Everyone I know in academia somehow simultaneously believes that they’re working far too much AND that they’re not working enough to get it all done. That leads to a horrible situation where we feel unsatisfied and exhausted, and we often don’t get to enjoy our downtime because we feel guilty too. In this episode, I answer a very common question - how much should I be working - with a more nuanced answer than you will get from most people! If you worry you do too much or not enough, then this is the episode for you. If you want to find the Randy Pausch lecture that I mentioned, it’s here . Links for the transcript If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on how to stop wasting time by trying to be too efficient. Transcript [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. Today we're gonna be thinking about one of the most common questions that we get asked, especially when I was a supervisor and that just, I think, runs through our heads a lot of the time, and that is how much should I be working? There seems to be obsessions in all different directions at the moment in academia, and it slightly does my head in because we have the people that are like, if you don't work 60 hours a week, then it's just not even worth being in academia. You're meant to be committed, that kind of, you are not working hard enough vibe. But then we also seem to have this other obsession with you've got to have work-life balance at all times. And you should never be stressed and you should never be busy and you should never work too long hours. You know, I can get everything done in 25 hours a week and blah, blah, blah. It just seems to be a whole lot of people telling you a whole lot of things about how much you should be working, and so many people seem [00:01:00] to want a definitive answer to it, that you should be working this much. And I mean, I have a confession, right? You're not gonna get a definitive answer to that in this episode. I know you want one. And so what we're gonna do today is we are gonna think about why it feels important to have a definitive answer to that question, and then I'm gonna give you some other tips and guidance for what are actually better questions to be asking and how you can answer them. Okay, so let's go. First thing, why do we want to know? We want to know how much we should be working because we are worried we're doing it wrong. The reason that question feels so important is because we are convinced that either everybody else is working more than us and we are not doing enough, and that we are gonna get behind. Or we're doing something wrong by not working enough. You know, I've [00:02:00] had PhD students in the past who are like, I'm not doing as many hours as everybody else and I seem to be on, on top of all the things I'm doing. And that freaks me out a little bit 'cause I think I'm doing something wrong. Or we wanna know, could I be working less than I am? 'cause what I'm doing at the moment doesn't feel sustainable. Is there a right amount of how much I should be doing that could be less than what I'm doing at the moment, or it's because you've got particular circumstances, whether they're health circumstances, life circumstances, or whatever, that put a limit on the number of hours you can work or are willing to work, and you are wondering whether it's even possible for you to be in academia. Can you do a PhD in those hours? Can you be an academic within those hours? And so we desperately often want somebody to say, this is the amount of hours. This is how much you should be working, and if you do that, you'll be okay so that [00:03:00] we can answer some of these bigger and more pressing questions of whether we're enough, whether we are doing it right, and whether we are capable of this anyway. The problem is that when the real things that we care about and worry about are kind of squished down, and we're instead asking the practical kind of so-called easier questions like, how much should I be working? We just don't get to the bit that really matters. 'cause I could turn around and say to you, you should be working 35 hours a week. You should be working 50 hours a week. You should be working whatever, however many hours a week. And you might go, oh gosh, I'm already working way more than that, and I don't feel on top of things. Or you might be going, oh, there's no way I could do that many hours in a week with my commitments, with my energy levels, with my disability, with my, whatever it is. Whatever number I gave you of [00:04:00] how much you should be working, you are gonna have a reaction that's nothing to do with those actual hours, or probably the worst case you'll go, oh, okay, right cool. I can work that much. And then you'll work that much and then often not get the stuff done that you want to get done, and then say, well, hang on. She told me that working that many hours is the right amount, and I worked that many hours and I haven't achieved what I wanted to achieve. And this is because we're asking the wrong question. The other reason I hate the question, how much should I be working is because I have known people at every extreme of that in every direction. I've known people who work an obscene number of hours don't seem to do a lot else in their life and who are exceedingly, exceptionally successful. I also have known [00:05:00] people who every time you went into the department on a weekend, they would be there doing their stuff and they were no more successful than anybody else. I also know people who would happily tell you exactly how many hours they work a week, and it was very high numbers, but who also seemed to spend all of that time chattering with people in nearby offices. So it doesn't predict success in any meaningful way. I've also known people who didn't put the hours in and didn't really get on with academia and didn't get stuff done, and I've known people who really didn't seem to work that much, but somehow did the right things and flourished anyway,. Success in academia is not measured in number of hours worked. It's also not measured in number of words written. That's the other metric we often go to, right? How much is the right amount of what words to be writing every week? Well, it depends [00:06:00] what phase you're in. Depends what stage of the research process you're at. I've known people that have wrote loads and been really successful, wrote loads have not seemingly been that successful. People who haven't written very much, who've had amazing careers 'cause they've just written the right things and people who have not written very much and sort of drifted out of academia. Again, how much writing should I be doing is also the wrong question to be asking. What we want to be asking instead, and if you take nothing else from this podcast, this is the question I want you to take, is what do we want to be doing with the hours and energy that we are willing to give this job or this PhD? What would I best be doing in the hours that I'm willing or able to spend on this career of mine? ' Cause how much time you should spend on something is entirely dependent on what the thing is and on who you [00:07:00] are and what constraints you have around you. So some people who work really long hours spend all their time doing things that don't move the needle. Don't bring fulfillment. Don't move them closer towards either their goals or their kind of community collaborations or whatever it might be. There is an amazing guy called Randy Pausch, and I'll put a link to his work in the show notes. And he talked about don't polish the underside of the banister. Often I see academics polishing the underside of the banister iE doing work that nobody sees and is not very important or impactful. Now, does this mean you should only be doing things that get you promoted? No, obviously not. We want academia, whatever stage we're at, we want academia to be a fulfilling place, an intellectually stimulating place, a place where we work for the social good, if that's your vibe or work for the pure joy of knowledge, if that's your vibe whichever, right. So this isn't just about being like super [00:08:00] strategic and doing the exact right things to get yourself promoted, but it is deciding what's important to you and choosing to spend more time on that stuff. If you are working 60 hours a week, but you're spending 20 of them sorting out your reference manager system, then you're probably not enjoying it, and you're probably not moving your career in the directions you want to go. How much we should be working also depends on what we are doing from a personal human perspective. So there was a really good episode a while back with some researchers from Bath where they talked about how to look after yourself when you're doing emotionally taxing research. And so if you are somebody who is doing research that is distressing to read about, where you're having interviews with people who are having very big emotions about the situations that they're in. You may find that the amount of hours you can dedicate, at least to that part of your research is gonna be much less than somebody who is doing much less emotionally taxing research. For those of [00:09:00] you doing research that is extremely cognitively taxing, you may be able to do less per day than you are at other times. And this is something that will also change throughout your PhD throughout your career. So for me, when I was in data collection phase, for me and the stuff that I was doing, data collection wasn't at all emotionally taxing and it wasn't particularly cognitively taxing. I was getting people into the laboratory. I was administering stress tests and things like that. Not like nasty ones, just like difficult maths tasks and things like that. I was sticking electrodes on them. I was taking saliva samples, all these sorts of things, right? It wasn't that difficult. As a bit of an extrovert. If anything, it was kind of fun chatting with these people running the sessions. I could do hours and hours and hours of that sort of work without it wearing me out socially, emotionally, cognitively. Whereas if data collection for you is close analysis of a poem, for example, [00:10:00] maybe it's not emotionally taxing, depending on what the poem's about, but it's maybe cognitively taxing that you can only do it for a couple of hours before your brain feels like it's drained. And then other people, we have so many people in my membership and in my wider community who are doing research about inherently distressing tasks often, which intersect with their own personal situations as well. So people with disabilities looking at disability prejudice, for example. Anything where like intersects with their own experiences. And for you guys, you may find that you can only spend a much more limited period of time. So taking into account what you are doing at any one time and how much time it is reasonable for you to expect to spend on it is super, super important. You also get to think about yourself as an individual. So some of it, you know, when I was doing my PhD, I was young, I was fit and healthy. I probably had ADHD, but that [00:11:00] mostly came out in over excitement rather than anything else and I didn't have any children. I didn't have any responsibilities. I didn't get much money, but I got a little bit of money from the department, which was enough that I wasn't doing other jobs and things like that. I could basically largely throw myself into stuff. Now, obviously, being me, I was trying to balance 47 other hobbies as well, so that slightly dragged away from my academic time. But other than that, not a lot did. You might have. Illnesses, you might have disabilities, you may have responsibilities, you may have family. You may be caring for people. You may have a whole bunch of reasons why you only have so much to give. There's also, I know many, many listeners and members who are part-time students who are balancing this alongside part-time or full-time work. And then the question is not so much, how much should you be doing? It's how much can you do given your constraints? And once you have that time, once you've decided what that amount [00:12:00] is, what do you want to spend that time doing? And it may well be that if you are somebody who has quite a lot of constraints on you, that means you need to be much more selective about what you choose to spend your time doing. It is not that you should be trying to find more time to work, more than your body or mind will allow you, but instead thinking about how can you support yourself to be much more selective than your average PhD student, than your average academic, so that you can really pick and choose what you spend your time on and how much time you give it. Now one of the things I'm gonna be teaching in the membership next quarter, so if you're listening to this live, this is coming out a week before quarter one of 2026 launches, and the entire quarter, so running February, March, April, is gonna be focused on time management, task management, and how we can kind of create a PhD life that we love and one of the things that we address right at the very beginning is this notion of really thinking about what proportion of [00:13:00] our time we want to be spending on different things. We need to balance the current needs of what we're doing right now. So for those of you who are academics, that might be your administrative responsibilities, your teaching responsibilities, your supervision responsibilities, or those sorts of things, how we balance the kind of urgent day-to-day needs of those sorts of things with the longer term needs of your career and your progression and so on, and thinking about what proportion of your week rather than the absolute number of hours, what proportion of your week you want to spend serving those different parts of you. For PhD students, it's slightly different, but obviously lots of you are balancing lots of things anyway, but also towards the end of your PhD you start having to balance what do I need to do to serve my current work, IE the thesis versus my future self. So turning things into papers, presenting at conferences to raise your profile, applying for jobs and all [00:14:00] those sorts of things too. So at pretty much any stage, your academic career, you're sort of balancing up the needs of the day to day now with the needs of future you. And one of the things I'm gonna be supporting my members to do is decide, therefore, what proportions of their week do they want to spend on these different elements. For example, one of the things I will teach is my role-based time blocking system. I do have an episode that kind of broadly introduces that, if you wanna go check it out. But I will take people through step by step so that they can really think about what amount of their week do they want to spend in each of the different roles that they have in what they're doing at the moment, and how adjusting that can make you feel so much more in control of your academic life. We also wanna think about how you are working, not just what you are working on in these, not just what topics you're choosing to spend your time on, but also how you are working within them. Often when the pressure builds and the to-do list grows and the panic sets in, we [00:15:00] somehow forget that we did actually choose to do most of this stuff, especially those of you doing PhDs. I accept that once you become an academic, there's a whole bunch of stuff that you did not necessarily sign up for, but as a PhD student, the doing of your research is pretty much what you dreamed of, right? Yet somehow all that pressure helps it turn into something that feels like someone else has forced it on you. Feels like you don't want to be doing it when actually most of us came into this through a love for our subjects. So another really useful question to ask yourself instead of how much I should be working is, how do I want to work within these hours? How do I want to make those hours feel lighter and more joyful and more engaging, rather than feeling like a sort of pressured drag that I have to pull myself through? This can be about changing the way we [00:16:00] work on things. Those you who've been around for a while know that I'm a big fan of like pieces of paper and felt tip pens and all that kind of stuff as ways to work in a more engaging way. But it can also be as simple as what, how we talk to ourselves while we're working. Because if we're working on something that we allegedly like, but the constant narrative in our head is, this isn't good enough. You are not good enough. Everyone's gonna think you're an idiot. That's not very clear. What if they disagree? What if they dislike it? What if they fail? Then you are not gonna enjoy doing that thing. Whereas you could be doing the exact same jobs for the exact amount of time, and instead thinking thoughts about how interesting this is, how fun it is, how difficult it is in a really kind of puzzling and interesting sort of a way so that you can actually spend more time enjoying the things you're doing. So that kind of quality of how you work is also super important, much more so than how many hours you spend doing it. I have two points left to make. So one is [00:17:00] the amount of time you are working and what you are working on also can and should fluctuate. Fluctuate day to day, week to week, month to month, and year to year. If you find that you are always working, like slogging away the same number of hours every month, every week, I want you to really reconsider. When you think about people who are at the top of their game, you think about people, you know, athletes and things like that, Taylor Swift even, anyone who's like at the top of their game, they will have periods where they're doing more of this, and then there'll be periods where they're doing more of. That there'll be periods where they're really pushing or where they're really preparing to push, and there'll be other times where they're sort of ticking over to some extent. And I want you to think about how you have those fluctuations in your life and how you can try and create those fluctuations in your life. One of the things I think has gone wrong with academia at the moment is how all the kind of traditionally down [00:18:00] times have got eaten at both ends. So, you know, there used to be this semi unstructured summer that you could kind of look forward to and get stuff done. It sort of, you know, exam boards and things like that, start eating into it at one end, conferences and things like that. Then suddenly there's loads more getting ready for next year than you ever anticipated. Those of you in the US and other places might be teaching summer schools and so on. It is getting eaten away at, you know, all these grant agencies. If any of you work for grant agencies, I'm looking at you. Not impressed all these grant agencies that have a deadline of January 15th. Excellent. Thanks for that. So suddenly your Christmas holiday is spent writing a grant or finishing off a grant and so on. It does feel as though the academic year has got eaten away at in lots of different ways so that it doesn't have quite the ebb and flow that it used to. But I want you to think how you can create a sense of ebb and flow, how you can create a sense that there's periods where you are pushing, where you are really working hard, but in a fun and [00:19:00] engaging kind of a way. And then there are periods where you are doing what's necessary to get through. This always reminds me of the metaphor of athletes. They have their competition season, they have more preparation season. They have more recovery season, and then even within those periods of time, they have their kind of, you know, hard training hour and their recovery hour and all these sorts of things. They don't expect themselves to be running all day every day. They also don't expect themselves to never be uncomfortable. And I think this is something that academia gets wrong is that we think if you've got a period of time where actually you are working long hours, you are pushing hard. It is quite pressured that that is necessarily a bad thing. That is not necessarily a bad thing. If you can put around yourself the support structures you need, so that you can feel looked after during that time. So you can look at where, are there things [00:20:00] I can take away that I don't have to think about during this time while I'm pushing hard at it? And where there's an end to it. So I often say to my members who are in that last sort of throes towards submission, they don't have to come up with a kind of work schedule that is sustainable forever. This is not talking forever. It's about the next two months or the next three months or whatever it might be. And they get to decide what's sustainable for that period of time and what pressures are they gonna relieve of themselves so that they don't have to do them during that period of time to support themselves to be working really, really hard. And then what are they gonna do after it so that they have that period of recovery and have less pressure before the other elements come along. The other way you can do it is even on a week to week basis. I remember a mentor of mine back in the day, she told me she had a very high, she was like pro vice chancellor level and she told me that not working on weekends was really, really important to her, but she had very [00:21:00] heavy workload that she often struggled to get done within the normal working week and so what she had arranged with her family was that on a Friday night, she would always work late. She was just not available on Friday nights, so they could do their own thing, whatever. She would work as late as she needed to work on a Friday night, but she then wouldn't work until Monday morning. So it was this sort of balance where in order to get her completely free days on the Saturday and Sunday, she kind of compensated with one later night. I also knew people who wanted to be able to be engaged in their family life to be able to put their children to bed and all those sorts of things. And they would sometimes work split shifts, so they'd allow themselves to finish at 2.30 so they could pick up the kids from school so they could do homework and tea and all that fun stuff. But they would then do a couple of hours after the kids had gone to bed to finish off the things that they hadn't finished earlier. And that was how they balanced it so that [00:22:00] they were meeting their needs, and also being able to engage with the things that were important to them. The final thing I wanted to say is that I actually think constraint helps, and this is the only place where I think thinking about how much I should be working or I want to work is important, is I highly recommend that in any kind of chunk or phase of time, you know, whether that's this week or this month or this quarter, that you decide how many hours you are willing to give and try as far as possible to intentionally stay within that time. So I've built this into my week planning process that I teach in the membership. At the beginning of any week, I will decide, okay, how many hours have I got that I'm willing to give this week? And then given that constraint, what stuff am I gonna get done this week? And the absolute number of hours will vary depending on where I'm at in the quarter, how many [00:23:00] workshops I've got going on, whether it's launch free study of those sorts of things. It will vary a bit depending on those sorts of constraints. It'll also vary at different times of year. But once I know how much I'm willing to give that week, then I decide , what are the most important things to fix into it? And the reason constraint helps so much with that is because of that age old law that probably has a name that I don't remember, which is that work expands to fill the time you give it. If you know that you can flop over into the evening or you can flop over into the weekend, you often end up not wasting time as such, but allocating more time to something that's less important than you would if your time was constrained. So one of the sort of premises of the role-based time blocking method that I teach is that we try really hard as far as possible to stay within those blocks that we set doing tasks that are associated with that [00:24:00] role and if we have less time to do it, then we make decisions about the scope of the task, about the quality of the task, or about the way we are working on the task to enable us to still get it done within that time. Okay. Usually people think the only thing you can manipulate is to give a task more time, and that's simply not true. , I did an online life drawing class this weekend, obviously, 'cause you know, hobby Girl and, one of the things they got us to do, we had like a woman in like her little shorts t-shirt thing. And I dunno why I felt the need to tell you she wasn't naked, but she wasn't naked. Um, and. At first, the first few drawings they gave us a minute. So she did a pose, we had a minute to draw it. She did another pose. We had a minute to draw it, and then they gave us some different instructions. And then we had a three minute pose, and then we had a five minute pose and things. And the point is, any of those times were enough time, [00:25:00] as long as you were kind of mindful of what you could get done in that time. Yeah. Could I have drawn better in my one minute ones if I'd had three minutes? Obviously, yes, but I had one minute, and so I did what I could do within that one minute. When I had three minutes, I did what I could do within that three minutes. None of them were right, none of them were wrong. None of them were very good frankly. But that's 'cause I'm a beginner. But I adjusted my expectations of how accurate it would be, how detailed it would be, how rough it would be, all of those things based on how much time I had to do it. And we can do that in academia way more than we think. It's actually true of wordcounts as well. Okay, you can explain your entire thesis in 15 words if you had to. You can explain your entire thesis in 250 words. You can explain your entire thesis. In 2000 words. You can spend a hundred thousand words. You just give less detail. You just give a broader brush [00:26:00] picture, the fewer words you have. And the same is true with time. You get to decide not only how long you're going to give something, but also what that means for what you are going to produce within that time. If you are marking and you've got x number of hours to mark, X number of papers, then the way you mark it needs to be adjusted to allow for the amount of time that you have. Expecting ourselves to do a one hour review in 20 minutes is the pathway to absolute burnout. So I hope you have found today useful. I've taken a question I often get asked, how much should I be working? Hopefully explained why it's not a particularly useful question to ask or to try and get answered at least, and hopefully giving you some guidance about other things that you could be thinking about instead that I hope will address the real issues here of feeling like there's too much to do in the time that you have available. [00:27:00] I really hope that's useful. If you want more specific guidance, you wanna know how I recommend people set up their weeks, how I recommend people review their weeks, what to do if you don't stick to your plans, what to do if you make unrealistic plans. If you want help with all of that stuff, please have a look at the PhD Life Coach membership for PhD students. If you're an academic, please recommend it to your students as well. The launch starts next Monday on the 26th. You can get in anytime that week between the 26th of January and the 30th of January. But the sooner you get in, the sooner you get access to everything, including the live sessions. So if you have any questions, do let me know. Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next week.

