'cause I can hear some people going, you know, oh, but I, my brain doesn't wake up or whatever. That's not the point. The point is that it's really distinct from how you normally work. So for some of you, so I have a good friend, who will say writes books, and he loves writing longhand in a beautiful notebook. And so it might be that maybe your real PhD work, you're in there, you're doing your data, you're typing away on your laptop and things like that. Vikki: But in the ahead part you've got a beautiful notebook and a fountain pen, and you only do it in slightly glamorous looking hotel foyers, but once a week you go off and do that or whatever. Right. Sophie: Yeah, and I, I massively would love to write something in a beautiful notebook. Uh, I, I take all my notes in a beautiful notebook, but that Yeah, precisely. That's the kind of thing you are ahead method of writing can be whatever you want it to be. There's loads of people who would absolutely hate why around in bed talking into their phone. I mean, like, some people would be like, no, I've woken up. I want to get up and have a shower. It's attaching it to what works for you that matters and making sure it's different from your main task of work at that time and more fun feeling. More, more sort of easy and light feeling. Vikki: Yeah, definitely. Sophie: You then get to witness yourself doing work on your PhD and having fun. Or I get to witness myself writing a novel and having fun. That reminds me by proving to me that actually writing novels can be fun. So then I look at the other novel I'm writing, I go, well, what if you could be fun? You haven't been for a while, but like, what if you could be? Sophie: And it all just has a knock on effect where you end up having much less stress and much more fun. Vikki: I love this. Sophie: If you try the ahead method and you love it, you can then do it even when you are not behind on something else, and that is what I decided to do. Sophie: I love the ahead method so much. I thought, well, why not just write all my books this way? Why not just write. I'd like to go down from 400 words a day to 300 to make it even lighter and easier feeling. But I am seriously planning to write my next book at the rate of 300 words a day, all via the book ahead method, even though I won't be behind on anything else. Sophie: So that's why I changed it from ahead and behind to, yeah, I giving names and titles to things. So originally when I introduced this in my Dream Author coaching program, I called it Ahead and Behind. But then when I decided I was gonna do it anyway, even if I wasn't behind, then I changed it to the Book Ahead Method and I am gonna do it even when I'm not behind on other things. Vikki: Love. Amazing. Thank you so much, Sophie, for coming on. It is super useful. Tell people a little bit more about what you're up to at the moment and what books they should be looking out for. Sophie: Well, I am finishing my next Poirot novel. So one of the things I write is the new series of Hercule Poirot novels at the request of Agatha Christie's family. And I'm just putting the finishing touches to the latest one of those and preparing to launch the book I've mentioned already, which is called, it's a very long title. No one would do what the Lamberts have done, which I call Lamberts for short. And then I'm apart from that, I'm coaching and doing lots of swimming, which I always do. And planning the next stages of the dream or for coaching program, which is about to develop in various ways. Vikki: Can't wait to hear about that. We will put links to Dream Author and to where you can find out more about Sophie and her writing generally in the chat. Thank you so much, Sophie, for coming on. Thank you everyone for listening and I'll see everyone next week. Take care. Bye-bye.