A critical inner voice is one of the most common and difficult experience as a PhD student or academic. In this episode, you get to hear me coaching TWO of my current students in the PhD Life Coach membership, who are both part time PhD students while holding down demanding careers in our National Health Service. It runs like one of our group coaching sessions, where they each get coached AND hear each other get coached on self-talk, prioritisation, and compassion. If you have a critical inner voice, or if you’ve ever wondered about the benefits of group coaching, then you’re in the right place! If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on How Winnie the Pooh can help you manage your mind . Transcript Vikki: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast, and this week's episode is actually something that we've never done before. Those of you who've been listening for a while will know that occasionally I have either listeners or members come on to have one-to-one coaching with me on a variety of different topics. Vikki: But this week I've actually got two of my current PhD life coach members on the episode to both be coached today. And the reason we thought this would be a really fun thing for you to all listen to is because as you'll hear in a second, both Kate and Janice have a sort of similar situation. At the moment, they're both part-time students with full-time jobs which I know will resonate with lots of you, but we thought it also reflected a bit more what we actually do in the PhD life Coach membership. Vikki: We have online group coaching where you get to hear other people getting coached in a webinar format as well as getting coached yourself. So how today is gonna go is that I am gonna coach [00:01:00] Kate and I'll get 'em to introduce themselves in a sec. I'm gonna coach Kate while Janice listens, and then Janice will come back on and we'll have a bit of a chat about what she took from listening to the coaching. Vikki: And then Janice will come on for coaching while Kate listens. And then Kate will pop back to talk about what she took from Janice being coached. You guys get to listen to all of it, so you get to hear two different people getting coached on this. Even if you're not a part-time student with a full-time job, there will be lots about time management and prioritization and self-care and all that good stuff that we all need to think about. Vikki: And you'll be able to see how beneficial it can be to hear other people getting coached and apply it to your own life. So thank you both so much for agreeing to come on. I'm super excited to have you here. Let's go ahead and do some intros. So Kate, do you wanna tell us a bit about who you are and what you're researching? Kate: Hi. So my name's Kate. I work in the NHS as a nurse and I am working, managing, working clinically and doing a [00:02:00] PhD via prior published works at the moment. So I'm writing up other work that I've done. I'm year two of a four year kind of contract with my organization. So I'm halfway through and my research is based on the impact of fresh air exposure for patients and intensive care. Vikki: Perfect. So your PhD is kind of connected to your work? You've still got the clinical duties associated with your actual job. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. And Janice? Janice: Hi everyone. I'm Janice and I also work as a nurse in the NHSI am an infection prevention control nurse consultant. I do my PhD. I'm in my second year as well for a four year program. And, uh, yes, juggling, doing both. Vikki: Perfect. And your PhD's connected topic-wise as well, isn't it? Janice: It's, I'm going to be looking at antimicrobial resistant bacteria and how we can better fight against it. Vikki: Amazing. So as I said, Janice, we're gonna get you to [00:03:00] turn your camera off. Yeah. But you will be there in the background listening in. Usually in the group sessions, people are then contributing in the chat and things as well and we will have a chat, Kate, and then Janice will come back in a bit. So give us a little bit more kind of context for what's going on for you at the moment. What's feeling challenging? Kate: So this year I have, um, I've been off work for a bit 'cause I've been unwell. So at the moment I am trying to manage the transition back into both roles. So my PhD and my academic work, and then also my clinical work. And both of them have competing pressures and competing challenges. And I find it very hard to be able to manage and rationalize the time I'm spending on each area. Kate: So I find that my operational hat, my operational job can sometimes feel that I have to be, um, as present as I possibly can and I have to be managing all the operational pressures that we have and I have [00:04:00] to be supporting the team. And it feels like when I'm trying to manage the competing pressures of clinical stuff and non-clinical stuff, I will always find it very difficult to find that balance. Kate: And I feel guilty and harassed, um, when I'm trying to do one and I'm thinking about the other. So I find it very hard to switch between the two roles. And I think that also fits with the fact that I've also got family and I've also got, you know, friendships, relationships, stuff out of other work. Kate: 'cause I'm somebody who takes on lots of other things. I'm not good at saying no? So I think probably my question is about managing transitions between two roles and two, two challenges, but also how to, I've just come back into clinical work and I'm about five, six weeks in and I found that transition back in much harder than I expected to. Kate: And then I'm finding the transition back into my academic work as hard, but in a completely different way. So it feels like my, I've got my confidence back up [00:05:00] in one half of my life, but I'm now trying to pull the confidence up in the other half of my academic life. And that was reflected when I've been struggling to write something that I can absolutely know, I can write. My tone of writing in my piece is lacking in confidence, I would say. So I sent it to a friend to read it for me and she said, well, this is, this is great, but this isn't how you write this is, this is a different style of how you normally do it. Kate: Like she's like, you need to say be more confident, be more bold, be more, you know, own the page a bit more. So it's just how I can build my confidence up academically after some time away and how I can sort out that balance. Vikki: Perfect. So help me understand it a little bit more. In terms of your confidence. What sorts of things are you finding yourself saying to yourself when it comes to getting back into doing the PhD work? Kate: I think I am more, I feel more anxious to submit. 'cause I'm looking at [00:06:00] submitting this paper and I've been writing, so this is a paper that I was meant to finish in the summer and then I'm six months after I wanted it to be submitted. Kate: So I kind of, in my head I'm saying, well, you are late. You are late already. You've, you've already let yourself down 'cause you are already six months later than you wanted to be. Um, and that it is because I'm a bit later and I've had a break from it. It then takes you a while to get back into it. And so I'm finding that kind of getting back into it a bit harder than I thought I would do. Kate: So I'm having to reread lots of the papers that. I have read previously and I know, but I've forgotten bits of it I think. Because I've forgotten bits of it, all that anxiety about having to know the topic so well. So you've read everything, um, and you feel completely prepared to be able to write down your argument coherently 'cause you understand the evidence base as well as you can. Kate: So I think it's that confidence about the evidence base, probably that is, I've lost it a little bit and I think it's [00:07:00] um, because I'm, 'cause I'm late in getting to this stage 'cause I thought I would be , further on, I kind of feel a bit cross with myself and a bit kind of frustrated. And then because I'm crossing frustrated, I think I'm under more of a time pressure. Kate: So I found myself looking at the two weeks before Christmas and I'm not working Christmas this year and this is the first Christmas I've had off in my whole career since having maternity leave. So I've never had Christmases off, like full two. I've never had a full two weeks off at Christmas ever. Uh, so I'm kind of, I really want to take a break, but I also really know I have to get this stuff done and then I kind of feel like I'm, I've lost my confidence and I'm behind the curve. Vikki: Okay, perfect. So you mentioned there that you are having to revisit things because of the time away. Tell me more about why that's a problem. Kate: It feels irritating. Vikki: Mm. Kate: And it feels like I've, it feels like I'm behind. It feels, it's just a reminder every time that I have to look at something. Again, you should know [00:08:00] this, you are behind the curve. You should have done this earlier. This, this, you shouldn't be doing this now. And I know in my, I know why I didn't do it. Now I know I couldn't have done it previously, but I'm finding it very hard to switch off that kind of critical bit of my brain, which is you are not where you thought you were going to be and being still quite angry about not where I thought I was going to be, which I know is nonsensical but is hard to come around to. Vikki: Why is it understandable not nonsensical to feel like that? Kate: Well it's, it's understandable because being unwell was unexpected. It was, you know, it's normal for me to be angry. Like, you know, I like my brain tells me that all the things that I'm feeling and all where I am is exactly where I should be and I have no control over it. Kate: But I think because of the operational pressure that is in the NHS all of the time, it feels like there is a mandate all of [00:09:00] the time that you should be working at 120% all of the time. And if you are not working at 120%, that you are kind of somehow doing yourself or somebody else a disservice. So I'm just trying to negotiate to myself, not, and trying to notice why I'm, I think I feel ang, I think I feel quite angry that I'm not where I wanted to be. Kate: And I've kind of got there for my clinical bit. So like, I feel like I've, I've got, I've come to terms with it for my clinical bit 'cause I couldn't have physically done it, but I kind of keep thinking, well, I should have maybe when I was in bed, why didn't I, why didn't I keep reading these papers when I was in bed? Kate: And I, I realized that, I realized how naughty that sentence is and I realized that isn't, that's a stupid sentence. Like, I should have done more while I was sick in bed. I realize. Yeah. Vikki: Okay. So one of the things, so for everybody listening, I know Kate and Janice reasonably well, they've been members for a little bit and we've coached before. [00:10:00] And one of the things I want to kind of just reflect back is the, the words you're using to yourself. Okay. You are telling yourself your thinking's nonsensical. You are telling yourself it's a stupid thought. All of these sorts of things. Okay. So there's the level that you are criticizing yourself for not being where you thought you would be, but there's also a level to which you are criticizing yourself for not handling this better, for not being able to think the thoughts that you know are sensible and cognitive. Kate: Yeah. Vikki: Okay. Yeah, and I want us to be really careful of that bit of judgment too. It happens quite a lot with people who have been coaching for a little while and kind of think I should be able to regulate all my thoughts by now. Yeah, we can get a bit perfectionist with coaching too. I see this quite regularly and I've had it myself. Okay, so [00:11:00] tell me why it's completely understandable that you are feeling like these thoughts are stupid? Kate: I think it's because I feel that I have come such, I feel like I've made real strides this year. Like I'm quite proud of myself of the work that I've done and the publications that I've managed to get out and I've managed to kind of feels like I've, for the first time in this whole process, I've started enjoying it. Kate: Like I think for a lot of the first bit I was terrified and thought and had huge imposter complex. And then I kind of found this community and found a level of peace and a level of calm. And I found I'm really frustrated that I found that peace and level of calm. And then I became unwell. Kate: And now I'm just trying to kind of, and I feel like I should, I feel like I, all the stuff that we do, all the coaching, that I've listened to, all of, all of the models, all everything I feel like I should be. I like, I shouldn't have to, I shouldn't be feeling this way. [00:12:00] 'cause I know, I know it. We've talked about it, we've done all of this stuff. Kate: And so I think I'm a bit like, oh, I, I thought I would be better. I thought I would be better at dealing with this than I am, which is, you know, think I just thought I was more in the middle. And then this has kind of knocked all of my confidence about how I manage myself so it's, I think it's, I think it's been a confidence knock just in lots of different ways that I didn't expect, I think. Vikki: Yeah. No, definitely. And this is so common, right? Because people come with one problem. You didn't know you were gonna get ill, when you joined the membership. You were mostly focused. I think it's fair to say on the kind of time management element of it, that you've got this very, very busy, very important, very pressured job. Vikki: Um, and you wanted, and the PhD was very important to you, and you wanted to kind of be able to balance all of those things and work out how not to stretch yourself too thin. And [00:13:00] you then made huge strides in how you were managing your division of time and your time blocking, and the thoughts about your, what level of perfection you were expecting from yourself and all of these sorts of things. Vikki: You made huge strides. And what I think is really important to recognize is that when a different challenge comes along, we have to re address that stuff. We don't, you know, coaches have coaches. There's a reason that just cognitively knowing this stuff isn't sufficient to just be able to, oh, I can just apply it to every area of my life now, sort of thing. Vikki: So we got now this new situation. I know it's not new for you, but as in it, it wasn't what you anticipated joining the membership for and we get to think about, right, how do I want to now adapt and apply some of these things that I've learned? Yeah. Okay. And one things I'd really encourage you to do is be [00:14:00] kind of gentle with yourself on that. It's not easy to apply them to a new situation. You are in a kind of new, more challenging situation than you were before, which means we get to kind of re practice in this situation. Kate: Yeah. Vikki: How does that feel? Kind of just reminding yourself that it's completely normal not to be able to just self-regulate into the new challenge. Kate: I think I hadn't thought about it in that kind of a concrete way. I hadn't thought about it that the reason I'm frustrated is because I thought, well, I've learned all the, like, you know, I've got your tick sheet. I know what to do, you know, I like a plan, I like a process. Kate: I was like, well, I've gone through the process, but it still isn't where it was before. So I think it's really important to say, well, you actually have to relearn this. You actually have to do this again. And I think you think sometimes in skills acquisition, well, I've learned all the skills, therefore I should just be able to apply it. Kate: And actually it's not really reflective of real life. And I think that's the thing with [00:15:00] maybe lots of people who are doing PhDs and academics and who are balancing lots of things. We're used to having a recipe, doing it, being able to do it, and then just being okay. Yeah. And I think probably I underestimated this as a new chunk of the challenge. Vikki: And you know, from the membership. I love an analogy, right? And particularly an analogy that's sort of specific to the person I'm working with. What advice would you give a newly qualified nurse who's like, I've learned all my skills, I've done my clinical training, I've qualified, I'm a nurse now who then finds themself in ICU or whatever going, oh, this is a whole other ball game than when I was on placement. Kate: I think, um, I would say every day and every challenge is new and different, and you have to come at it with the toolbox of skills that you've got, but recognizing [00:16:00] that actually it's about skills acquisition over a whole career. And each time you do something for the first time, you're an amateur. So you have to work out how to do it. Kate: And it's okay for it not to be perfect 'cause nothing in life is perfect and nothing in life is a straight line and it's all, you know, tricky and challenging. And actually just being in the race is, is hard enough. So well done for just joining the race. Vikki: And how does it feel if you reflect that back at yourself? Kate: Uh, compassionate and kind and relaxing and takes a lot of the pressure of, I should be better than this. I should be further along than this. I should be able to cope with this. Or I should be, I've learned the rules, I should just be able to apply them. I think that's, I think that reflection that coaches have coaches I think is really important as well. 'Cause I think you kind of think, you know, you. You've learned all the skills, therefore you should just be able to apply them all the time. And that just isn't true, is it? It's just, it's [00:17:00] not even, it's not, it's just not true. No. You just can't. Sometimes Vikki: and people listening might be interested, and Janice might be interesting, listen to this, that we are not actually talking about your confidence in your academic skills at the moment, because I actually don't think that's the first layer of this. I think the first layer of this is the extent to which you're beating yourself up for not managing this better. That you're not being patient with yourself and you're not understanding that this is exactly where you are and not kind, you know, not doing all this emotional stuff. And I think if we can start there, I think the actual building of the academic confidence will come with time. Vikki: And I think, yeah, obviously it's something we can talk about in other coaching sessions in the membership, but, um. This self-judgment that you should be able to be managing all of this makes it so much harder to be kind of creative and patient and all those things to build the [00:18:00] academic skills. Kate: Yeah. Yeah. It's like there's a voice in the room all of the time. You know, the, the critical friend that all of us have, a critical friend in our head, my critical friend is on def com, you know, is, is really chatty at the moment in a really unhelpful way, which isn't, you know, and I think I can and because I'm trying to manage the helpful friend and being like, I know that you are completely unhelpful, be quiet. Kate: That actually makes it even more frustrating. So you're right. It's that bit. That's the hard bit to manage. 'cause I know I can do it 'cause I've proved I can do it. My, you know, I've proved that I can write, I've proved that I can publish. I know I can do it. At the moment, I just can't make my critical friend be quiet. Vikki: Yeah. Now there's two things that I wanna say about that. The first you mentioned that it was useful to know that coaches have coaches. I think the other thing to bring to that is remember, and I'm sorry to have to break this to everybody, there's nothing about coaching skills or [00:19:00] self-regulation skills or anything like that that means you don't feel the crap emotions. We are never, there is no one on this planet where I don't think it's even possible to have the sort of self-regulation skills that mean, and I don't think it's even desirable to have the sort of self-regulation skills where you don't experience any of the emotions. Vikki: And if that's the goal that we think we should have, that if I was good enough, if I paid attention in enough of Vikki's sessions, if I'd been the good enough PhD life coach member, then I would be able to not feel angry and not feel frustrated by this and not get, you know, sad about it and all of that. Vikki: That's not the end goal. The goal is to be able to feel these legitimate emotions, to know how to not make them worse by spinning stories in our heads about all the things they mean, and to have a safe place to return [00:20:00] to. Okay? There's nobody who is completely regulated at all times. It's like trying to build a fence that doesn't wobble in the wind. Vikki: It's not actually desirable. It's perfectly fine for you to wobble when you have difficult things happening in your life, the point is, you know, where that point of balance is, where you've got skills that can help take you when you are down and you know, things that you can say to yourself, ways you can treat yourself to bring you back to a safe place. Kate: Yeah. And it makes sense. Like the wobbling makes sense. Like I remember you said about tight ropers, tightrope walkers. Yeah. You know, tightrope walkers wobble. And if you expect to be a tight roper and not wobble, that's not realistic. Yeah. Life is about being a practice tightrope Walker is knowing how to get yourself back in balance. Kate: And the same thing is true on this. Yeah, I think, I think I thought naively and I, I know this is massively [00:21:00] naive that because I had been in coaching for a bit and because I'd done work and because I'd planned it and 'cause I'd read loads of books. I was like, I'm ahead of, I, I get this, I can fix this. And I think I've realized that actually it's a bit harder than I thought and I wasn't as, um, kind to myself that I couldn't fix it as quickly. I think the, the challenge is exactly as you say, I didn't realize, um, how, how angry I was and the narrative I was telling myself about not being able to fix it. So actually it was becoming a double, a double beating. Yeah. If that makes sense. Vikki: Absolutely. And I'd even be careful around the words, fix it. Kate: Yeah. Yeah. Vikki: Because I don't think there is a fix it here. Yeah. I think it's a supporting yourself through it. Kate: Yeah. Yeah. Vikki: Okay. The other thing I wanted to pick up from what you said was around this critical voice. Okay. And you are right. We all have a critical voice, but you very much [00:22:00] talked about it as something that's unhelpful and that you need to shut up. Yeah. Tell me more about how you feel about that. Kate: I think that I, so I, from your coaching and from trying to be more compassionate and trying to be a compassionate leader, I try and be really careful with and with my patients as well. I talk a lot about the internal voice and about how if your internal voice is saying things to you that you wouldn't say to your best friend, then that's not a helpful internal voice. Kate: So I think I'm annoyed with myself that I can't apply the same principles that you've taught me and that I teach my patients about the internal, compassionate, turning the internal critical voice into an internal compassionate voice all the time. Like, I can do it some of the time, but I find it very difficult when the internal voice gets loud or when stuff goes wrong, because stuff does go wrong sometimes, doesn't it? You know, you make a mistake or you know, if you have a bad day or you haven't slept properly, then I can't always [00:23:00] turn the critical internal voice into a compassionate internal voice, even though I know I tell my patients to do it and you've told me to do it, and I can normally do it. It makes me more frustrated that I can't turn the volume down. And in trying to turn the volume down, actually the volume goes up. 'cause then you beat yourself up about, that's another thing you can't, like you can't do. Vikki: Yeah. No, definitely, and this is why I wanted to pick up on this, because I think this is something that is super, super common, and it's even common in the kind of pop psychology, online advice space. This notion that we need to either shut up or turn down that voice. I really believe, and this, I think you are gonna be able to apply stuff from your life for this, because I know you manage people and I know you have teenagers. So both of those things are gonna bring skills into this. Okay. I think we should stop labeling our critical voices unhelpful. I think your critical voice is trying to help. They're doing it in a misguided, unhelpful way. Just like a parent who's just nagging at their [00:24:00] child, it isn't working, no one likes it, but they're trying to help. Yeah. Your internal, this voice is trying to help. They're just, they're super anxious for you. They're worried you're not gonna get your PhD done. All of this stuff, and the only tactic they have to go with is telling you you're rubbish and you have to sort yourself out. Okay. And I think the more we can see it as a kind of slightly misguided critical voice, rather than an actually intentionally unhelpful one. Vikki: You know, you hear people talking about banish the inner critic and all of this. I'm like, no. Give you in a critic a little hug. They're trying to help, they dunno what they're doing. It's not helpful. Okay. And I don't think we have to dial it down necessarily. I just think we have to know how to engage with it. . So when I, and my, I have, uh, you know, you talk to my family, I have a healthy internal critic. Right. Um, and I no longer try and dial it down, but I'll engage with it in a kinda [00:25:00] like, yeah. Yeah. I know you're worried that I'm not gonna get this stuff done. It's okay though 'cause I'm gonna do X and Y and then the rest of it we can worry about another day. Vikki: So don't worry. I got, it's all right. I know you're just stressed out. It's fine. We are all good. And where you get to actually engage with that voice, not in a kind of, oh, okay. Okay. I'll, I'll do what you say. I'll do what you say, but in a, it's okay, dude. Don't worry. You just, you are flapping. It's okay. It's 'cause you're stressed out that we had some, we had six weeks off for however long it was. You know, you're worried about all of that. It's all good though, because we're on a new timeline. We've got a new plan. We know what we're doing next. We are not, we don't, we're not behind anything. Vikki: It's okay. I've, I've got you. And it's more of that kind of pragmatic reassurance rather than the trying to shut it up. 'cause just like with children, the more you just try and shut 'em up, the louder they get the same as unhappy employees. Right. The people you [00:26:00] manage. If you are just going, yeah. Yeah. You just need to be less critical. All right. Just shut up. I assume that's how you don't manage your teams at work, you know, be like, yeah, I get it. Yeah. It's pretty tough at the moment, isn't it? Yeah. And it, oh, and by the way, for my internationals National Health Service, when we're talking n hs, um, you know, it's like, yeah, it's pretty tough here at the moment. Vikki: I get it. That feels awful. Yeah. Well we're gonna do this bit and we're gonna do that bit and we're gonna not worry about the rest of it. 'cause that's outside our pay grade. We can talk like that to our critical voices as well. Kate: Well, that's fascinating. I have never even ever thought about treating my critical voice like that. And that makes so much sense. 'cause you're right, the management style you would use with your colleagues is not a, you know, having a go at them 'cause they're raising concerns or they're getting histrionic. You wouldn't be like, no, no, absolutely. And that clearly won't work. Clearly won't work. So it's that whole application, isn't it? So I think that's, that's really helpful. Thinking about my critical voice as a [00:27:00] you know, like an employee in my life or like a, you know, like a, like a, I've gotta listen and I've gotta be calm because if I'm calm they'll calm down. Because if the more histrionic they get, the more histrionic I get trying to make them quiet. And actually then it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle of then everyone's cross and stressed and it doesn't help. That's really interesting. Hadn thought of that. No, that's good. Vikki: The other thing it's useful for is occasionally your critical friend's useful. They're just not saying it in a great way. Occasionally, so often my critical friend says, you don't have time for this, Vikki. There's just no way. There's too many things. And if I go shut up, you're just being negative. Leave me alone. Not helpful. But if I go, okay you've been reminding me lots of times, there's too many things. Is there, is it possible there's an element of truth in this anywhere? Vikki: Is there any bit of that I need to listen to? If so, what can I actually do? Is there something I could [00:28:00] delay? Is there something I could decide not to do? Da da da is like, we've all had them, right? People we work with who just moan about everything and you get in the habit of just not listening to them. And then every now and again they raise a thing and you're like, okay, yeah, that that one's a fair point. We should probably listen to that one 'cause they are quite sensible. Um, we can do that. The more we can actually kind of almost listen to understand our critical voice where it's like, I'm not gonna listen to all your drama, but what are you actually worried about? Okay, yeah, you're worried about that, right? Cool. Is there any truth in that? Is there anything I actually need to act on here? But in that kind of calm, as you say, pragmatic way and suddenly it becomes a very different conversation. Kate: Is, there's something about, I'm just trying to operationalize it in my head of how I can listen to the critical voice, but also notice when they're being a bit histrionic and so, you know, calm down when you need to calm down. But actually how to take the nuggets. Is that something that, so I reflect, 'cause every day I've got a reflection like [00:29:00] workbook or I work what I'm gonna do in the day, what my objectives are. And I write a reflection of how I'm feeling in the morning. And then I reflect at the end of the day, which is how it's gone and what's happened. Kate: And that kind of, so is that where you would put the kind of critical friend? And I find that's a good way of calming the critical friend, 'cause it's acknowledging where they are. But it's also then about rationalizing it within, actually you've done some really good stuff today and then it layers into that. So is that where you would put that or would you, how would you, how would you, how's the best way to manage your critical friend? Vikki: I think there's different ways that you can, um experiment with. I don't think there's a one size fits all with it. Yeah. I'm a talk out louder to my per self person. Um, I find I do that more consistently than actually writing about my thoughts. I have, I have probably a very unhelpful thought that I think too fast to write. Now that's just like people who say they're too busy to meditate, probably need to meditate. Someone who thinks too fast to write probably needs to write. [00:30:00] But I tend to talk out loud to myself. Interestingly, I don't think you were in our coaching session earlier. Vikki: Interesting. Um, Lee, one of our members, read out a conversation she had with herself. So she'd actually decided, right, I'm just gonna write down the things I'm telling myself. 'cause she sort of had a side of her that was being compassionate, her version of compassionate, we talked about whether it was actually compassionate or not, and a version of her that was being very critical and she actually wrote it down and read it out almost like a play. Vikki: So there was that sort of approach where you could actually say, right. Come on then. Critical friend, tell me what is it you're thinking? Gimme it, all of it. And then you go, okay, as boss Kate, you know, we spent a lot of time thinking about the notion of you being a boss for yourself as boss Kate. How am I gonna respond to this person? Vikki: You know, I wanna be the best version of boss Kate. I want to be calm, I wanna be sensible, I wanna be empathetic to their challenges. How would I respond to this concern? Yeah. So I'm listening, I'm taking from it [00:31:00] the things that, um, you know, where actually they might have a little modicum of truth in there. Vikki: But I'm also filtering out the drama, helping them feel, listened to, deciding what we need to fit, move forward with. So I think there'd be a variety of different ways you could do that. And certainly if you've already got a bit of a journaling practice, then I'm a big fan of like building on things you are already doing. Kate: Okay. No, that's cool I like the, um, 'cause I'm quite a practical person. I like the whole kind of, right. This is, this is, and I can try and see if I can that No, I think that would work. I like the idea. I like, I, I wish I'd come to coaching earlier then that about the play. That would've been fascinating to see and like hear. Yeah. That's why group coaching is really good. 'cause you learn so many tricks from each other. Vikki: Yeah, definitely. Literally everyone with the chat was like, oh my God, this sounds like my brain. So I think even just that validation of knowing that other people have these ridiculous, ridiculous, in inverted commas, ridiculous [00:32:00] conversations with themselves. Vikki: Even just people seeing that like, oh, it's not just me. And I think especially at this time, you know, we're recording this just before Christmas, although it will come out after the new year, at this time of year that you need to rest. No, you need to get it done. No, you need to rest. Argument is happening in everybody's heads. And that was the sort of short version of what we talked about. And being able to actually visualize that and go, okay, hang on. I'm coming in, pragmatic, sensible, calm boss who's got high expectations, but cares is gonna come up with a plan here. Kate: Okay. Uh, that's, I really, really like, I really like that. That's gonna be something that is, you know, really helpful. Vikki: Amazing. Thank you. Janice, that feels like a good opportunity to bring you back in. Janice: Hello. Excellent. Vikki: How were you feeling? What were you sort of thinking as you were listening to Kate talk? Janice: There was so much there and very much, I could understand how you were feeling. Janice: [00:33:00] Um, it was interesting how you started off with frustration and anger and, you know. Being critical of yourself, moving to more of a relaxed state when actually you understand. And it is interesting how you use the analogy about obviously us being nurses, I think we are probably the worst at taking our own advice and looking after ourselves. Janice: We are the last to do that. Um, so it was just interesting to hear you say that, you know what we would advise, but you weren't taking that on board. It was just so nice to see you relax in the end and actually realize that. And it's, the other good thing was about. Um, who was it? The people who walked the tight right ropes in the circus and actually if they were rigid, they'd fall off, wouldn't they? You've got to be a bit bendy. So it is, we've got to be a bit flexible in life and so therefore we've just got to be able to flex with it and understand it. Janice: But it is completely natural that you feel that way, especially after having that period of time away. I think [00:34:00] with us as nurses and been in the job for so long, we can just go straight back into clinical practice and, and build our, we don't have time to think, do we? Whereas this is all new to us academic world, even though we're in our second year, it is still different. It's different. Yeah. So you're doing amazing. Vikki: Thanks. And how about for yourself, Janice? What did you take from it that you can kind of apply into your own situation? Janice: Interesting. It's so weird when you see another nurse speaking, I'm thinking, oh God, we're so hard on ourselves, aren't we? We are so hard on ourselves. And definitely that critical voice, um, self-sabotage for me anyway, self-sabotage. And I thought that negativity, we need to be more positive. We do work in very stressful jobs within the National Health Service NHS. And it is so true as well about how operationally we function in the NHS, you've just, it is 120, [00:35:00] 150% all the time anyhow. Janice: You drop down to a hundred percent and you're not performing very well. And we know that that's not the case, but it is like we are just constantly on the go, aren't we? So I think we just need to be a bit kinder to ourselves. And so it made me reflect about how I feel about everything that's happening at the moment with myself as well, and thinking actually I need to be kinder to myself. We've done well to get to where we are and we can't forget that. Vikki: Yeah, for sure. Perfect. Let's move on to Janice then. So I'm gonna ask Kate to turn her video off. Thank you. And maybe we can start from there. Why do you feel like you need to be kinder to yourself? What's going on at the moment? Janice: I think, um, very much what Kate was saying, you know, clinically we are very strong in senior roles. We do manage staff and we manage to help with the organization and everything. But this whole studying thing, it feels like, I suppose, [00:36:00] how can I put it? I just keep harping on about when I was younger, I used to be able to study and I used to be able to do an assignment in 24 hours. You know, you stay up all night, do your assignment, hand it in and be fine, and you just kept going. Janice: It's different now. I'm older and for me, I have very much felt the early menopause and my dyslexia. I have really felt it this time. Um, even though you manage at work and it is your day to day buzz and bread and butter, you just keep going and you know your strength, you know your weaknesses, you've got a team around you. Janice: It's different when you are doing your PhD. It is, you are on your own, not on your own, but you are on your own , and you've got to come up with the work. Not to being too critical in yourself, but you are. And I think last year I spent the whole year on self-sabotage and am I really [00:37:00] meant to be here? Janice: Um, I do feel that I'm in a position now. I can say yes, I'm, I'm meant to be here, but it's just really difficult trying to manage the time, but understanding my dyslexia even more. I used to feel it's my superpower. I very much feel now it's a hindrance. And is it because I'm just not fast enough anymore? I can't read as much as I used to be able to read. I think it's just a di completely different way of learning. Janice: And it's completely different time management skills that I used to have and that I currently have in my day-to-day job. So, um, it's been interesting. So I've spent the last year and a half I feel trying to find my way. My new way in studying, and at times, yes, I've got angry with myself and annoyed, but I think I've just allowed myself to be critical, but therefore understand that I'm in the best place I can be and it's just gonna take time , but it's [00:38:00] still, that voice is still there, isn't it? Thinking you're not good enough. Vikki: No, definitely. And I think what's really interesting is how, if I was thinking of this as like an experiment that I was doing, there's a bunch of confounders here, okay? Mm-hmm. So we are talking about how it might be harder because you're older. Yes. That it feels harder because you're menopausal. Janice: Yeah. Vikki: And we have lots of members who are doing their PhDs later in life. Both people who are menopausal, people who aren't. But you also picked up, and I think it's really important to recognize that this is a very different ball game than academic stuff you've done before. And I think it sometimes gets underestimated because I think sometimes we sort of confound young and highly structured academic courses with older and very unstructured academic courses. Janice: Yeah. Vikki: And we make it something about us. Now I am the first to say I'm not [00:39:00] gonna like gaslight year about menopausal symptoms. All right. Yeah. There's definitely bits that this becomes more challenging, don't get me wrong, but reflect a little bit more for me about the ways that the actual PhD process feels different than your previous academic stuff in ways that are maybe not just to do with you. Janice: Yeah, it's the structure, it's the format of it. It's online. That's what I was trying to compare the other day. When I went and did my nursing degree, it was face to face on site, doing it full time, not having to juggle working and that you had classes, you had assessments, but it was all very practical. Janice: Whereas this is all online. It is not as often because you were in like four days a week. This is much different. Um, and you, you are given, you know, your reference this in your modules that you have to work through, but you're not [00:40:00] given any particular time scales. Uh, so it's so easy to, to drift and then go, oh, I've got to give my assignment in. Janice: Whereas when you're in university and you're there every day, everybody else, I suppose it's that peer structure around you that encourages you to carry on. Whereas it's different because obviously I've got my colleagues that I work with my team who may ask me now and again, how's it going? Um, but you know, my cohort's really small only eight of us, not necessarily that we all keep in contact during the month. And that's why I've surrounded myself within your membership as well as others, just to give myself that peer to peer support and coworking time and just motivation. Definitely. That's what's different this time round. Yeah. Vikki: And I think that's so important to recognize. Janice: It is. Vikki: 'Cause otherwise it becomes this, I used to be able to handle it and now I can't. Janice: Yeah. Vikki: Um, [00:41:00] and yes, we need to be sympathetic to life stages and all that stuff and to health challenges and whatnot. But if we can recognize that actually this, it is a completely different ballgame. You know, even if you have an active cohort, they're not going through in the same people watching on video can see me doing ladder hand gestures where, you know, when you were an undergrad, when you were, you know, doing masters or whatever. Janice: Yes. Vikki: Your cohort were doing modules at the same time as you. Janice: Correct. Kate: You had assessments to do at the same time, so you were kind of going through it step by step together. Janice: Yes. Vikki: Certainly people that have trained in the UK anyway, you've sort of gone through these things together and it may well be that some of the things like the dyslexia and stuff were better structured where it was more practical. There was less choice about what you do when Janice: Right. There was. Vikki: It's like this module, go do it. Yeah. It wasn't, you weren't making decisions about when to work and what you were [00:42:00] focusing on and all those sorts of things. Janice: No, definitely agree. And um, I think maybe that helped me mask my dyslexia as well and masks those key, um, symptoms of being dyslexic in terms of time management, reading and things like that. It was just a lot easier, whereas now it's very evident. Now I've got to manage myself. Yes. Vikki: Yeah, a hundred percent. Because I do think, and I am, I'm not a clinician in this area at all, and I don't have specific training in this area at all. So this is opinions. Nothing else. Janice: Yes. Yeah. Vikki: But I do think that there's a cluster of people that are high achieving people who have things like dyslexia, A DHD, for whom actually they can function within a structure. They don't necessarily do it healthfully, they don't necessarily do it calmly and like in a steady pace. Yeah. But the external [00:43:00] structure of modules and deadlines and things like that along with a healthy dose of kind of good girl syndrome and trying, you know, I'm top of the class kind of vibes mean that one way or another they muddle through and actually get stuff done and it might not feel great on the way and we might pull some late nights and we might beat ourselves up about being disorganized and whatnot, but it kind of comes together. Janice: It does Vikki: in that more structured environment. And then suddenly you're in this environment and none of those things are there. Janice: Right. All those skills that I've learned before, they're not the same anymore. Vikki: Some of which, which were useful skills and some of which were probably highly unhealthy, right? Janice: Correct. Exactly. Vikki: But they got you to an end goal one way or another, and suddenly they don't necessarily apply anymore. Janice: Correct. And anyone who knows me knows I'm a very much a high performer. I've always got to be busy. I've always got to be performing. I've always got to be doing, they [00:44:00] used to say to me, another course, Janice. Another course, another course. It's just the way I was then. But I, I'm slowly falling back into it, but it's taken me longer just to get into it. But yeah, it's, it is definitely a different structure. And you're right, maybe I need to be kinder to myself because it's different. Vikki: Yeah. And I want, I think what would be really useful to pick up, just 'cause you've said it a few times and I feel like people have misunderstandings of it. What do you mean when you say kinder to yourself? What does that actually, to use Kate's words, what does that operationalize as? Janice: Good question. It's the same what Kate was experiencing, I suppose. I, I have that critical voice and I'm like, well, you're not good enough. You dunno what you're doing. How could you not know what you're doing? You've got onto the PhD, you are here now. You're gonna have to perform. They're gonna find out that you actually, you don't know what you're talking about. Which is, I know, it's silly that even say it, Vikki: not silly, everyone says it. Janice: Um, my daughter's [00:45:00] always saying to me, mom, you've got your place. You're there. You know, of course you should be doing it. But it is a difficult thing to understand and like you're saying that suggestion to write it down and see that conversation that you have for yourself. I'm very aware of my critical friends, but Yes. Vikki: But what would kind look like? Janice: What would kind look like and like, it's interesting you said that earlier, that it is not nor not normal, no one on this planet could ever not have any negative thoughts or any critical friend. So we are gonna have them, aren't we? I suppose using it to make sure that it drives me forward. It doesn't hinder me and I use it as a positive and I use it in a good way rather than I can't do it and stop. That would be a good way of doing it. A positive way. Vikki: Yeah. Love. So just 'cause you picked it up this point about no [00:46:00] one can not have these doubts. I want you to imagine, and I'm gonna say, I'm gonna put myself out on a limb here and I think this will make Kate laugh in the background. Uh, you guys have worked in the NHS I'm gonna guess, you know, some of these people, they probably are a different profession than the one you are in. Imagine a person who never entertains the thought that they have faults. They're probably in your organization. I'm gonna guess there might be a few. Janice: Oh yes, I think so. Yeah. Vikki: This is not where we aspire to be, right? Yeah. We, we don't, there is something deeply unhelpful about never, ever questioning yourself, never, ever critiquing yourself. But we wanna make it so that it's like helpful critique and not just mindless criticism. The reason I ask you about kindness is 'cause I think it's a concept that times people up in knots a bit. Because often, and certainly the conversation we had in coaching today was this battle between the critical voice that was [00:47:00] saying you are behind. Vikki: You need to crack on and get this done by Christmas. You need to cancel stuff so that you can work more. And then the kind in inverted commas voice that was saying, oh no, you've done your best. It's important to rest. And that sort of thing. And I like that voice to an extent. But I think it can become sort of almost two extremes, that on one hand we are yelling at ourselves and on the other hand we're sort of, um, almost being a little bit indulgent, a little bit like, oh, you little poppet. Have a sit down. Yeah. In fact, I dunno if you ever listened to it, but for people listening, and I'll tag it in the show notes, I did a podcast episode ages ago. It was one of like the first 20 or 30 I did, about talking to yourself as each of the different Winnie the Pooh characters. Janice: Oh, brilliant. Vikki: How you can use it to like model different sorts of self-talk. Janice: Brilliant. Vikki: I love it. It's one of my favorite episodes. Janice: Yeah.[00:48:00] Vikki: But I want us to just spend the last part of this session thinking about what would be a kind of kind but firm kind, but ambitious voice. So I want you to imagine, you know, if you had a mentor. You don't want them, I presume, just to be like, oh Janice, don't worry. You'll be fine. Do it tomorrow. You're a bit tired. But equally, you don't want them to be like, Janice, you're so lazy. Why haven't you done this yet? Dah, dah, dah. Yeah. You want 'em to kind of have high expectations, but to then support you and make you believe that those are possible. So what could, when you are thinking about, 'cause we discussed previously about prioritization and that sort of thing. When you are thinking about your time management challenges and your prioritization, what would that sort of kindly, high expectations, supportive, ambitious sort of voice sound like. Janice: What is my goal? Reminding myself what my goal is and where I want [00:49:00] to go. Vikki: Yep. Janice: Have little miles milestones. Vikki: Mm-hmm. Janice: I've only just introduced this because actually I never used to have that, but now I'm having to prepare things for over a longer period of time. I need little milestones. So I have a list and I take it off, or I have a star chart and I star it. You've got through that week. Um, yeah. My main thing is my goal step by step. So by Christmas I wanna be at this place, I would've handed this piece of work in. And then, so I like to have my bigger picture now to say where I eventually will go, but then my smaller goals. And that's something I've just started to do. Vikki: And obviously that's something we structure out in the membership, right? In terms of our quarterly planning and the midquarter reviews and all those sorts of things. Janice: Yeah. That's helped. Vikki: But what would your, so you've given yourself clarity, you've reminded yourself why you're doing it, all that good stuff. Absolutely love all of that. If you were then off track of [00:50:00] one of those. So you haven't, you know, I get this draft finished by Friday. It's Thursday night, it's not ready. What would that kind but ambitious firm voice say then. Janice: Just do it. Okay. Just get over, Vikki: you know better than this, janice, we ban the word just in the membership. 'cause just implies it's easy. So how can we, what would they say that doesn't involve the word? Just Janice: get on with it. In reality, I, what would probably happen? Why have you left it this late? And why, why are you doing this to yourself? But what I should be saying to myself is actually don't, you know, stop listening to this. Just, not just, but get on and do it. And then we were, look, we will review our again after you've handed it in tomorrow, lunchtime. Vikki: Yeah. [00:51:00] And it's amazing how hard it is not to say just do it. So for those of you who don't know, the reason we ban that in the membership because just implies that it should be easy, that you shouldn't need to support yourself, you shouldn't need to start. Why on earth don't you just get on with it? Um, but it's so habitual and often people don't. Vikki: I'm gonna suggest some sort of phrases for you in a sec. 'cause often people don't have a voice here. They have kind and indulgent sort of like, oh dear, it's okay. Don't worry. You've tried kind of vibe. Or they have critical or they get to slightly exasperated like you sounded there. Just get on with it. Vikki: Come on. Just do it. Yeah. And sometimes that's helpful, but I prefer a kind of calm, encouraging. So rather than a just do it being more of a, okay, this is tough. You are exhausted. To be fair, I've had to do this to myself a lot this week. Yeah, this is tough. You are exhausted. We have got goals [00:52:00] and they're important goals. Vikki: So, we can do this one next bit. I believe in you. We're only gonna do it for 45 minutes. I ain't gonna beat you up if it's not perfect. I ain't gonna beat you up if we don't move as fast as we usually do. But we are capable of doing this next bit. We are not the sort of tired that needs to go and pass out for the afternoon. We're gonna rest tonight. We are the sort of tired that I can crack on with this bit and do it well enough. Let's just get this bit done. Just! Let's get this bit done and then we'll reassess. That sort of positive encouragement I think can be a really useful vibe because otherwise you hear the exasperation in your voice. Otherwise, yeah, if you get into, oh, just get on with it, then we either get a bit defensive and start criticizing or we collapse into the kind of indulgent thing again. Janice: Agree. I like that. I'm gonna start throwing that now.[00:53:00] Vikki: Thank you. Okay, perfect. I'm gonna bring Kate back on. Kate, if you wanna bring your camera back up. So how did you find listening to that, Kate? What were your sort of reflections and learnings? Kate: So in the same way that you reflected that there were some themes in both of us because of our profession and because of where we work, I was equally reflecting on the same thing. And I think that, your critical voice and my critical voice could probably be besties Janice: true. Kate: Um, so that's, that's helpful. And I think that's probably it. Feels, I wonder whether it's something to do with our profession or I wonder it's whether it's something to do with our nature. 'cause we've become nurses and we are part of a caring, relatively patriarchal system with challenges. So I was really interesting to reflect on that. Kate: I really liked the whole concept of the critical friend management system that we've come up with now during this, um, thingy. [00:54:00] And I really liked, um, the confounding variables. So you said at the beginning, Vikki, you were like, right, well actually what are the confounding variables? If we were looking at this from a research perspective, what's the, what are your confounding variables? Kate: And actually you, the phrase that I like the most that you use, Janice, was you said it's a different ballgame. And it's that bit, isn't it? That I think probably we think we've done courses before, we're driven people, we've got to where we've got to in the NHS, so therefore we should know all the rules of all the games. Kate: And then you start this new game and you're like, oh, I don't know anything about anything and I'm not really sure I should be here. Oh dear. What have I got myself into? Janice: It's so true. Kate: Think it takes, yeah, I think it takes a while to feel comfy in that, in that bit, to kind of realize that, you know, you're in the game. You wanted to be in the game. You've worked really hard to get in the game. You're now in the game and you're like, oh, no different game. Oh, what am I gonna do? And I thought, I, I liked Vikki's point about your calm, encouraging voice. And one of the things that we've talked previously about in other coaching with other students is [00:55:00] about your CEO, your boss and about what would your boss say. Kate: So I was thinking about your internal voice and my internal voice, and I was thinking, we probably need to take them for a CEO meeting actually, and sit down and go, right. I'm listening to you critical voice. I'm listening to you beside me, which is like, come on, just relax. You've worked really hard. And then I'm also listening to the voice that is the mother, that is the wife, that is the volunteer, that is the manager, that is the, can we do X by tomorrow, et cetera. So it's about having kind of all of those , voices and opinions around you, but being able to be calm and encouraging. Kate: 'cause that's what CEOs need to be, which is focused, goal driven, realistic, but calm and pragmatic. And I think as nurses, we're very good at being calm and pragmatic. We're actually very good at it. And I think probably one of the issues that we both have is 'cause we're quite good at being calm and pragmatic and sensible and get anything done [00:56:00] 'cause that's what nurses are good at. Give them anything. Can they like, yeah, we can find our way around them. We'll do it. I think it's about using that calm nursing, CEO energy of right. What are we going to do next? Let's just look at next. What's the next 15 minutes gonna look like? What's the next half an hour gonna look like? What's the next day? And not allow ourselves to get too far down that spiral of, well, I haven't done it by today, therefore I'm gonna be completely, I need to work Christmas day. You know? Exactly. Yeah. Pulling that back. So, no, you aren't working on Christmas day and you're not thinking, well, I can peel the sprouts while I'm reading that scoping review. 'Cause that's not appropriate. It's not what your CEO would say, is it? No, Vikki: that's perfect. And both of you as members have access to my Christmas planning worksheet and workshop. They're both online now. So if you weren't there live, then you can plan your intentional holidays. The last thing I would add in, I love this notion of bringing like the different roles of yourself together and [00:57:00] thinking, right? Vikki: How are we gonna actually work this out between us? And actually that intentional holiday planning workshop is really thinking about that. How can you look after all the different bits of you? Um, and this is relevant to everyone, but it's particularly relevant to women of our age, I would say. Vikki: Mm-hmm. Is don't forget there is also the Kate and Janice, the human being. Okay? So there's CEO, you and researcher, you and partner, you, mum, you, whatever else you there is also you. Okay? And I want you to make sure in any of these conversations, the, you, you that wants to do just something, just 'cause it's fun or just because it's restful or just 'cause it's joyous or whatever, that that role needs to be in there too. Janice: I agree. Vikki: So it's really easy, especially when, you know, when we're the sandwich generation with parents and kids and all that fun and games. Mm-hmm. It's really easy to forget that bit too. [00:58:00] It's, it's making sure there's space for that bit as well. Janice: I agree. Thank you. Vikki: So on that note, thank you both so much for your honesty and vulnerability. And whilst we've done this very much in the context of you both being nurses who are doing PhDs, I think it is super relevant to anybody who's, any come from any other profession. You know, we have people in the membership who've come from law and technology and all sorts of other places who have, you know, their own version of this challenge. Vikki: And even people that have come straight in from undergrad and masters and who are now suddenly going, hang on, I used to be good at this. And what's happened now? I think everything you've said is super, super useful for them too. So thank you both so much for listening. When this goes out, it's gonna be the 12th of January, which means that the new quarter of the membership will be starting in two weeks time. Vikki: So make sure you're on my newsletter, everybody, so that, you know, when that's happening and you get all the invites so that if you would like to join too, [00:59:00] come and join Kate and Janice and all the rest of my community, then you'll have that opportunity as well. Thank you all so much for listening and I will see you next week.

It’s a time of year where lots of people are setting goals, worrying about which goals to set, and then beating themselves up if they don’t meet them. In this episode, I answer a question I was asked about how to set goals when you’re not sure they’re possible. I share five ways to evaluate big audacious goals to see if they could be a good fit for you and then share two skills that you’ll need to develop in order to pursue a goal that has the potential to be unrealistic! It’s the perfect episode if you have a tempting big goal on your mind! If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on how to achieve your goals using the self-coaching model . Transcript [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the first episode of 2026 for the PhD Life Coach Podcast. I am genuinely feeling really excited about this year. I've got some really cool stuff coming up in the business for the PhD Life Coach membership and some more free stuff that's gonna be happening soon. So keep an eye out for that. If you are new to the podcast and you are wondering what the PhD life coach membership is, it is my quarterly program for PhD students where you get all the support that you feel like you're currently lacking. You get an active community. You get a place where you can talk about all those questions that seem a bit stupid, but actually really hold you back, where you can help yourself to reduce your procrastination, reduce how overwhelmed you feel, and actually change your PhD journey so that you can enjoy it and have the PhD experience that you wanted. If you wanna find out more, you can it's all on my website. The PhD life coach.com. And there's [00:01:00] gonna be a launch at the end of January, so I'll be taking new members in the last week in January. So keep an eye on that. If you're not already on my newsletter, make sure that you sign up so you hear all about it. If you already have your PhD, you are also so, so welcome here. This podcast is here for people all the way from the very, very beginnings of their academic careers through to the very end and beyond. Much of the time, the stuff we're struggling with is exactly the same stuff. It's sort of two sides of the same coin, and I certainly intend this podcast to be a support for everybody across the board in academia. There may also even be a few listeners who are not academics at all. That's okay too. You are very, very welcome. The stuff I talk about is pretty universal. You'll have to forgive some of the framing that makes it very specific to the weird world of academia, but most of the rest of it is pretty relevant to everyone. So you are welcome here too. Anyway. With that out the way, it is time to think about goals, and it's a time of year where we're [00:02:00] all pondering this stuff, right? Maybe you've already set New Year's resolutions. Maybe you've already stopped following some of your New Year's resolutions. It happens. Here's your reminder to reengage. All good to reengage,. But today we're gonna think about one specific question that I was actually asked at one of my very rare live events. So I was doing a talk about decision making and careers in London and I was approached afterwards by a very nice PhD student who said, you know, I really, really enjoyed your talk and everything, but how do I decide whether to pursue a goal or not when I'm not sure whether I can meet that goal? And I thought this was such an interesting question. We had a really interesting discussion about it that I thought I would elaborate on it in the podcast here. So in that workshop, I talk a lot about making decisions based on reasons you love. So if you choose to pursue a goal, for example, you're doing it for reasons that you really, really like. But her point was, [00:03:00] don't you need to know, or at least be reasonably confident you can achieve a goal before you set it as a goal and the example she gave was being Prime Minister. She was like, yeah, imagine, imagine I want to be Prime Minister. How can I set that for myself as a goal when I've got no idea how that could be possible? I've got, you know, there's no reason to believe that would be possible. It's so big, it's so ambitious. It's all these things. How, how could I ever set that as a goal? Now, I think she underestimated my sport science background. So having come through a 22, 3, whatever years it was, career in sport and exercise sciences, I am very used to people setting ludicrous long-term goals. So the number of my personal tutees, who intended at some point to be Olympic gold medal winners or to internationally represent their team, win the World Cup, whatever it might be, was huge, loads of them. Okay. It's one [00:04:00] things you find with when you're teaching sport scientists. Loads of them are elite athletes themselves as well. And so the notion of having a goal that is outlandish, is audacious, is not that unusual in that sort of a setting. But what this discussion did for me was it allowed me to sort of step back and go, okay, well, in whatever context it is, how would you decide that you want to make that your goal and how would you go about achieving it? And for some of you in academic context, that goal might be being a full tenured professor, for example, which for many is like the pinnacle of an academic career. So what I wanna talk with you today is like an expanded version of that conversation that we had, where I give you five ways to assess the goal, and then two skills that I think you need to develop, in order to make [00:05:00] these big outlandish goals a reality. So the first way to assess the journey is we have to really think about what would be the route to that outlandish goal. And this is the process we went through with her example of being Prime Minister. Right? So we went through, it's like, okay, so you wanna be a Prime Minister. If you wanna be a Prime Minister in the uk, you have to be an mp, right? I think that's true. You might need, I can you be in the House of Lords? I dunno, internationals. It's a weird system over here. But anyway, the map, you're not gonna just randomly be in the House of Lords, the best way to be Prime Minister is to be a member of Parliament. How do you become a member of Parliament? You get elected. How do you get elected? You have to participate in an election. How do you participate in an election where you have to be nominated by your party? So you have to be involved in the local party and be chosen as a representative. How do you get involved in your local party? Well, you tell them you want to be involved and you start doing things. And so then as you go through this conversation, it's like, okay, so what's the goal here that does [00:06:00] feel achievable? Now if you know what political party you support, then a goal could be get involved with your local political party, and I'd want you to, you know, in the interest of making these things more specific, I want you to then define for yourself what that would actually mean. What does involved look like for you? But that would be the first step and those would be the things that you would need to go through. And this does two things, right? First of all, it gives you a route by which it feels a little bit more achievable because we don't even have to decide at this point that we definitely want to be Prime Minister. We just have to decide that we've got a vague goal of being Prime Minister, and our specific goal for this year is to do X and Y with my local political party. Now, of course if you're sitting there going, I don't even know what, like what political party represents me at the moment. I get you. Okay. Seriously there too. But the first steps for you then would be to work out how you're gonna determine [00:07:00] which political party you want to get involved with. You know, do you wanna do some sort of like visiting system where you try different things? Do you want to talk to more people? Do you wanna read more? What would it be? Okay. But the first thing this does is it makes it a little bit more achievable and gives you goals that are on the way to that big notional goal. And note, remember, at this point, we don't have to decide for 100%. That is definitely the thing we're working towards. But if it were, these would be interim goals, so we can focus on those. The second thing it does is it enables you to decide whether you actually like the look of that journey, because if you are somebody that, for example, uh, has a lot of opinions about how the country should be run and likes telling people what to do, I mean, I dunno why you're looking at me here. Um, you might think, oh, being Prime Minister would be fun. But when I think through that step by step process of like, okay, I'm gonna have join a local political party, and then I'm gonna have to win people around there, and I'm gonna have to build a reputation and I'm gonna have [00:08:00] to talk to lots of people who I don't necessarily agree with, and I'm gonna have to doorstep and I'm gonna have to do this, and I'm gonna have to do that. I'm like, no. No, no. This is also why, um, I, I no longer set myself running goals. Okay? I absolutely love running events. And I have a very bad habit that when I finish a running event, I decide that I definitely want to book another running event and next time I'm gonna train properly. But the problem is when I look at the actual process of being a good runner, I don't want that bit the, I have to still run when I don't feel like running and I have to go out in the rain and I have to spend X number of hours a week running. I don't want that bit. I just like turning up and doing the shiny bit and prancing around. So I now pick running events where you can run as little or as far as you want. So kind of checkpoint based adventure racing, 'cause then if you don't feel like it that day, you don't run as much, but you still take part. It's great. Love it. Anyway. So you get to look at that journey and go, is that actually a journey that feels like it would be fun? Okay, so you get to assess that [00:09:00] journey. I said there were five things. So the first is identifying that journey and deciding whether you even like the look of it. The second is to check in with yourself that the journey is inherently valuable even if you don't make the ultimate goal. So we want to try and pick big inspiring goals that the journey is worthwhile, even if we don't make it all the way so, sticking with my being Prime Minister 'cause it's more fun than talking about having to be full professor. Um, sticking with my idea of being Prime Minister, does it feel like I would get a lot out of, not just enjoy, I would benefit from the process of becoming Prime Minister? Would it enable me to develop in ways that I want to develop? Would it be inherently valuable for me as a [00:10:00] person? What we wanna avoid are goals that are only amazing if we hit them and are a disaster if we don't. Yeah. Sometimes you see this, I do think sport has become a lot more psychologically informed over the last 10 years than it ever was when I grew up. And so you see a lot more of this kind of journey based, participation based narrative, not where we are not trying to win, right? We're not going back to times where it's like, oh, it's all taking part that matters, but it's the recognition of what you get outta striving to be better than you were, what you get out of that dedication and commitment. But back in the day you would see people that would say things like, you know, second is the first loser and anything other than first is a fail and blah, blah, blah. And that puts an enormous amount of pressure and actually sets the goal up as something that if you don't achieve it, then all the efforts have not been worthwhile. I want you to choose big audacious [00:11:00] goals that the journey is inherently valuable. So as an example, let's say you do pick a big audacious academic goal, like becoming full professor, I want you to be sure that that journey that you are getting what you want out of your PhD experience. You're getting what you want out of your postdoc experience, out of your early academic career, et cetera, et cetera, so that if at any stage it's either not possible to achieve your goal or you choose not to achieve your goal, that you have still got a lot out of that experience. The third thing I want you to consider is, does this big goal use your strengths? Okay. All of us have strengths and weaknesses. One of the things I've noticed in academia is we are typically very bad at recognizing our strengths. We're typically really good at telling people what our weaknesses are. We are really good at setting resolutions to fix and improve our weaknesses. So little note, if all your [00:12:00] resolutions are about fixing things you're not good at, at the moment, you might wanna have a little tiny reconsider as we're still at the beginning of the year. And instead, we wanna think about things where they really maximize and use strengths that we have. Really maximize the things that we find easier than other people, where we have the potential to be seriously amazing where we are looking at honing talents, rather than fixing our weak points. So have a look at any of these big goals that you might have and think, does this play to the best parts of me? Now, some of you will have listened to my previous episode from just last week, week before. Can't remember. Recently, let's say, um, where I talked about why I left academia. For a long time, academia played to my strengths for a long time as I was pursuing my sort of career as I was trying to working way up the academic ladder, I was really valued for the things that I was good at. I was able to use [00:13:00] those strengths to succeed, and I was recognized and it was amazing. Loved it. But I realized that towards the end of my career that actually the next steps, the things that were the logical follow on for me, didn't play to my strengths and would be me trying to kind of fix weaknesses. I was perfectly capable of doing them. And if I'd wanted to pursue that goal, then I could have done, but it no longer felt like I was maximizing my strengths and instead felt like I was having to become somebody that I wasn't actually that fussed about becoming. So check in that these goals will really use your strengths. The fourth element is I want you to think about your reasons. We always want goals to be intrinsically driven. We want to be trying to achieve goals because either we value. The benefits of them or preferably that they are fun and engaging and part of who we are [00:14:00] really intrinsically motivated rather than goals that are to do with the rewards you'll get from it, earning lots of money or whatever, or because of societal or closer expectations that other people telling you, or indeed you telling you that you should do this. There is a huge body of literature talking about the importance of intrinsic motivation for goal success, for goal adherence, for enjoying that journey, for psychological wellbeing whilst trying to achieve the goals. So when you've got these big goals. Just double check. Where do they come from? Are they shoulds or are they things that you intrinsically value and want to pursue? The fifth one then is more of a like little check-in, which is to what extent have you got capacity to engage with this goal at the moment? So there's nothing wrong with having huge goals that will take you 10, 20, 30 years to achieve. In fact, I think that can be quite [00:15:00] fun and exciting, but you also need to check in with what capacity you have to engage with it at the moment. And I think in my view, there's always time to engage at at least some level. So maybe you wanna be Prime Minister, but at the moment you are doing your PhD, you've got two young children and whatever else, maybe, I'm not saying for sure, but maybe you are not in the greatest of positions to start being like a active member of your local political party. But maybe this is where you listen to political podcasts. Maybe this is where you make friends with people who are interested in politics, so you can actually have discussions about these things so that you build elements of this journey that fit with your current capacity. Then we start looking ahead to when might my capacity change or when could I change my capacity? But bearing in mind that sort of little element of realism so that we're not telling ourselves we should be doing something that we don't have capacity for. [00:16:00] Okay. So those are my five ways I want you to think about the journey. I want you to identify what the steps are so that you can actually build it back to being a more proximal goal, and check in that you actually wanna do those things. Two, I want you to make sure that the journey is inherently valuable, even if you don't get to the destination. What will you get out of the journey by pursuing it? What will you learn about yourself? What will you develop in yourself? Third, I want you to make sure as using your strengths so that you're not trying to fix things about yourself. That your goal is helping you become the best version of the bits of you that are already brilliant. Four. I want you to think about the quality of the motivation. Make sure that it's intrinsically driven from your values, your beliefs, the things that you love to do rather than things that people tell you you should do or in order just to get rewards. I always worry when people tell me they're doing a PhD, primarily either for the authority and recognition that the title will [00:17:00] give them, or because their mom or dad always dreamed of them having a PhD. I always worry about it. If that's you, it's not the end of the world, but I would really encourage you to develop other reasons, for doing it. And then the fifth one is, what capacity do you have to engage? And so when you're thinking about those sort of more proximal steps, making that appropriate to the life you are living at the moment is really, really useful. Okay, so if you've still got a big goal in mind and you've run it through those things, what are the two other skills that I want you to develop? The first is tolerance of uncertainty. So one of the things that I see a lot is that people would find it easier to work on something if they know it's going to happen. So if you knew your article was gonna get published, it can be a lot easier to work on it than if you are trying to work on it, not knowing whether it's ever gonna get published or not. The problem is that almost all [00:18:00] interesting goals are at least somewhat uncertain. Okay? Because otherwise we'd just be doing them. And so one of the things that I would want you to develop is the ability to be unsure and to work towards it anyway, and this is useful in a whole variety of settings. Any of you who find that you get a bit needy in relationships, I used to get very needy in relationships, friendships as well as romantic ones, and you'd be uncertain whether that person likes you, uncertain whether they, you know, feel the same way you do or whatever. There's nothing about trying to get more certain that makes you more attractive or makes you a more interesting friend. You have to be able to engage in a relationship whilst being uncertain as to how it's gonna go, being uncertain how they feel about you, and showing up the way you want to show up. And then it will become clear one way or another. It will either become clear they don't treat you the way you want to be treated, in which case we get to move on. [00:19:00] Or that actually it is reciprocated and it's a beautiful thing. But when we try and get that certainty, does my supervisor think I'm good? Does my supervisor think I'm doing enough? Does my supervisor think I'm good enough? Then we start turning up like a bit of a weirdo. We wanna be certain that I'm capable of doing my PhD, certain that I'm capable of getting promotion. Whereas what I want us to be is to be like, okay, I have no idea. But if I was gonna get it, these are the things I need to do and I can be okay on the way I can look after myself through the uncertainty. One of the things we talk about in the membership quite a lot is about not trying to fix your emotions with actions. Now, there's a few exceptions to that. I'm a big fan of dancing, walking, fresh air, those sorts of things to improve and enhance your emotions in those sorts of ways, but the majority of the time we're best off being able to go, you know what? I'm a bit anxious 'cause I'm uncertain. I can look after anxiety, but these are the steps I need to [00:20:00] take. These are the things I need to do as if I was more certain. And then the second skill that I want you to develop is the ability to disengage from a goal when you want to. So I mentioned that I have this sports science background. One of the most unhealthy things, I think, is when people start getting into, um, you know, the only way I'm not achieving this goal is if I'm dead. You'll have to carry me out of here before I don't follow this goal, and it's just, it all sounds very dramatic and it all sounds very like, oh my God, you're so committed. And it's like, no, that's stupid. I'm sorry. I love you if that's the way you thought yourself, but it's so stupid. Yes, we wanna pursue goals even when they feel difficult. Yes, we wanna pursue goals even when we're like, oh, what have I done? But we have to have a point at which we say, you know what? The journey's not making me [00:21:00] happy anymore. You know what? This isn't even the direction that I want to be traveling in anymore. We have to have a point at which we can disengage with goals, not interpret it as a massive failure, and choose to go in a different direction. Now, if you are somebody you know who's already given up on your news resolutions, for example, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about hitting one bump and deciding this goal doesn't count anymore. Or not recording what you eat because you're eating things you don't want to eat or giving up on your goal of reading however many articles 'cause you haven't stuck to it. Whatever. That's not what I'm talking about. But there is also a point at which this thing you've always dreamed of, whether that is a qualification, whether it's a job, whether it's a relationship, whatever it might be, the pursuit of it isn't serving you anymore. And it's useful to know that you can leave at any point. You can choose [00:22:00] not to follow that goal. And you might think, well, if I acknowledge that, then I'd just leave. And if that's your thought, i'd have some sensible considerations about whether maybe you should be leaving, but actually it can also give a bunch of freedom. A lot of the PhD students in my membership will say to me, knowing that I am choosing to continue that actually I could leave my PhD if I wanted to. Knowing that I'm choosing to continue actually empowers me. I don't feel trapped anymore because I know I could leave if I want to. It's why I believe that everybody in a relationship should always be financially independent so that they could leave if they needed to. Okay. It's my little feminist agenda drilled into me by my mother from a young age. Knowing that you could disengage is also the ultimate freedom to pick a massive outlandish goal because it doesn't have to be a massive deal if you get partway down the journey and decide that actually [00:23:00] something else serves you more. So those are my five ways that you can assess your big goals, your two skills that you'll need to develop to kind of pursue that journey. I would love, if you're not already on my newsletter, sign off for my newsletter and tell me what big outlandish goals you have either for this year or for like the next five, 10 years, things that you really want to have in your life. I really hope that you found this useful and inspiring. I have some big outlandish goals for the business. I also have.... is it a big outlandish girl? I think it's, yeah, it's a medium sized goal. I have a goal setting up a circus club in my home village. It's gonna be like for ground skills, juggling, poi Diablo, all that sort of fun stuff. It's not gonna be for children. Adults need more play in their life too. It's gonna be for adults. It's not gonna be for people who are necessarily good at it. Um, I'm really excited. It's my big personal project for 2026. I'm putting it out there so that I definitely stick to it. Thank you all so much for listening. If you are listening on [00:24:00] YouTube, I'd like to point out that yes, it is Christmas and there is a box that looks like it's got mulled wine in it behind me. It's actually hiding Christmas presents. I was halfway through recording when I noticed it was there, so I was trying to stay in front of it all the way through. You know what? If you haven't checked out my YouTube, then you might wanna see the efforts I was taking to stay in front of and therefore blocking the cardboard box. If you listen on podcasts, this makes no sense whatsoever, but go with it. It's all good. Maybe you should check out my YouTube. In fact, there's gonna be more YouTubes, special ones coming in the new year too, so make sure that you do go follow me over there. Anyway, thank you all so much for listening, and I will see you next week.

I really wanted to cut down how much I use my phone and I bought a Brick! This episode is my honest review of the experience so far, and includes some evidence-based advice about what you can and can’t expect from a product like this. I take you through my ups and downs and the behaviour change approaches that I have applied to my Brick strategy. A must for all habitual phone users! {PS this is NOT sponsored by Brick and I bought my own device!} If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on why phone addiction confession might help you too . Transcript [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the PhD Life Coach Podcast. Now, for those of you who know that I always preach the whole work life balance, intentional holiday things, rest assured this may be coming out on, I think it's the 29th of December, something like that. It might be coming out then, but I am recording it three weeks early. Check me out. I am using the last gasps of motivation that I have for 2025 to get ahead of myself for these things so that I can have the intentional holiday that I planned. I hope that it has gone that way for you too and that you have used all the skills you've learned listening to the podcast, and for those of you who are members, to have the holiday that you need. If not, before I get going on the other stuff, I just wanna remind you it's not yet the end of the year. Okay, you may be back at work to some extent. I want you to think we have got a couple of days left of 2025. We have got that little funny beginning of the year where it hasn't quite started properly. I want you to be as intentional as you possibly [00:01:00] can be. Don't say, oh, I ruined it. I didn't get any rest. Oh, I ruined it. I didn't get any work done. Any of those things. Think what have I done, what do I still need, and how can I be as intentional as possible for the remaining days? Okay, let's do it. Anyway, today's session, though, is about a topic that I started about a month ago. So you may recall, I did an episode a while ago where I was talking about wanting to reduce my phone usage and I talked about a product called Brick. Now, this is not a product placement episode. I have not been paid. I purchased it just like anybody else , based on various reviews that I had seen from people that I respected. And I wanted to check back in with you about how it's going because I. Used to have a tendency, and I still to some extent have a tendency to find a new thing, think it's the answer, and then to stop using said thing and it [00:02:00] get relegated to a cupboard somewhere. So I thought I would let you know how I've been going with the Brick and exactly how I've been using it, what that process has been like, what I've learned from it, and what I'm gonna be doing going into 2026. Now, in case you didn't listen to that episode, this is a Brick. If you're on YouTube, you can see it. If not, it's a little square plastic um Brick, um, for want of a better phrase, it's about what, five centimeters square, about a centimeter deep, something like that. Says Brick on it, and essentially it's a fancy casing for a fancy one of those, is it RFD tags or have I said the wrong letters? I'm not sure. What are those tag things that does clever things to your phone, but it's like a physical one. It's got a magnet on the back, so I leave it on the side of my fridge in my utility room. And essentially the idea is that you can pre-program it to turn off certain apps and certain websites. So depending on what your go-to distractions are, you can set it up [00:03:00] in different ways. One of the things I love about it is that you can set up different versions of that, and this is where it's better than just buying the little tags off of Amazon or whatever and setting it up yourself. You can have pre-programmed combinations of what it switches on and switches off. So as an example, and I'll go into this in more detail as we go on through the episode, I have a different version for weekends and weekdays. So during the weekdays, I will absolutely be turning off like the Instagrams and all of that sort of stuff. But on weekends, I also turn off Slack and email, for example. And within that there's quite a bit of nuance. So you don't just turn off safari or don't turn off safari. You can turn off certain websites. So I've got Facebook in there. I've got a bit of a news habit. So I've got my go-to news sites turned off. Right move. Those of you who are in the UK will know what I'm talking about. It's, uh, property looking at website, I'm not moving. I [00:04:00] have no intention of buying a house in the next five years, but, it's fun to look at houses I can't afford. Anyway, so that's what Brick is, and I was really using it because I was noticing that I was scrolling more than I wanted to, that I didn't feel better for scrolling and the kind of self-driven resolutions of just, I won't use it in these time slots weren't really working for me. I was also finding it difficult to use the leave your phone in another room strategy. Um, because there are things that I do like having access to, I do like having access to my Spotify. I do like having access to audio books, for example. I do also wanna be able to answer the phone easily if family contact me and things like that. So there were certain things that I did want to be able to have access to that made the Just leave your phone somewhere else more difficult to implement. So I [00:05:00] thought Brick could be a really good solution for me. So how did it go? Well, inevitably because I'm me for the first few days, absolutely bloody brilliant. So for the first few days I was Bricked for usually up to 23 hours a day. That doesn't mean I was using it for a whole other time, but that I was completely out of it for 23 hours a day. This was a massive reduction on my previous screen time, particularly in apps like Instagram and I was just like, this is amazing. I am the new biggest fan of Brick. I need Brick T-shirts. This is just brilliant. This is gonna change my life. All those thoughts that we have. However, because I am now Coach Vikki, and not just optimistic Vikki, I was also aware that I was in that honeymoon period and I knew that that honeymoon period wouldn't just last indefinitely. But I enjoyed it and I was riding it while I could. I had decided at that stage there's two different ways you can turn on [00:06:00] your Brick. One is that you actually take your phone. So I'm showing people my phone on the video. You take your phone, you go into the Brick app. So, mine is currently Bricked as people will be able to see if they're watching on video. But imagine it wasn't, you would press the, um, Brick there and tap it against here and that Brick it. So I was using that sort of intentional action, that active choice, because I quite liked, and I'd heard. My coach, Karin Nordin, talk about this. I quite liked the sort of ritual associated with, and now I'm tapping and therefore going into work mode so that was how I decided to try it at first. The other option is that you can schedule it to go into particular modes at particular times. So at first I did the tapping and I put the Brick in my utility room, my utility, I live in a townhouse. My utility room rooms on the ground floor, and then my lounge and kitchen are upstairs, and then the bedrooms are above that. So the utility room is kind of as far as you can get [00:07:00] from where I normally am, other than putting it in the garage, which I didn't want to do. And it's also not a particularly inviting place, right? It's a utility room. So, it's not like I'm gonna sit in there and scroll. So I thought that was a good thing. And like I say, for the first few days it went really, really well. First week in fact, it went really, really well, really fundamentally changed how I was spending my time. The other thing that really helped during that time and that I would recommend for any of you who are wanting to change your phone time, is that I had really clear ideas of what else I wanted to do. I am a hobby monster. I have so many different hobbies, and there were so many things that I wanted to be spending time doing that weren't just scrolling on my phone, that that was a really attractive draw for me. Okay. So I wasn't just trying to stop. Using my phone. I was trying to create space to do all these other things that I wanted to do, and that went really well as well for about the first week. Now you can all hear the but coming, right? There's a little but [00:08:00] coming here. It started to drift after about a week. I wasn't quite as routine about tapping in. I was sometimes going to bed without Bricking the device. There is a saving grace in it though, I have to say, which is that if you've gone to bed or you've gone somewhere without booking it, you can Brick remotely. So you can Brick without being near the Brick machine. You just can't un- Brick without being near. Or really like you get five emergency un Bricks, but that's all you get. So you have to be careful not to use those. So you can go, ah, I didn't Brick it and just Brick it there and there. But even so, I was finding myself kind of going, oh, well I'm quite tired tonight. Maybe I'll just let myself look at it. After all I. So I'd, I was starting to blur my own intentions. I thought I had been quite clear with myself, quite intentional with myself about when I wanted to Brick the phone and when I didn't, but I found myself [00:09:00] negotiating with myself. I found myself saying, oh yeah, but you aren't quite tired. Oh, yeah, but it's not for long. Oh, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, all that stuff. Okay. Now, I sounded quite judgy when I said that about myself. That's 'cause I'm a flippant sort of a person, but I genuinely wasn't. I genuinely, one of the things I'm really proud of myself about is that I didn't get crossed with myself at that stage, and I didn't, as I often would've done in the past, declare that the Brick is useless and didn't work and chucking in a box somewhere. I instead thought, Hmm, that's interesting. Gonna need a plan for that as well. Gonna need a plan for when I am feeling too tired, or I'm motivated to do the fun things that I thought I wanted to not be doing. Okay, and that required me to make another decision. Did I want, if I was too tired to do in my head, too tired in speech marks, to do the fun hobby things that I had been wanting to do, did I then think it was [00:10:00] okay to be on my phone? And for some of you, the answer will be yes. And that's absolutely fine. For me, the answer was not. Yes for two reasons. One, because I know that if I've got the option of going on my phone, then suddenly the, oh, I feel too tired is a really low barrier to get over. It's like, oh, I'm too tired. And so I go on my phone, um, and b, I don't feel better. So if I am too tired to do something else and I go on my phone, I don't end up feeling less tired. I just end up passing some more time. And that was not how I wanted it to be. And so what I realized was that I needed a plan for what tasks I wanted to do, what activities I should say, not tasks, what activities I wanted to do when I wasn't energetic or motivated enough to be doing my hobby things, but I still didn't want to pick up my phone as an option, and I found that quite difficult because anything that [00:11:00] wasn't pointed at any of my kind of hobby interests slash goals felt like a waste of time. It was really, really interesting to observe. So like I was like, I could do coloring and puzzles and things. It's like, well, that don't get me anywhere. That's no point. You know, that total like eldest daughter, high achieving bullshit that I'm sure lots of, you're susceptible to that. It must be useful what you're doing, even if it's hobby useful, it's building your skills and da, da, whatever. Right. Building a side quest, the notion of coming up with stuff that was just a bit mindless, but not my phone, I found really hard, but when I noticed how hard I was feeling it, it was like, oh, okay. Cool. It just needs to be things that I quite like doing, that I find relaxing, and that is where I did then start slotting in things like coloring things like puzzles, that kind of stuff. I've asked for a jigsaw board for Christmas. I'm very excited. I have to do jigsaws that have got [00:12:00] words on 'cause I'm so bad at matching colors. But you know, the jigsaws that are like covered in signs or books or whatever, I like those ones. Mom's under very strict instructions, what to get me anyway. Um, so I had to come up with things that I could do when I was feeling tired or motivated. I think this is a really important step for all of you to think about 'cause often we think about what are we gonna do when our besto set you? It's the same if you want to exercise more, right? That often we think, oh, well, if I've got the energy, then I'll do my full routine. But having an idea as to what will you do if you feel like you haven't got the energy to do your full routine, but you want to do more than nothing, what does that look like? Okay, so I realized this fitted into something I talk about in the membership all the time, which is not just planning for your best self, planning for the self that you know will also show up. So I kind of got back on it again and I started being a little bit more intentional. I started Bricking the phone a little bit more. I still wasn't back up to quite the [00:13:00] same hours of being Bricked as I was previously, but it was a bit better. And then I have my big life issue. So those of you who've been listening, you'll know that we had family stuff that happened, um, that I will not be going into on the podcast, but that was very disruptive, meant that I was away from home for a week. It's still somewhat ongoing now, but I'm back home again. But I was away from home and I didn't take the Brick with me. Now part of that was just the leaving in a little bit of a hurry and not really thinking about it. But part of it was also the kind of, um, you know maybe I need to just be able to hang out on my phone and not worry about it. Maybe this is not the time to be sort of trying to stick to resolutions. So when I look through my Brick data, I had 13 days in the end where I didn't Brick it once. Now I wasn't away for all of that time, so I can't use the, I physically couldn't thing but I [00:14:00] had 13 days where I didn't break it at all, and I'm not a hundred percent sure whether that was the right decision for me or not. I think it probably wasn't, but I'm going with it because it's what I did. Now, the reason I say that is because I'm not convinced that that kind of black and white, oh, well I shouldn't even think about it thing, is a useful way to think about anything. I think it probably would've been helpful for me to take the Brick with me and at least Brick for some of the time. I think that probably would've encouraged me to do other things, to spend time, not just on my phone, to spend time on things that were a bit more rejuvenating, so I'm not gonna beat myself up for it. It was a really tough time, but I think in future, I want to plan for those kind of emergency crisis moments as well, and I think that plan will involve less [00:15:00] usage of the Brick, but not no usage of the Brick. Now, so where am I now? Like I say, the issues are still somewhat ongoing, but I am back home. I'm back in much more of a normal routine, and the thing I'm more proud of than anything, I always encourage my members. I encourage all of you to identify things that you are proud of. What I'm proud of more than anything is that I have got back on the metaphorical Brick horse. I could easily have said that I'd screwed it up by being away, being off for that long and that it hasn't worked, Chuck it in the old tech box that we never look at again. I could equally, and I want you to be really aware if you are likely to do this at the moment, I could equally have said, I'm gonna try again in the new year. That would be a really, really easy thing to say at the moment, but I didn't. I said you are back into sort of mostly normal routine. How do you want to do this now? But importantly, I didn't just say, you gotta [00:16:00] get back on it. Gotta get back on it. You know, it's really important. I said, how can I make it easier for you? Because I am a bit distracted at the moment, I think it's fair to say. And so I thought to myself, how can I make it more likely that this will be effective? More likely that it will be helpful and something that I can be proud of rather than something that I'm feeling guilty for not doing for example. And I thought, you know what? As much as I love the kind of ritual of going down and tapping it on my Brick to signify when I'm starting. I think that is a cognitive step too far. So we often talk in the membership about initiation energy, the sort of energy it takes to start doing something and that can be really, really difficult. And that sort of like, okay, I'm going to be Bricked now. Tap. Felt like something that was easy to put off. Or I'll go and Brick in half an hour, I'll go and Brick in an hour. And I thought, you know what, what will support me at the moment? And this isn't saying this is [00:17:00] how I'm gonna use it forever. What will support me at the moment is setting up some schedules. So I set up schedules where my phone automatically goes onto different modes at different times. So it has, I think I've got four settings, something like that. One which comes on first thing in the morning. One that comes on at the time that I am gonna start work. Where roughly when I'm gonna finish work and roughly when I go to bed, and there's slightly different settings for each of those different time slots, and having that has helped me massively , because there's four changes because I don't necessarily need those four changes, it means it gets ReBricked. So as an example, if in the mornings I wake up and I decide I'm gonna go and un Brick my phone, which is not the plan, I don't intend to scroll in the mornings, but occasionally the Brick is near where I feed the dog, so occasionally I um, Brick it re Bricks again at [00:18:00] seven 30 'cause it's time to start work. Okay, those of you who, if you're worrying about me starting work at seven 30, it's because I'm on a new plan where I then exercise at nine. So it's not that I'm just working crazy hours, I promise. It re Bricks at seven 30 so even if I've got up in the morning and gone and un Bricked it, I can only scroll till seven 30 worst case. 'cause it will then Brick itself again. And it won't unb Brick again unless I go and un Brick it. So having that schedule has taken loads of the cognitive load away from me and has made it much more easy to notice what I'm doing and to stick to what I intended. The other thing I've done is I have collated easy other analog options. So I have one of those like foot stool things by my sofa, which is hollow. Used to have dog toys in it. I kicked the dog out. The dog now has his own basket under a different chair, and it now has my toys in it. So I now have right where I'm likely to be sitting and scrolling I have [00:19:00] analog things that I can do. I have a Kindle by my bed so that if I wake in the night and reach for my phone, I've got a Kindle to reach for instead. I've kind know that's not strictly analog, but it's reading, so we're going with it. I've made it easy for me to have alternatives nearby when I would normally pick up my phone. And again, that has really helped. One of the things that I think Brick is absolutely genius for is the stopping you the times that you don't even realize you're picking up your phone. It has been, frankly, terrifying. My husband has been laughing at me the number of times I pick up my phone, either without realizing I've even picked it up or picking it up to look at the time, and then clicking on the Instagram app, clicking on Facebook, clicking on whatever, and being faced with that black screen saying, uh, you've chosen not to access this app. Go and do something more interesting. Or whatever it says right. It's been really, really useful to [00:20:00] notice how intuitively and how automatically I'm doing that, and it just squishes all of that because you can't access it, so it gives you that moment. Yes, of course I could walk downstairs if I really cared and un Brick it, but I don't because my intention wasn't looking. It was just that I kind of automatically ended up there and it has stopped all of that. The other thing I'm proud of is we had to go away again because of the family issues for a day at the weekend, and I decided what I would do this time was I would take the Brick with me. I would Brick my phone, but I would leave the Brick in the car. So I could choose to UnBrick if I decided intentionally that I wanted to, but it wasn't just a free for all access to my entire phone. And that actually worked really well. I went out once to UnBrick it for a short period of time just to check some messages and things like that, have a quick scroll, but I was only out for like 20 minutes or something like that. And then I ReBricked it Happy days, and I was off the phone for the rest of the day. [00:21:00] So that worked really well, and I think that is how I will continue to do it. If I'm just going. Into town or whatever. I'll just take it Bricked. I still have access to the phone. I still have access to maps. I still have access to all my banking cards, all of that sort of stuff. I just don't have access to the social media things. In fact, it's quite interesting because there have been quite a few times where I've been with friends going, oh, there was a reel I was gonna show you. And them being like, no, I can't. Then it's like, you know what, Vic, you're gonna have to think of more interesting things to talk about than what you just saw, on instagram and that has actually been really good. You know what? We had conversation before Instagram. You can have conversation about something different. So that has been really, really good. Now, the one thing that I have not yet figured out that I'm gonna need to think about is that I have not Bricked the entirety of the internet, as in like in my browser. I have Bricked certain websites that I know suck up my time. So the ones I mentioned before, [00:22:00] plus Reddit and Medium and things like that. Now I have a bit of a plan for next year, which I'll tell you about in a future podcast, but if you've heard people on Instagram talk about personal curriculum, I got very excited yesterday and have a bit of a plan. What that means is there are a bunch of places where I could actually get quite distracted, scrolling and looking things up on the internet, and I don't think I really wanna do that either. So I'm still pondering on this, but I think I'm going to need, they have a setting where instead of having, what websites are blocked, you can have a generic, all websites are blocked except this one, this one, this one, this one. So I'm gonna have a little bit of a ponder about whether, for at least so times a day, I want to have it so that most of the internet is blocked apart from a few things. Haven't quite decided yet, we shall see. But that's okay because I'm seeing this as a process. I'm seeing this as [00:23:00] something that I'm kind of working through and working with myself, asking myself how can I make this easy rather than, does this machine work? Because the short answer to all of this is there is not a single device that will fix your phone habits. There is not a single piece of exercise equipment that will make you fit and healthy. There is not a single planner that will make your life perfectly organized. All of these are tools that come along with behavior change and emotional regulation and, general self-management. And when we can see them like that, when we can see them as tools that then need intention and strategy to use, then suddenly they become super, super useful. If we expect them to be a kind of panacea for everything, then they will inevitably disappoint and we will either blame them or we will blame ourselves. So if you have considered buying something like a Brick before, I think my [00:24:00] conclusion would be, I highly recommend it, as long as you are willing to go through an iterative process of deciding intentionally how you are gonna use it and that you have a very clear plan as to what other things you want to spend time doing if you are not on your phone. So that's my review of the Brick. I wish I could say in my affiliate links are down there. I don't have affiliate links. I just bought a Brick. So I don't have any of that stuff. I'm not biased in any way. That is just my experience of it. I would love to hear Brick strategies. So if any of you already have a Brick and are using it in a way that's different to what I've said, or if there's anything you found particularly helpful or not helpful, please do make sure you're on my newsletter. Drop me an email, let me know how you're using it. I would love to kind of further refine it in the future. If you don't have issues with your phone use, but there are other elements of behavior change that [00:25:00] you are trying to change, I want you to run the same sorts of things through and even to re-listen to this episode, thinking about it in the context of the planner that you think's gonna fix everything. The exercise machine that you think's going to fix everything, whatever it might be. Okay. Being intentional, being able to spot when your behavior is changing, being able to track, being able to choose intentionally, having approach goals, so things you're trying to do rather than avoidant goals. All of this stuff is just really good practice for any sort of behavior change. And I have just illustrated this time using the Brick as an example. I hope that is useful. This is our last episode for 2025. Thank you so much all for coming. We are heading rapidly towards 150,000 downloads at the point of recording this, which is utterly bonkers. Don't think we'll quite make it by the end of the year, but I'm super, super excited. So thank you for all your support and I can't wait to keep chattering [00:26:00] with you through 2026. So thank you all for listening, and I will see you next week.

We hear so much about people leaving academia at the moment and it’s easy to make assumptions about people’s reasoning. I realised when talking with a one-to-one client that my story is not necessarily a typical one, but it could be one that it is interesting for people to hear. So, in today’s episode, I share my reasoning for leaving academia. I don’t do so in an attempt to encourage others to do the same, and while telling my story, I recognise many privileges that led me to have the career that I have had. Instead I simply wanted to share my experience with you all. If you liked this episode, you should check out “ how I finished my PhD in just over two years (and why I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it) ”. Transcript [00:00:00] and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. So today's episode is a little bit of a change in direction from the last few episodes because this is going to be more about me rather than kind of hints and tips necessarily. And I hope in doing that partly you'll just get to know me a little bit more, but much more importantly, you'll get a bit of an insight and a viewpoint on academia and my journey in academia and how it might relate to yours, and this kind of came about based on a conversation that I was having with a one-to-one client, somebody I've worked with for a really, really long time. And I can't remember what we were talking about, but it came up about me leaving academia and she had made an assumption, understandably, that I had got fed up of academia. I had stopped enjoying academia and that that was why I'd left. 'cause that's why most people leave, right? We hear about the great resignation and all that stuff, and when I [00:01:00] explained to her why I actually did leave academia, she was firstly surprised and secondly found it quite motivating and inspiring. So I thought I would share it with you guys too. Now that makes it sound like it's going to be a exclusively positive story. It's not an exclusively positive story, but it's possibly not the one that you are expecting based on most people who leave academia at the stage I did. So let's backtrack slightly. Just for those of you who haven't been around for quite so long. Give you a bit of context. I was an academic for 20 something years. I was a very unusual case who went to university to do my undergraduate degree and stayed in the same place until I was full professor. So I did my PhD, my postdocs, and all of my academic career in the same institution here in the uk, which is really, really unusual. It's not necessarily something that I super recommend, [00:02:00] but it's also not something that I would recommend against particularly. It was sort of a combination of opportunities and circumstances that led to that. If you wanna hear more about the beginnings of my academic career and how and why I did my PhD quite fast, um, I have an episode about that. Again, might not be quite what you expect because that is definitely not something that I would necessarily recommend but you can check that out. So I was in the same place for the whole of this time, and about five years before I actually left, I had decided that I was going to leave at some point. Essentially I decided that I didn't want to retire as an academic. You know, at this stage, what would it be, I would've been about 40, I guess something like that, early forties. And I decided, you know what? I don't want to do this for another 25 years for reasons I'm gonna share. And that was when a [00:03:00] sort of vague exit plan started mulling in my mind, most of which was limited by the fact that I was living on my own at that stage and we need to be able to support myself. And whilst professorial salaries aren't amazing, they are okay and certainly do very well if you are living on your own. So I'd got this sort of vague plan that I wanted to leave, and then a combination of events meant that it actually happened. But the reason I didn't want to stay was not the so-called toxic environment in academia. It was not the pressure. It was not even particularly the workload, although the workload did annoy me more than anything. I did get overwhelmed at times, but not in a sort of burnout way, just in a, I'm knackered and this is annoying me kind of a way. So did those things contribute a bit? Yes. Were they the reason I left? No. [00:04:00] Absolutely not. I found myself in a portion of academia that I actually still love in terms of the people and the culture and the climate. I don't think you can do much better than sport and exercise sciences. They are the most remarkably normal people. They are, yeah. There's some people who are like very ambitious or whatever, but generally they were lovely. And then you threw in that I was working closely with physios who were just the most gorgeous people and a bunch of educationalists also lovely. Um, did have some medics. Some of the medics were more of a challenge, but many of the ones I worked with were absolutely glorious. And then you also add to the mix the fact that for the last 15 years of my career, I was teaching focused and so I was mixing in the teaching focused world as well. And I have to say teaching focused academics are some of my favorite people love them. Uh, genuine people who are really [00:05:00] interested in student development and in doing the right thing by their students and are just generally lovely. I was surrounded all the time by people I genuinely really liked. Now, were there some people that I wanted to boot over the garden fence because they would never fill in the forms properly that I needed them to do that I didn't care about either, but they needed to happen. Yes, absolutely. There were people, but there really were very few people that if I got stuck sitting next to 'em at the Christmas dinner, I would be sad. I really loved the people I worked with. I adored my students. The students were wonderful even when they were being a pain in the bum. They were just enthusiastic, nice kids, and I really enjoyed all the time I spent with them. Um, I even... by the time I had sort of carved my niche in teaching focused work, and maybe I'll do a podcast another day about my transition from research oriented career to a teaching focused career and why I did it [00:06:00] and how I navigated it. I'll do that another day. But certainly by that stage I had found a kind of area that I cared a lot about, that I was pretty good at doing and that I was actually quite well recognized for, you know, people were asking my advice, I was getting like awards and recognitions and all that kind of stuff, and things were good. Okay. The one time where I would say things were not good was during the 2020, the pandemic. That was pretty horrendous, but I think that was very unique to this particular situation. Did it flag some of the things I like less about academia? Yes, potentially. But mostly I see that as a kind of a blip on and otherwise very lovely career now. Does that mean I don't think academia's a toxic environment? No, absolutely not. I think there's a huge amount of pressure. I think there is a huge amount of unnecessary [00:07:00] workload. I think there is a huge amount of trying to ring every last drop outta somebody. But I genuinely didn't come across very many people that I actively disliked and I actively thought were badly intending in their interactions. Does that mean I agreed with everyone in management? No, absolutely not. I think management, senior management made a whole bunch of good decisions and a whole bunch of really stupid decisions, unreasonable decisions, and so on. And when I was quite junior, I would get quite cross about that. As I got more senior, I understood more of the nuances and I understood more of the pressures, and I could see more how it came about and why they were doing the things they were doing. Even when I didn't necessarily agree with them, I could see how it happened. I also, as I got more senior and more insightful, I [00:08:00] would say more reflective. I also saw the extent to which most of the time when people weren't behaving the way I thought they should be behaving or other people thought they should be behaving, it was because of the stress and pressure they were under rather than them being intrinsically nasty people. Now there are some things I want to clarify here. I was very privileged in a number of ways. I kind of fitted in, I think it's fair to say. There were times when I didn't, when I was more teaching oriented and some of the research intensive people, um, would judge me for that, for example. But I did my PhD in a very, very supportive research group. I was very well protected through the early stages of my career. And so sort of got through that vulnerable bit with really, really good people around me. Now, there were some bits that got a bit complicated. Well, that's a story for not on a podcast, but on the whole, I was very well protected in ways that certainly I [00:09:00] don't see all of the PhD students in my membership, for example, and for many of you don't necessarily see being protected. But for me it was a good career and it was a career that I got an awful lot of opportunities out of, that I got an awful lot of happiness out of, and an awful lot of friends out of. And to be honest, I look back with pride and celebration, so you might be asking, okay, then why did you leave? And it's a valid question. The main reason I left was because I didn't want what was next. So by this stage I achieved full professor during the pandemic in 2020. And then after that I was head of education for my school, so I was overseeing all of the academic programs and I was on a track to sort of senior teaching leadership roles. You know, it probably would've been director of education for the college, next [00:10:00] maybe deputy provost, chancellor, education for the university, things like that. Okay. And you know, I knew the people that did those roles. I think, you know, I'm not saying I was a shoe-in, but there was certainly an expectation that I would apply for those things if they were to come up. And I increasingly realized I didn't want them. I might have been good at them in some ways, but I didn't want them, and that might sound strange, right? That's how you have wide influence, right? By affecting policy and instigating widespread change across an institution is how you have really big impact. And I was really interested in impact across the whole university. I've never been somebody who sits neat and tight in one discipline. I've always been interested in working across disciplines and across different areas of the university, and it certainly would've been a huge [00:11:00] promotion. It certainly would have been big increases in salary and all that sort of stuff. Right? And I knew a lot of the senior leadership team, so I'm sure it would've been a transition, but they were broadly good people and I was, you know, I was largely excited about, about working with them. So why did I decide that I didn't want to go that way? I didn't want to wait for those roles to come up and to apply for them. Well, it was two things really. One was about what I wanted to be doing, and two was about what I was good at. Because one of the things that I don't think I realized early enough, and I want all of you guys to realize much earlier than I did, is that you really have to understand yourself. You really have to understand not only what influence you want to have in the world, but also what you enjoy doing the most, what you want to spend time doing, and where your strengths are best spent. Okay. I spent a lot of time trying to [00:12:00] fix my faults instead of deciding where my strengths were best spent. And what I realized as I got further up through the tree was, whilst I had lots of good ideas about how things should be done, I was not a good people manager. Okay. Now some of you might be surprised by that, I get on with people, right? My saving grace was that people liked me. People generally knew that I was well intended and liked me personally. However, that doesn't make you a good people manager. I was not good at letting people kind of have their heads, so like, you know, give them an idea or give them a project to do and let them do it the way they want to do it. I have my ideas about how I want things to be done, and I'm not necessarily good at letting other people crack on and do it their own way. Is that a failing? Yeah, probably. Does it mean that, it made those things difficult? Yeah, probably. But it is a useful thing to recognize and don't get me wrong, right? I did all the leadership training and all those things, but when I got stressed, when I [00:13:00] felt under pressure, my general tendencies came back, and so I wasn't necessarily very good at letting other people do things their way. I also wasn't necessarily very good at doing all the kind of behind the scenes, collaborative discussions, stuff that enabled people to come along with me when I did have a new idea, I could sort of see it. I could see how obvious it was, and I could see that it was clearly the right thing to do, and so I couldn't understand why people needed a bit longer to sort of come round to it or to get past some of their objections and all that sort of thing. I was also somebody who was quite comfortable with big change, who was quite excited by big change, and I didn't necessarily under stand, people who would prefer things to stay as they are, even if it's not quite as good or whatever, just because it feels comfortable. My brain doesn't work that way and I wasn't always very good at, recognizing that other people were [00:14:00] feeling like that. I'm also somebody who can do a lot of work at the last minute, so I was also not very good at seeing out into the future to give people lots of notice for when we were gonna get things done. And I realized that the further I would go through my career, the more I would be managing others, the more I would be allowing other people to implement their views on things and just kind of guiding strategically or whatever, the more I would be having to sort of win hearts and minds, et cetera, et cetera and the more I realized that it wasn't really what I was great at and then I realized that actually the more I did that stuff, the less I was doing the things that I feel that I'm good at. The one-to-one conversations with people, the running small group sessions, the doing interesting keynotes, coming up with innovative new ways of explaining new ideas and that sort of thing. I'm good at that stuff and the [00:15:00] more I was doing teaching leadership, the less I was actually doing the stuff that I loved and that was genuinely 90% of the reason I left, I didn't want the things that were ahead of me. And I'm not someone who can tread water in circles. 'cause you could say, you know what? It's fine. Do some school level admin roles. You don't have to go for that ones. Maybe they'll try and talk you into it. Perhaps you do a few years of it, tolerate it, whatever. If I don't have something to work towards, I get really bored and grumpy. It's no surprise that these thoughts all accelerated a bit after I got my professorship 'cause I'd been wanting that for a long time. I'd been working hard for it and things and then we went into pandemic and that was a whole thing. So we survived that and then it was after that. It was a bit like there's nothing I'm striving for now. I could, I, you know, there's plenty of teaching related research I can still do. There's plenty of stuff I want to implement and things to [00:16:00] improve our programs, look after the students and all that stuff, but it's all going round again stuff. It's, here's another academic, yeah, here's Freshers, here's this, here's that. And I loved so much of it, but I can't tread water and stay in the same place. So for me, I didn't leave because I hated the environment. I didn't leave because it became intolerable or because I was bored of being burnt out or any of those things. I never did burn out. I was pretty overwhelmed at times, but it was that the positives were no longer sufficient for me. The striving, the thing I wanted to get to next was no longer there for me, and then the workload didn't feel worth it, and I think this is a really, really important thing to recognize is workload is not an absolute measure of this is enough, this is too much, this is not enough. Workload has to be proportionate to [00:17:00] how much you care about the other end of it. Now, does that mean we should have unlimited workloads? Obviously not, but I got annoyed by the workload. I got tired and stressed out when I had to stay too late and things like that. But when I was working towards something I believed in and that something I mostly enjoyed and was surrounded by nice people, I could cope with the workload just fine. If I had really wanted those jobs, really believed that I was gonna be great and would be able to do them in a really, really good way, and that I would enjoy that process, then absolutely I would've carried on with the workload. It was fine. It. It was fine. I was healthy. I was able to do it. Perhaps if my health had changed, that would be different. I realize, again, I'm speaking from a position of privilege, but genuinely my experience was it was a load of work, but it was really cool. So I left academia 90% because I felt like I'd finished it. [00:18:00] I'd done all the things I wanted to do. I don't wanna say ticked all the boxes, 'cause that sounds a bit kind of arbitrary, but, I'd achieved all my goals. I'd treat, you know, I wasn't somebody who grew up dreaming of a career in academia. I didn't even know that really existed until I was offered a PhD. But once I knew what academia was, I've done all the things that I wanted to do. And so then it was time to do something different. The 10% is that I had personal reasons to move back home to where I grew up , and. You can't really, there's nowhere where I live where you can teach what I used to teach. I was a sport scientist. I'm near one of the greatest universities in the world at home, Cambridge, but they don't have sport science. So it wasn't something that I could definitely carry on if I came back here and I certainly wasn't gonna commute for it. So that was the kind of 10%, but the vast majority was a sense that I had completed it. I'd done all the things I wanted to do, and then I was so [00:19:00] excited. Where it all became reality was two things. One where I got a gorgeous husband who would ensure that I could still eat while I was making my business start running and two, I came up with the business plan. I knew I wasn't gonna leave just to do anything. But I came up with the idea of the PhD Life coach membership specifically, and from there it was just, this is what I wanna do. This is all the bits of academia I adore. This is everything I like doing. I think there's a huge need for it. I can see the benefit that it would have, and I can do it. I will be good at it, and I don't need to lead a big team to do it. So some of you might be wondering, you know, will I ever get to a stage where the PhD life coach membership will have, um, you know, other coaches And I'll take a step back in a more leadership position. We might have guest coaches, keep a little eye out next year just 'cause [00:20:00] I think it's good to have more voices in there rather than it all being the Vicki Wright Show, but. I do not wanna take a step back. I want to be hands-on in the membership, talking to my students, knowing my students, coaching them, supporting them, and being there with them the whole way through. I wanna be producing these podcasts. I wanna be speaking to you guys. I wanna be writing your emails. I wanna be coaching you. I want to be with you guys all the time, whether you're a PhD student all the way through to full professor, because I think we all struggle with the same things. Now, once I've got enough people, if I can employ people who will do the behind the scenes stuff that I don't have to do anymore, happy days, I would love that. Somebody to do my invoices and all those things. Beautiful, perfect. But I wanna be hands on with all of this stuff. And so that's why I wanted to tell you this story because I think actually some people who are, especially in the early stages of their career, you hear so many horror stories about academia. And I do [00:21:00] not doubt for a second that those are true and that those are people's experiences. And I certainly saw elements of that throughout my career. But I think it's also important to hear the other bits. I think it's important to hear that it can be amazing. You have to remember I came into it at a different time, but even my last few years were still amazing. And I want you to know that you can choose to leave something that's really good. You do not have to stay doing something until you absolutely hate it. You can do something, love it, and then leave. That's all fine too. You can do whatever you want to do, and I think we need to be told that a little bit more often. Now, does that mean academics? Listen as I speak, does that mean I'm recommending you leave academia and become a coach? No, I'm really not. I would actually say that for 95% of people that would not be the decision you think it is. I [00:22:00] really mean that. I think it's often seen as an easy get out. It is far from an easy get out. If anyone wants to talk about it, you can let me know, but that's not what I'm saying. What I want to say is that you can make any decision you want to make for whatever reasons you want. I thought people were gonna think I was stupid. I thought people were gonna be like, whatcha doing? You're a professor. You've got such a secure job, you've got an amazing pension. You are gonna do these great things. We thought you were gonna be pro vice chancellor, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I thought people were gonna say that stuff. Some of them said that stuff. Most of them said, congratulations, you got out. Which probably says more about them than it does about me. But you can choose these things for any reason you want to. If you want a positive experience in academia, you can choose to have one, and you can choose to think about it in the ways you want to think about it. Put yourself in the places that you want to put yourself in and achieve all the things that you want to achieve. And when you feel like you've had enough, [00:23:00] you can use your skills elsewhere. There are so many options and so many ways that you can do this. I really hope that was a useful insight and helps you understand a little bit more about me. Please feel free to ask questions if you're on my newsletter, you can always just reply to that and I will try and get back to you as quickly as I can. I hope that was a interesting different sort of story for this week. So thank you all for listening, and I'll see you next week.

< Imposter syndrome often affects the most high achieving people yet it can still feel so true that you’re “not good enough” and “conning” other people into believing you’re better than you are. In this episode, I discuss a paradox that I see a lot in academics experiencing imposter syndrome - the tendency to simultaneously believe that you are an imposter AND hold yourself to higher standards than you hold other people. I’ll discuss the five past experiences that may influence why you have these paradoxical beliefs and why recognising this can be the first step to overcoming some of these imposterish thoughts. Links for the transcript If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on how to overcome imposter syndrome . Transcript [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast, and this week I'm gonna be thinking about imposter syndrome again. Now this is something we've been talking about quite a bit in the PhD life coach membership 'cause it's part of the theme for Q4 of 2025, and I think this topic is relevant to everyone, right? I coach people all the way from the beginning of their PhDs through to very senior academics, and imposter syndrome shows up at all stages. But the more I've talked to people, the more I've coached people on this sort of topic, the more I've noticed a paradox that doesn't often get talked about. And so that's what I'm gonna talk about today, this paradox of imposter syndrome. Now, before we go any further, before I explain the paradox, I do have to just say one thing, which is, I hate the phrase imposter syndrome. Okay. Everyone uses it. I've mentioned this on the podcast before. It makes it sound like it's a medical condition. It makes it sound like there's something psychiatrically wrong with you. None of those things are true. It makes it sound like it's fixed, that you can't do [00:01:00] anything about it, that you need to cure yourself in some way. None of those things are true either. Other people use the phrase imposter phenomenon. I kind of prefer that, I think, although I think people don't generally understand what it means, but whenever I'm talking about imposter syndrome, imposter phenomenon, I'm thinking about this tendency that some people have to consider that they are not as good as other people think they are. To believe that they are in some ways, conning other people around them into believing they're better than they are and that is at least in part, a consequence of the environment that you are in. Often we see imposter syndrome, imposter phenomenon as some kind of like individual failing, that we should just think better thoughts and be more confident and build our resilience and all those helpful things, uh, helpful things. When in reality many people are treated like imposters simply because they don't fit the kind of stereotype of what somebody in academia should be like, look like, sound like, behave like. [00:02:00] Okay, so everything I say today is within that context that I'm somewhat skeptical of these imposter behaviors and thoughts as being part of a syndrome, and I'm skeptical of the extent to which they are an individual thought mistake rather than a consequence of the way that people are treated. However, the mindset piece is the one piece that we have most control over, that we are actually able to work on as individuals. And I think there are many ways that we are maybe not creating our own imposter syndrome, but we are exacerbating it and making it more uncomfortable than it needs to be. So. All those kind of caveats in place. What do I mean by the paradox of imposter syndrome? Now, some of you may have heard of something called the Dunning Kruger effect before. This is where people who have the highest abilities are most likely to feel likely they're imposters. And I did a little bit of reading around this, there's some [00:03:00] controversy around the original mathematics, the original analysis that demonstrated this, as to whether it was a real effect or whether it was an artifact or not. But essentially what they demonstrated was that if you were a high achieving person, you were much more likely to feel like an imposter than somebody who was not. Everyone I work with are already in the kind of top end of educational experience, educational performance by virtue of the fact that they're either doing or have done a PhD. I certainly see a very high rate of imposter syndrome amongst these people. I don't have other people to compare them to, so I can't say it's necessarily more than the general population, but it's certainly a very high level for people who are objectively excellent at what they do. The paradox that I've noticed though, takes that one little step further. It doesn't seem to me that it's just that people who are more capable are more likely to perceive themselves as imposters. [00:04:00] It's that these high achieving people who are having all these imposter ish thoughts are also holding themselves to a standard that is not realistic. So in my experience, most people are not criticizing themselves for being a bit too average. They are simultaneously telling themselves that they are worse than everybody else. That everyone else can do this more easily. Everyone else is more successful than me and at the same time, they are telling themselves that they shouldn't find this difficult, that they should be able to write a good first draft, first attempt, that they shouldn't need multiple redrafts, that they shouldn't get this much feedback. And even when you kind of try and normalize those processes that everyone writes a [00:05:00] somewhat shoddy first draft, unless it's something they've written in many formats before, they somehow still believe that that's true, but that they shouldn't, that they should be able to perform at this exceptionally high standard. That they should be able to do things easily without too much effort and in a way that is pretty good quality first time. Okay. I want you to reflect. Does that feel like your thinking? Are you holding these two really contradictory thoughts in your head? That you're not good enough, that you've convinced everybody that you are, but you've conned them in some way. Yet at the same time, there's an expectation that you should be exceptional. If that feels true to you, it's okay. I see an awful lot in academia and I have some ideas as to where it [00:06:00] comes from. Now, this is not based in research, what I'm about to say. This is based in my experience of talking with hundreds of PhD students and academics about issues like this and working with them over a period of 20 something years. So this is very much anecdotal, but I really think it is worth reflecting on. Where I think this paradox is coming from is rooted in the background of people who end up working in academia. The vast majority of people who work in academia have been highly successful in either their previous educational experiences or in previous professional experiences. Many, many of you who are going into PhDs who are in academic careers now will have excelled at school. Not all of you. Some of you are going, oh, I didn't, that's okay. I'm gonna come to you in a minute. Okay? But many, many of you will have excelled at school. And the problem is that sounds great, right? We all wanna excel at school. That's brilliant. The [00:07:00] problem is when you excel at school and when you excel, then into maybe your early university careers as well, is that actually that becomes something that you are really rewarded for, that you really value in yourself, and that kind of becomes part of who you think you are. I am somebody who excels in these ways and often we then wrap up in that a bunch of stories about the ways in which it's okay to excel. And I sort of identified five things that I see really regularly with my members, with other PhD students and academics that I work with, that show the way their pasts shape the expectations they now have of themselves. The first is around being the best. So many people who have excelled in [00:08:00] their previous lives, they've excelled in their previous educational experiences take a lot of value from coming top of the class. They expect to be one of, if not the better performance. You know, maybe your class used to rank you, maybe you went to top universities, you got top grades, you beat other people in these various different, relatively arbitrary often performance measures, and that becomes part of your sense of who you are, that I should be somebody who is the best? I'm not used to being somewhere in the middle of the pack. I should be somewhere near the best. Now the trouble is when you start putting in a room into a university, a whole load of people who've all been top of their class in the past, suddenly you are much more normal than you are used to being. And suddenly this notion that you should be the best doesn't feel so plausible anymore. And the problem is that if [00:09:00] you've spent your whole childhood believing that success is being the best, then you suddenly feel like an imposter. Or you can tell yourself you're an imposter if you are not the best. That somehow some part of your brain believes that you don't deserve to be there if you are not the best. You are not used to making up the numbers. You're not used to being an average contributor to a particular degree, program, career, whatever it might be. And by the way, that's not saying that you are not the best now, but not all of you can be the best. I'm sorry, I hate to break that to you, but if we have been brought up believing that being the best is what you have to do in order to belong, then suddenly we're in a position where we're telling ourselves we're an imposter, but we're holding it up against the really unfair criteria that the only way to belong is to be the best. My second thing I've observed, and this [00:10:00] might be different people, okay, might be the same, might be different people. These are people who've been brought up believing that the way to be valued, the way you get rewarded is not just to be very good at what you do, but to be good with seemingly no effort. There's people that take pride in having winged it, that actually if they can do well in a school test, they can do well in exams, whatever it might be, you know, they've written their undergraduate dissertation at the last minute, that that is somehow better, that that is proof of how good you are, that you haven't had to put effort in. And even if you don't believe that, even if you don't actually believe that you shouldn't have to put in effort, if you are somebody that academic work has often come easily to, you won't necessarily have experienced having to put in lots of effort. Now, that's not the same thing as not having to work hard. Okay? Everyone who has got to where you guys have got to has worked hard at some point in their lives. [00:11:00] But that is not the same thing as spending lots of time sort of tussling with something that you don't understand. Usually the people that have done really well in school have never really experienced or rarely experienced that sensation of, I just don't get this, but I'm gonna need to figure it out 'cause I've got to do it. Usually you've got it reasonably quickly. And so again, when we then find ourselves in this kind of hierarchical performance oriented environment where we are all pushing the boundaries of our knowledge, suddenly having to put a bunch of effort in, finding it difficult, having to sort of wallow in that confusion and keep moving forwards and doing it anyway and trying to figure it out a bit at a time that feels like you're doing something wrong, where for the vast majority of the population that's doing it. That's literally how things get done. [00:12:00] They were doing that at school. They were doing that in their undergraduate degrees, if they did them, they were doing that in their early careers. That's just doing it. But when you've grown up as somebody who hasn't had to put that much effort in, who hasn't had to sort of force themselves to kind of really stay engaged with something they really don't understand, then suddenly it feels like failing. It suddenly feels like you're an imposter. When in actual fact you're not an imposter at all, that is literally doing it. The third thing, 'cause some of you might be listening to this going well, neither of those things are me. I was never the best at school. I've always worked really hard, I've never got found things easy. The third one I've observed is people who believe that they could and should be able to do it all to the best of their ability. This is where those of you who are kind of consider yourselves hard workers and stuff often come in that you were able to do all of your homework and you were able to do it all to a good standard [00:13:00] because you worked really hard, you were committed. Maybe it didn't come easy. Maybe you persisted. But through that persistence, through that hard work, you were able to tick all the boxes. You were able to do all the things. You did all your readings, you finished all your homeworks, you made your notes beautiful, I'm sure. And suddenly you find yourself now in a place where it's not possible to read it all. It's not possible to write it all. It's not possible to research all the ideas that you come up with, okay? And it's perfectly unreasonable to consider yourself to be able to, but if you have spent your whole life, being somebody who has been able to do it all, who has completed all the extra readings, who does do things for extra credit, has always managed all of these things, then that again, can feel like a fail. Where again, to the average person, to the normal person, [00:14:00] they accepted it ages ago that they weren't gonna do all the readings, that they weren't gonna be able to complete everything to their best of their ability, that they were just gonna have to get some bits of it done and it will just have to do, and they'd have to suck up getting a C on it or whatever. Many of you won't have had to experience that before because even through undergraduate and possibly even master's, depending on the nature of your program, it was still possible to do it all. It was even clear what all is. 'cause some of this with PhD, it's not even, and even academics as well, it's not even that you can't do it all. It's that there's no defined boundary of what all is. Anyway, we get to choose the scope of our research. We get to choose what we should or shouldn't have read. We get to choose what we know about and don't know about. Whereas even if you are going, well, you know my master. I definitely didn't do all my reading or whatever you still knew what doing it all would look like. It would be doing all that reading, for example. [00:15:00] Okay, so now you're in a place where there's no clear definition of what all means. There's no way of doing it all anyway. And again, we have a tendency, people like us have a tendency to interpret that as being an imposter, that in some way other people managing to do it all, or it's okay that they're not doing it all, but I should be doing it all. 'cause my conception of being good enough is doing it all. So we've done being the best, not putting effort in and doing it all as three of my five things so far. The fourth one is around not needing help. So a lot of people who've been high achieving through their lives, whether that was initially at school or whether you went off and did another career first and excelled there. A lot of people really take pride in not having needed help along the way. They were able to just do their homework. They were able to just prepare for [00:16:00] exams. They didn't need lots of help. And remember, by the way, you're not expected to resonate with all five of these. You might resonate with all, but others you'll resonate with some of them. Not others. Okay. I really resonate with the doing it all and probably sounds awful the being the best as well. I resonate with those ones a lot. I resonate less with the not asking for help side of things. I always quite liked asking for help. It was fine. So you'll resonate with some more than others. And again, if you are somebody who has traditionally been able to do everything without getting any extra help, without actually having to ask about things that you didn't understand, suddenly when you're in a position where you do need to do that again, it can feel like you're failing. It can feel like you're an imposter. Where in reality, for most people, that's just normality. That just is what you do. You dunno how to do it. You are someone, they help you. You do it. It doesn't mean anything about you as a person, but if you've pinned your self worth on the fact that you don't ask for help, then suddenly you're [00:17:00] holding yourself to a standard that you are never gonna meet. We can't do academia. Whatever stage you're at, we can't do academia without the help of others. Ironically, as you get more senior, for academics listening, as you get more senior, you start relying on the help of those senior to you as before, but also to those junior to you as well. Most academics can't maintain a research profile without the support and assistance of their PhD students and postdocs, particularly in the sort of science, engineering, maths, medicine end of things. But we all need help in order to succeed in academia and believing that we don't, again, positions this imposters in a way that's really unfair. The fifth thing that I've recognized, and I resonate with this one hugely, although I have overcome it, is that it's okay to do well as long as you don't brag. Now, I don't know what your school was like, but at my school it was not cool to be clever. [00:18:00] It was not on any level cool. To be clever, I was usually top of my classes, certainly until I went to sixth form, and to some extent there as well, to be fair and trust me, the boys did not like the girls who did well at school. Now that sounds like it shouldn't matter, but when you are 14, that really, really matters. And so the last thing I would do at school is tell people what marks I got on a test. The last thing I would want anybody to know is whether I've done all my homework or not. I mean, I usually hadn't, 'cause I'd usually forgotten it existed, but that's a different story. Um, the last thing I would do is brag about my achievements because no one thought they were cool. And when you are 14, being cool is very important. And this doesn't stop when we get past being 14, right? There can be a real tendency in a wide range of societies to penalize [00:19:00] people who brag about their achievements and to be honest, to particularly penalize people who were socialized as being female, people who come from minority backgrounds, et cetera, et cetera. So then we've had this whole life where we've reinforced that we've got to do well. We've preferably got to do better than other people. We preferably got to do it with minimal effort. We've preferably got to do all the things and we preferably got to do it with very little help, but we also must be careful not to acknowledge those achievements too much because other people will judge us as being bigheaded. And then we wonder why we have these screwed up conceptions of who we are and what we're actually good at. Because the problem is if we tell ourselves we're bragging to tell other people about our achievements, what we also do is spend less time telling ourselves about our achievements too. 'cause it somehow feels like bragging, even if it's happening inside your head. And so we end up in this place where we've rewarded ourselves, where other people have [00:20:00] rewarded us for all this kind of complicated performance that we've put on, and where we can't compliment ourselves on it too much, and where we can't even be seen to be enjoying other people complimenting on it too much. 'cause that might make us look like we are bigheaded too. So we have to like poo poo any compliments or praise that we get from other people. And that's where we end up with this paradox of imposter syndrome, where we are simultaneously telling ourselves that we're simply not good enough and that we've conned other people into believing that we are, and that the standard we are holding ourselves against is completely unfair and unrealistic. So what do we need to do? Okay, that's a whole, like when things are determined by our background experiences, our kind of formative thoughts and all that stuff, it can be really hard to then go, okay, what do we do about that? The first thing is I want you to recognize it. I want [00:21:00] you to recognize where the reason you think you're an imposter is because you are expecting yourself to do something that is unrealistic. This is not about the times where we think we're an imposter because we literally don't know what we're doing. It's the times where we're criticizing ourselves for being an imposter, for taking multiple drafts to get a decent draft together, for example. Things that in reality are absolutely normal. I want you just to notice and go, oh, I'm doing that thing where I'm holding myself to an unrealistic standard again, aren't I? We don't have to change it. We have to notice it as a pattern notice as that, oh yeah, I do that thing. And we're gonna notice compassionately, right? We're not gonna be like, oh, I'm being that awful person again. We're gonna notice compassionately, but we're gonna notice it. The second thing I want us to do is I want us to really normalize effort and confusion. Now, people have talked about normalizing failure a lot in the past. So they've talked about, you know, people sharing their CV of failures, all [00:22:00] the grants. They didn't get, and all the papers that were rejected and everything, and I think that's great, right? Big fan. I do think it comes from a place of privilege where there's certain types of people that are able to share that information without it adversely affecting them. So I don't think it's perfect, but I do think it's useful, right? It's useful to know that other people have had these experiences, but what I wanted to focus on more is normalizing kind of the storm before the calm. I know that's the wrong way around, but the storm that's before the calm, I want us to normalize the confusion, the difficulties that happen before you get to the version you make public. Because again, people really believe that their research questions should come outta their head fully formed, that they should be able just to sit down, decide what it is, and this is what it is. That drafts should come out mostly coherent the first time, and [00:23:00] anybody who's been in this game for a while knows that that's not true. Hey, even if you've been in this game for a while and you still think it should for you, you also know that it's not true for other people. You also know that these things are iterative processes that we'll spend ages in a bit of confusion about being unsure as to whether to take it this way or take it that way. What argument will make sense, da, da, da, and that on some random Tuesday in three months time, we'll figure it out. But in the meantime, it's all a bit of a mess. We need to normalize that. I used to show my students the number of drafts it took me to get from like starting writing a paper to the final finished article. People don't even think about the extent to which articles are changed during the review process. There's this sort of general belief that if you were good, you'd be able to produce a first draft that was something in the order of what you read in a journal article, and no [00:24:00] one does that. So we need to normalize the kind of confusion, the changing of mind, the figuring it out, the not being certain, but muddling through anyway kind of stages, as being part of the academic process, not a sign that you're not good enough to be here. That is literally doing the research. One of the things that I often talk about with my members is that anybody doing a PhD or working in academia is working right at the edges of human knowledge. You are truly doing things that no one has ever done before. That's the whole purpose of producing original research, and that means we are gonna go in the wrong direction sometimes. That means we're gonna be muddling around in the dark. Sometimes that means that sometimes it's not gonna work, or you are gonna change your mind, or you're gonna find evidence to the contrary, or your model is broken and you need to rerun it, whatever it might be, right? That is literally what happens when you are [00:25:00] at the edges of human knowledge. It is not a sign that you aren't good enough. It is a sign that you are doing really difficult work with your incredible human brain at the edges of human knowledge, and you will figure it out. And the figuring it out bit is the important part. So when you are next telling yourself that you are an imposter, that you have conned them into believing that you are competent enough. I want you to remember. That having a process where you are confused and unsure and figuring it out behind the scenes, and then able to ask for help when you need it, able to kind of present it in its half-formed state and then able to get it to something that looks vaguely competent, IE convincing them, you are competent. That's doing it. That's not you doing anything wrong. That's not you pulling the wool over anybody's eyes. That is [00:26:00] literally doing it. It's meant to be a mess inside your head. It is meant to be a mess your first draft, it is meant to take a process of figuring it all out. You are meant to make mistakes. You are meant to get help. You are meant to pull it together one way and then change your mind. Do it a different way. All of those things are doing it, and if you can do all that stuff and then get it to a stage where you can calm somebody into believing that you are competent. That means you are competent. That literally means you are competent. If you can be confused and then get it to a stage where somebody else is believing that you know what you're talking about, and suddenly it is actually clear, that's competence. Competence doesn't start at the beginning of doing something. Competence is where you get to. No one cares if it took like 30 drafts to get it to this stage. Is it adequate for what you want it for now? Yes. And that means [00:27:00] you're competent. That means you're not an imposter. Does it mean you don't have things to learn? Obviously not. I think half the time imposter syndrome is not imposter syndrome, it's just being a beginner. And that can be at any stage of the career, beginner in the thing you are doing at the moment. Sometimes imposter syndrome is simply a gap in your skills between where you are at and where you want to be, and we get to focus on actually just practicing and training and getting support and developing those skills rather than telling ourselves, we don't deserve to be here, but the vast majority of the time we are telling ourselves we're an imposter because we're holding ourselves to unrealistic standards, and we're expecting and believing that having a bit of a shambles before you get there means you've done it wrong, rather than it literally just being how you do it. I really hope that's helped you. I know that I can't magically come in and just take out those impossible syndrome thoughts from your head. I wish I could, but please [00:28:00] notice where there is a paradox. Notice where you are holding yourself to unrealistic standards. Notice compassionately, and remind yourself that this is literally you doing academic research. I'm so proud of you all. Thank you all for listening, and I will see you next week.

< One of the most paralysing thoughts in academia is “I don’t know what to do”. Whether it’s about your next career move or how to analyse your data or what argument you want to emphasise, we can get stuck in the “don’t knows” for weeks or months. In this episode I help you break “I don’t know” down into “I can find out”, “I can’t know”, and “I get to decide”, so that you can plan a route forwards. Perfect for anyone who is bored of feeling stuck in indecision! Links I refer to in this episode If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on how to use a “ do know don’t know ” list. Transcript [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast and this week we are gonna be talking about a phrase that comes up in my coaching program all the time. And that is the phrase I don't know. You probably hear yourself say this a lot as well in the context of all sorts of things. I don't know where to start. I don't know if I can get this all done. I don't know what argument I'm trying to make. I don't know whether to go to the conference. I don't know if I'm ready to apply for promotion. I don't know if I'll pass my Viva. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. And the problem with that phrase, and we've touched on it in the podcast before, the problem with that phrase is that it is just infinitely paralyzing. When we tell ourselves we simply don't know something, it becomes almost impossible to decide what we're gonna do next. And what we usually do is when we think, I don't know, we think therefore I can't decide what to do, then we end [00:01:00] up feeling some really uncomfortable emotions, right? We feel overwhelmed, we feel anxious, we feel worried, whatever it might be. When we feel negative emotions, we all know, or at least any of you who have been here, when I've been talking about procrastination, when we feel uncomfortable emotions, the tendency is to try and avoid them. So what happens is we tell ourselves we don't know something then we feel uncomfortable emotions, and then we avoid those uncomfortable emotions by doing something different, whatever it is for you, I'm a scroller, I have to say. So we avoid our uncomfortable emotions by scrolling and then at the end of the day, we still don't know. We're still no closer to knowing, but now we're also beating ourselves up about the fact that we've wasted the day procrastinating. If that sounds like you don't worry. This is totally, totally normal. It happens all the time, whether you are a PhD student or all the way through to full professor or anything in between. There are so many things that it feels like we don't know and that we should be able to know [00:02:00] that it can be really, really overwhelming. What I'm gonna do in this episode is help you break down that sensation of, I don't know, into four different types of, I don't know. And from there, once we've identified which type of, I don't know we are in, it's a lot easier to start planning a way forward. So what are these four categories that I've identified? Well, the first is, I don't know, but I could know. So this is, I don't know if that journal accepts qualitative research or I don't know if it's possible to apply for that job when I have a PhD, but I don't have postdoctoral experience or a publication or whatever, or I don't know what the word limit of my PhD thesis is. So these are issues where there's something that actually is identifiable, [00:03:00] that is objectively true in some sort of meaningful way, and which you are able to find out at the moment. You may not know it right now and you may not fully see what routes there are to you finding it out, but it would be possible to find it out. So these are usually to do with rules and regulations or specific ways to do things where there is a set way to do it. How to perform a particular analysis for example. Whether an archive has the thing you want to find there. If we identify this as a, you know what, there actually is a objective truth here somewhere, then we can spin our brain off into, okay, how do I find out? Who might know about this? Where can I go to figure this stuff out? What do I need to do? What are the steps I need to take to identify the answer? To move from, I don't know, [00:04:00] to, I do know. Identifying that there actually is an objective answer out there makes it so much easier to then start brainstorming about how you can figure it out and how you can move forward. The second category are things where we don't know and we will find out, but we can't know right now. So these are things like, I don't know if my PhD is good enough. I don't know if my article will get published. I don't know if my promotion will be accepted. So there is an answer. It's just not accessible right now. And the problem with that is where there is an answer and it's not accessible right now, we can often feel quite discombobulated, right? We can feel quite uncomfortable where we're having to work towards something that [00:05:00] we don't know if it's going to work. This can also be true if you are doing analysis and things where there's maybe not a right way. Maybe you are developing a new methodology or something like that, and you are having to kind of figure it out. You will find out whether this way of measuring whatever it is you're measuring is working or not, right? Say we're doing lab work, for example, you will find out at some point whether you get a meaningful result, but you don't know yet. And in these situations, what we get to do is we get to accept that there are gonna be some uncomfortable emotions associated with the not knowing bit. Often we want to know because we want to take away those uncomfortable emotions, that sort of feeling of certainty and confusion and stuff, we're often not used to tolerating that, and so we sort of convince ourselves somehow that if only I knew this was gonna work, it would be fine. Or if only I [00:06:00] knew whether I was gonna get the job or not, it would be okay. What we often then do in these situations is we look for reassurance, right? If we are not sure that our paper's gonna get accepted, we, you know, go on our co-authors or our bosses or whatever to reassure us that they think it's good enough. We get 20 different people to read it so they can reassure us that it probably will be good enough. And in actual fact, none of those things really help 'cause they can't tell you that it's definitely good enough. They can only give you their advice, and in many ways it just doesn't actually fix the uncomfortable feelings at all. The magic here is accepting that we don't have to fix those uncomfortable feelings. That we can tolerate the uncertainty of not knowing whether we are gonna pass or not, whether we're gonna get the job or not, whether we're gonna get promoted or not, that we can tolerate that uncertainty and therefore we can live in a world where we don't know that yet. Now, how do we do that? [00:07:00] Part of it is about being kind to ourselves, so it is not sort of spiraling and making it very dramatic the consequences of it not being okay. Part of it is having faith that whatever happens, future you is gonna figure it out. So one of the things I often say, whether it's work related things or home related things, is we cross that bridge when we come to it. So well known phrase for a good reason because when we try and sort of cross all the bridges before we even get to them, you don't know what problems you're solving. And so many ways what we end up doing is kind of solving every eventuality, which is awful, right? So we end up in this situation where it's like if that article gets rejected from there, then I'm gonna submit it to this one. But if it gets rejected there as well, then it's gonna be this one, but then I'm gonna need to shorten it or lengthen it or change the framing of it, or whatever it might be. But then if it does get accepted, then this is gonna be a, you know, you can hear from my voice how exhausting it is to try and cover off every eventuality, and that's what [00:08:00] happens when we get ahead of ourselves on these paths. We don't even know what bridge we need to cross, yet we're trying to plan for all of them in the mistaken belief that we think it will help us feel better. It doesn't, we have to be able to stay here and say, at the moment, I can tolerate the uncertainty of not knowing. I can reassure myself that whatever happens, I will figure it out when I get there and that it's okay not to know at the moment. And what we then get to do is we get to say to ourselves, okay, if I can't know at the moment, whether this is gonna be okay, if I can't know at the moment what the outcome is going to be, how do I want to behave in that period of not knowing? What sort of person do I want to show up as? What kind of thoughts do I want to be saying to myself? What kind of actions do I want to be taking? And from there, we get to look after ourselves during this period of [00:09:00] unknowing, and then we indirectly make it feel more comfortable because suddenly we are moving in a way that is coherent with the person that we wanna be, that feels authentic, that feels like our future self, even though we don't know. As an example, if you are coming up to your Viva or a promotion interview or something like that, and you don't know if you're gonna get it or not, what do you want to have done between now and then in the not knowing? What actions do you wanna take? How do you wanna reassure yourselves? What emotions do you wanna be trying to induce in yourself to support yourself through that unknowing and to have as positive as possible an influence on that outcome? Because that's the thing we have to remember. One of the reasons that we don't know what's gonna happen is that there are so many variables, and some of them you are in control of, not all of them, [00:10:00] right? Which is why no one can ever reassure you fully. We are not in control of what the interviewer says, what the viva examiner says but there is a bunch that we are in control of, and that's the bit we get to focus on when we stop trying to fix the uncertainty with certainty, and instead try and support the uncertainty with kind of care and sensible actions forward. So we've got, so far, we've got the, I don't know where it's possible to know, and I'm gonna go and find out. We've got the, I don't know yet, but I will know in the future. Okay. Where we get to decide what we're gonna do in the meantime. The third type of, I don't know, I want to talk about today is the, I don't know, and I'll probably never know stuff. This can be some of the hardest to get used to because it can really spin in your brain and there's [00:11:00] no point in your life at which you will know for sure, and the problem is, this is, to be honest, most of the big questions in our lives. Was it the right thing to take this job instead of that job? Will it be the right thing to move countries or to not move countries, to stay at the same institution, to pursue this line of research instead of that line of research? Now, we'll obviously get some subjective information in the future when we see whether we like where we are, whether we're enjoying the research and all of those things, but we'll never know for sure whether it was the best decision or not because we didn't take the other decision. You can't decide whether staying in this country was a better decision than moving to a different country because you didn't do the other one. You don't know how it would've worked out if you had done the other one. It's the same as big personal decisions, you know, is this the right [00:12:00] person to marry? Is this the best possible person to marry? Well, we don't know 'cause we didn't live all the other lives. So what we get to do here when we identify that this is something where there is no knowing, then we get to make our decisions from that place. And I have a whole episode about how to make decisions that you love, in fact, I have it as a workshop that I run for universities as well. So how to make decisions that you love. So if you are thinking, okay, there's decisions I need to make that I will probably never know whether it was the right decision, best decision, or whatever, then I would really recommend that episode. Now some of these become an I get to decide problem, which is my fourth category of don't knows, which I'll talk about in a second. But not all of them will. Some of them are gonna be things like I don't know if my supervisor rates me or not. I don't know if my head of school likes me. These sorts of things [00:13:00] you are probably never gonna know. Maybe something will happen at some point that will convince you one way or the other, but usually when it comes to other people's opinions of you, things like that, we are never going to know. And so it's really useful to practice being okay not knowing, and again, this is an example of where the trying to find out in order to reassure yourself can make it worse. So this is where we end up being needy with people. Do you like me? Do you like me? Can I come to this? Do you want to come to that? You my friend, are you really? Do you love me? All that stuff. None of that makes you more attractive, right? None of that makes people wanna spend time with you. But that's us trying to shore up our own sort of self-esteem by feeling more certain about these things. When instead where we can identify that this is a, I'll never know for sure problem then we get to [00:14:00] ask ourselves, how do I look after myself? How do I look after myself when I'll never know for sure whether this was the best thing I could have done and whether I'll never know for sure what these people think of me. Again, we then get to say, okay, how do I look after myself in that environment? What do I wanna say to myself? What emotions do I wanna induce in myself? What actions do I want to take? What sort of person do I want to be when I'm not sure? This is something, especially the, what do people think of me? Think This is something that I struggled with a lot, especially growing up, but even into a long way into my adulthood, to be honest. I think it is part of having a, not really a DHD diagnosis. But lots of tendencies in that direction. People have lots of opinions about whether you talk too much, whether you interrupt too much, whether you do this too much, that too much, whether you don't do this. Yeah, you get lots of opinions. I don't have super strong rejection sensitivity. I do to some extent, but not as bad as some people with A DHD have [00:15:00] it but as I got to understand. This all better and understand myself better. One of the things I decided was I'm just gonna assume people like me it 'cause it just struck me that it doesn't really help to behave in any other way. Now, does that mean I force myself on people? No, absolutely. I vaguely read a room. You know, if you are not making tons and tons of effort to spend time with me or to talk to me, that's fine. Uh, you know, happy days, whatever. But I'm not gonna assume it means you hate me. I'm gonna, you know, my baseline assumption is that people like me and also that if you don't, that's okay too, because there's a lot of people... I was about to say, there's a lot of people I don't like. I don't think they're actually, I don't think that's actually true. There are a bunch of people I dislike. There are elements of a bunch of people I [00:16:00] dislike. I don't think I'm someone who really dislikes lots and lots of people. But there's people, right? We all got people. And so if I'm allowed to dislike people, then people are allowed to dislike me too. So that's one of the ways that I've kind of managed that uncertainty of not knowing what people think of me, is to kind of act as though I assume people like me and to try not to ruminate too much if evidence to the contrary comes up. Is it easy? Not always, but as a general rule of thumb, that has really, really helped me. Now that's the, I don't know, and I'll never know stuff. And then the fourth group is the, I don't know, but I get to decide group. And to be honest, this is the biggest group of all. There are some things that we'll never know. There are some things that we'll know in time we can't know now, and there are some things where there's a truly factual answer, but the vast [00:17:00] majority of things fall into the, I don't know, but I get to decide category. And this is essentially anything to do with choosing a direction moving forward. So this can be what research to focus on, how to make your argument, what to do first. Most of the, I don't knows, that you have in your life are I get to decide things. I don't know if I should do this or I should do that. I don't know if I should apply for promotion this year or next year. I don't know if I should change institution. These are all I get to decide problems. Will we ever know if it was the right decision? No. Is there such a thing as a right decision? Probably not, but we get to decide. And when we really grasp that, suddenly we get to start asking ourselves, how am I gonna decide, on what basis am I gonna decide? What do I want to prioritize? What's important to me right now? What sort of person do I want to [00:18:00] be? One of the biggest causes of, I dunno what to do, is getting conflicting opinions. So particularly as a PhD student, but even into your academic career, one person's saying, oh, you should focus on this. And someone's saying, focus on that. Or someone saying, include this stuff or exclude that stuff. You're like, I dunno what to do. I'm getting different advice. That is the perfect example of a, you get to decide problem. If people have got different opinions on it, that is like living proof that there's not one right way. That if that one person was in charge, they'd have done that and if that person was in charge, they'd have done something completely different. And you get to decide. So those are my four different types of, don't knows. I don't know but there is an objective answer that I can find out. I don't know, but I will know at some point in the future. I don't know and there's no way to ever find out and I don't know, but I get to decide. If you can pick apart your particular problem, I want you to think [00:19:00] now, what do I keep telling myself I don't know about? Pick which of those it is. And then you get to explore what your route forward from there can be. Before we finish, I'm gonna take one example that people often find difficult to put into one of these thing categories, and that is, I don't know if I've got time to do this. So let's work it through. Is it a, there's an objective answer to this? Possibly. So the first step would be to figure that out. Is there an objective amount of time that this thing takes? So is it fixed scope, fixed quality, and therefore a kind of predictable amount of time? Is there a way of knowing that? Often there's not, right? Often there's a variety of different scopes and qualities, and sometimes we work faster than others when we're up against the deadline or whatever, but [00:20:00] you can go, you know what, actually it takes me two hours to process each person's data. I've got 200 people, I've got this many hours. Actually, this just isn't possible. So it is useful if you are asking yourself, I don't know if I have time to do this, to say, okay, is there a way that this is actually quantifiable that I could work out whether it is or isn't possible. Now, usually it's hard to say it is possible, but you should be able to work out whether it is objectively not possible. This is always particularly relevant for those of you who are balancing PhD with other full-time part-time work. If there's not an objective answer, we get to say, is there, is this a problem where we will know at some point? Well, yes. When we hit the deadline and we either have or haven't done it, we're gonna find out then whether it was possible to do it or not. However, because of the way our silly little brains work, there will still probably be a part of you that are saying, oh, but if I had done this, then it would've been possible. [00:21:00] If I'd just worked hard, if I'd stayed up later, if I'd been more focused, if I'd procrastinated less, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. So is it gonna be possible at some point in the future to know whether you did do it or not? Yes. Absolutely. We will find that out in the future. Will you ever know for sure whether you could have done it? No. That falls into the, I don't know whether it would've been possible and I can't know because I can't do all the versions of it, so I don't know whether it was possible or not. The only way I guess we get a definitive answer is if you do get it done and then you know it was possible. So then what we get to say is, okay, I either need to accept that i'm gonna find out at some point, and I need to decide how I'm gonna behave in the meantime or we get to decide whether I'm giving it time or not, and I would always recommend you go this way. Most people go for the, okay, I'm either gonna stress about the fact that I don't have time to do this, [00:22:00] or I'm just gonna have a go and see how I get on. So that's the deciding. It's a, I'll find out at some point if I have enough time, and in the meantime I wanna work hard answer. Okay. There's nothing inherently wrong with that way of doing it. The problem is it does often lead to burnout. It often leads to overwork. It often leads to other stuff getting neglected because you're putting everything into this one thing that you don't know whether it's possible or not. I would always encourage you to consider, I don't know if I have time to do this or not a I get to decide problem. The reason for that is most tasks don't have an objective amount of time that they take, and most lives don't have an objective amount of stuff that has to be done. Now you might feel like it does. Okay. Often there's a lot of things that we do with our lives that we just take for granted as have to be done, where actually it's, it's often [00:23:00] not true. You know, if you are somebody who has to walk for an hour every day, there's lots of people who don't walk for an hour every day. If you are somebody who has to cook, cook all their kids' meals from fresh, there are lots of people who don't cook all their kids' meals from fresh. Many of these things are decisions. Okay. The reason I really like going for the, I don't know if I have time as being an I get to decide problem is because what you then get to do is you get to decide, okay, how many hours do I have access to that I am willing to give this, that I am able to give this, what am I able or willing to stop doing in order to buy myself some more hours? How fast or how limited in scope or quality am I willing to do this in order to get it done? And then I get to decide whether I want to do that or not. It might be that sometimes you get to decide that you wanna put more of your own resource into it, that you wanna work more hours than you normally would in order to get this thing done, in which [00:24:00] case we then get to decide how we look after ourselves. Or it might be that you get to decide that you are gonna limit the scope of it, or you are gonna limit the quality of the piece of work that you are doing, or that you get to decide, you're gonna have to just be decisive on your first idea and go with it. For example, rather than exploring all the different ways this could be written. We get to decide how long things take. So I would always encourage you to make the, I don't know if I have time for this problem as an I get to decide how much time I'm giving it and therefore what it's gonna look like by the end. If you have other examples, if you can think of, I don't know, questions that you have that you can't fit into one of those four categories, I want you to let me know and I will help you out. So all of you who are already on my newsletter know this, but if you're not, you can sign up for my newsletter on my website, and then every week you'll get [00:25:00] an email from me, which tells you about the podcast, but also gives you the opportunity to reply to me, ask any questions, follow up, tell me anything you disagree with. I'm an academic. I love nothing better than people disagreeing with me about things. So if you can think of a problem where you are saying, this is an I don't know problem, and I don't think it's any one of those four. Let me know and I will reply to you and I'll talk about it in a future episode. I hope that helps you see a route forward from that kind of place of confusion. Thank you all for listening, and I will see you next week.

Short one this week - I am using a current example from my own life to talk you through how to look after yourself when it all goes wrong. I talk through how I decided what work I am and am not going to do, and how I am looking after myself in the process. It’s short and the audio will be less crisp as I’m recording on my phone but I think it will be useful for many of you. Transcript Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. Um, I'm not gonna lie, I nearly didn't record this podcast. Um, a lot is happening over here and I am not gonna go into the details on the podcast. But suffice to say that life is complicated right now, if you're concerned. I am fine. I don't want you to be worried about me, but there is a lot of stuff going on that means that things are more difficult than I would like them to be. Um, and I need a podcast for this week, and so when, when I found out all the things that I've recently found out, I had to stop and think, right? What am I actually doing? What do I need to do? What can I do? Defer. What can I decide not to do? Essentially, how can I look after myself while I navigate all this other stuff? And for a moment I thought, right. I have a podcast episode that I've already recorded, intending to cover off the one of the Christmas period podcasts. And I thought, you know what? I can just move that forward and share that with them. Um, and so I was like, okay, we'll do that. That's fine. But then I thought actually for two reasons, I didn't wanna do that. Firstly, from my perspective, I don't want to disadvantage future me. Okay? I am super proud of the fact that I have already recorded one of the podcasts for the Christmas period, and I didn't want to then put myself back behind that if I. Used that one. Now. I was proud that I had the option, right? I was proud that I had something in the bank that I could use, but I didn't want to mess up my carefully lay plans to be ready for Christmas. I also thought that actually it might be useful for you guys. To hear a little bit about how I am navigating managing my workload while things are challenging. And actually that decision was reinforced when I sent a message to my membership, explaining to them how I was gonna handle it and what implications it might have for them. And I got a lovely email back from one of my members saying how much she values that I not only coach them, but I model. Like in my own life, how I navigate things. So I thought it was a really good opportunity. So this episode is about what to do when the bad stuff hits the metaphorical fan. Um, it's gonna be short. Um, you can already probably hear I'm recording on my phone because I'm away from my usual setup. There's not going to be a YouTube version of it. So this, and I'll explain in the podcast why all that is so. The first thing is pause and breathe. Okay. I am a few days into the situation unfolding, and I haven't made all these decisions immediately. Sometimes we think we have to like just. Immediately cancel everything or immediately decide that we're doing everything or whatever. I gave myself a little bit of time to pause and breathe. I decided that there definitely would need to be some adjustments, but that I could take a little bit of time to figure that out, and I would always want you guys to do that too. Just take a second to have a deep breath, a few deep breaths, and give yourself some time to think about it. Um, the second step always is to gather a small network of support. And I'm saying small because sometimes when difficult things are happening, some of you will want to retreat into your shell and not tell anybody at all. Others of you will feel a kind of urge to tell lots of people. Um. I was probably in the latter half where it was like, I kind of wanna talk about this stuff. Um, but actually sometimes having a large network of people just adds, you know, trying to help you can add to your cognitive load. So I basically told a few people what was happening, people that were able to help me either pragmatically or emotionally. And I haven't talked, I've got lots of very close friends that have no idea of anything happening. Um. But having a small network of support is easier to navigate and it means that the sort of, you get the things that you need. Um, one tip for when you're asking for support, partly, you know, we have to balance our own feelings of guilt and whatever that they're doing. This, I try to. Acknowledge that that's okay to feel like that, but it's also okay to ask them. Um, but one practical tip is, um, ask people to take the cognitive load, not just give them tasks. So as a really small example, I'm away from home at the moment, so, um, my dog is with my mom and my sister will be taking the dog to the field. Now I could be messaging her with details about what time 'cause he gets a secure field 'cause he's a naughty barky boy. Um. I could be messaging her with details about what time the field is and how to get in and what the code for the padlock is and when to pick him up and blah, blah, blah. I'm not, I've just told my sister to talk to my mom. They can sort it out between them. So do your best to ha wherever you can to hand over cognitive load as well as needing to sort of navigate the, like, give out the tasks yourself. Next step is cancel anything unnecessary. Now, thankfully this week I actually had a relatively light week. I do do workshops for other universities as one-offs. Um, and I didn't have any this week. I have a small number. I have my usual member member sessions, and I have a small number of one-to-one sessions, but I didn't have any other workshops. I don't know, I don't think I would've canceled them, but have a look through. I did have a few other bits and pieces that I was intending to do that I have let people know. That. Um, so to go immediately canceling anything that you can truly go, yeah, that's just not necessary this week. When you are considering the rest, when you're considering what you do wanna do and what you don't wanna do, really avoid all or nothing thinking. There can be a real tendency to either tell yourself, I've just got to keep going. There's too much to do. I can't, you know, I can't cancel anything or to tell yourself I absolutely can't do anything I need to just. Cancel everything now. Sometimes nothing might be the right answer. For some of you, depending on what's happening and everything, doing absolutely nothing might be the right answer for me this time. I don't think it is the right answer. I think I, I am perfectly capable of doing some things and in some ways it's quite nice to return into a little bit of normality for a period and do the things that I do normally and that I get, like I get nice feelings from doing and whatnot. Um, so for me, nothing was not the right answer. And remembering that it's not an all or nothing thing is super important because then you can kind of pick and choose in a intentional way what things you want to do. And for me that means balancing up two things. It means balancing up what is kind of most important, what will cause the most disruption if I don't do it, for example. Um, but it's also thinking then about what things do I have cognitive space for and what things do I. Get some benefit from doing. Okay. So at the moment I'm actually recording this, sat in a coworking session with my members. Um, and I, I love seeing my members. My members are great people. They always make me feel better. I love being with them. And so it's actually really nice to be, to be doing this. So thinking about what things actually give you those little bits of joy and what things you don't need to do. The other thing I would really encourage you is to think about your future self as well as your current self. So I gave you an example of that at the beginning of the podcast. Okay. So I, um, I could have just used a, um. A prerecorded podcast for today, but that would have penalized future me. 'cause I would've then need to think of something different to talk about for the Christmas podcast, for example, that I've had planned for a while. Um, and I decided not to, I decided to be kind to future me and do this now. Now, does that mean that I'm doing a slightly half-assed version of a podcast? Yeah, absolutely. There's no YouTube. The sound's not gonna be great. It's gonna be shorter than usual. Is it gonna be super useful for you? Yeah, I think it probably is to be fair. Um, and. So it, it, it does the job. And I think, to be honest, I think it does the job in a good way. And I'm really pleased that I'm not adding to my list of now having to think of more things for the holiday, for example. The other thing is once you've decided what things you are doing or what things you aren't doing, think about whether there's anything you can either reduce or preempt. So for me, I've sent a message to my members saying, look, at the moment I'm intending to go ahead with all of our sessions. I enjoy talking to them. It's about, it's a load I can manage. Um. But I have also given them a heads up that it's possible I may change my mind about that. It's possible I may need to cancel some sessions and I've given them some, um, practical information about what that will look like, that I'll essentially delete it from the calendar or I'll send them a message in Slack that I might not be able to access the membership site to send a, um, send a specific message. So by doing that, I sort of. Preempt the fact that something unexpected might happen, if you see what I mean. And it just means that I know that they're kind of aware and it means that, um, I will have less logistics to sort out if I do decide that something needs to change. And you can think about how that applies to you. For example, you know, maybe there are deadlines you still want to try and hit or something, but you can then, um. Make sure that you, you know, if you've told people that there might be a problem, then it's much easier to quickly send your supervisor a message saying, yeah, it turns out that was optimistic, not gonna hit it, or whatever, than it is to have to explain it all in that moment. Um. Final thing is just be really kind to yourself. Even this sort of planning, even trying to think through what you do and don't want to do can take a lot of cognitive load at a time when you don't have much to go around. So keep it really simple. And my final message is don't forget that you are a body. You are a human body, a human being body, as well as just a brain. Um. I just took a break in the, um, body double session to have a big stretch on the hotel room floor and I feel a lot better for it. We've been really mindful to make sure we are drinking water and trying to eat some food and all those sorts of things, so when it is all going down for you, don't forget those basics. Looking after your body, I am keeping it really simple this week. So that is your podcast. I suspect it will be something that is useful for some of you when, when these things happen. Um, thank you all for being there as usual, and I will see you next week.

< We’ve talked before about celebrating tiny wins, so now we’re talking about big wins. If you feel uncomfortable celebrating papers being accepted, finishing your PhD or getting a job, or any of the other big objective successes, then you’re not alone. In this episode we’ll talk about why this can feel so uncomfortable, how we can expand our definition of “celebration” and how we can ensure that we recognise and remember these important events. This is particularly relevant for you if that sounds much too embarrassing and social awkward to even consider! Links I refer to in this episode If you liked this episode, you should check out “ how to be kind to yourself ”. Transcript [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the PhD Life Coach Podcast, and this is really building on an episode I did a few weeks ago about celebrating tiny wins, and if you haven't listened to that one, don't worry. This one entirely stands alone, but this is sort of the other end of the scale, right? Because I think all of us can benefit from learning to celebrate our tiny wins a lot more. Those day-to-day things that we either take for granted or disregard as easy, where actually we have that opportunity to fill our lives with positive reinforcement and praise for doing the small things, but we then also have this question of what to do about the big things, what to do when we get a job, what to do when we get a paper accepted, when we get a promotion, whatever it might be. at the moment I'm doing a lot of work helping my members and other people who attend workshops that I run to identify their strengths. And one of the things that comes up over and [00:01:00] over is that people are really worried about being too big for their boots. They're really worried that people will see them as big-headed or arrogant and conceited. And so many of them find it really difficult to identify their strengths, and many of them find it really difficult to celebrate their big wins. They somehow feel that by celebrating their wins, that means they're diminishing other people or they're making other people feel uncomfortable or any of those things. And so this episode is really about how can we celebrate big wins in a way that doesn't feel like we are getting too arrogant and we're making other people uncomfortable, or how can we at least reframe that so that we're comfortable celebrating our big wins. So one of the things I always teach my members is that when we have little anxious thoughts, um, not big anxious problems, but like little anxious thoughts. It's useful to put 'em on the table in [00:02:00] front of us and ask us before we do anything else. Is there any truth here? Okay, so we're gonna do that with this one. Is it possible that you do sometimes get a bit too big for your boots, as it were, that you do sometimes behave in a way that is perceived by general people, not by just one person? By is perceived generally as a bit arrogant, a bit conceited. Is that true? Okay. Now I'm gonna put a rule on this. We don't count childhood. When we are kid, we're all idiots, right? When we are kids, we don't know. We almost all have probably been told at some point, oh no, don't say that. Or whatever. So this is', I don't want you traipsing up some memory from when you were 10 years old and going, oh, Mrs. Knight told me that I'd get too big for my boots. Screw Mrs. Knight. Mrs. Knight was my Class five teacher. Screw Mrs. Knight. She doesn't get to live in your brain anymore. You were a kid. You were finding out what was okay, what wasn't. So we're not gonna use those [00:03:00] memories. But if in your adult life you can genuinely think of times where people who care about you have had a quiet word and said, dude, maybe tone it down a little bit. You're kind of going on about yourself much more than you go on about other people , we're gonna touch on that very briefly at the start of this episode. And the reason I'm doing it very briefly is because I don't think that's most of you in my experience, the people who are perceived as too arrogant and conceited usually aren't the ones asking, how can I celebrate this without appearing too arrogant? They're not the ones asking it. And that means they're probably not the ones listening to this episode. The vast majority of you are probably worried about this in a kind of hypothetical. I don't want people to judge me way, but with no grounds for thinking that they actually do judge you in that direction. But let's touch on it. And when you're thinking about this, I want you to remember this is not just somebody who like feels bad 'cause they haven't succeeded this in the same way as [00:04:00] you have, or that you know, you've reminded them of something they haven't done in their life. The definition of arrogant is unpleasantly proud. With overconfident, with being conceited, there is an element of dismissing other people's wins as well. So this is not just about you celebrating yours to an excessive or unpleasant amount. It's also that you dismiss other people's achievements as well, if that still feels like you. I have a few small tips. The first one is don't generalize your wins too far. And this is true for all of us, right? Is that just because you've got one paper published, it doesn't mean you are the greatest thing ever. It doesn't mean that it's gonna be easy forever. It means we get to be proud of this one thing. So we get to make sure we are not generalizing too far. We need to make sure that we are feeling and expressing gratitude for the things and the people that helped us along the way. Usually when people are unpleasantly proud they're sort of taking all the credit without [00:05:00] recognizing how other people have contributed. We wanna make sure that we're all so celebrating other people's wins. And again, this is true for all of us, however loud we are about our own wins. We wanna be that loud about other people's wins as well. And finally, if this is something that you struggle with, I want you to take some tips from this episode where we think about quiet ways of celebrating, because sometimes if you are somebody who feels you have something to prove, you are somebody who has often been told that maybe your own self celebration is a little bit much. It can be useful to practice some quiet celebrations, not to manage other people's emotions, but to see what that feels like. So if you feel like you genuinely actually are in danger of being a bit arrogant and self-absorbed, then those are some tips for you, but we're gonna move on now 'cause I think for the vast majority of you, that's not the case. For the vast majority of you, this is something that you are worrying about that probably isn't based in much [00:06:00] other than either your own brain or like the occasional comment you've got from somebody who probably had other motives anyway. So the first thing that I would remind you, which is always, always true, is that other people are allowed to have thoughts and feelings about you. If you are behaving in a way that you think is appropriate, if you are celebrating in a way that you think is appropriate and that is in line with who you want to be and comes from your best self, other people are allowed to have opinions about that. That can be hard to stomach sometimes, but it's true. Everybody isn't. You are entitled to your opinions about people. You can think that people around you should behave differently than they do. It doesn't necessarily mean that we then have the right to make them change or anything like that. So we get to remember, yeah, there it is possible that by saying, I'm celebrating this, somebody will get upset about it. And that's their responsibility. Okay. [00:07:00] As long as we're comfortable that we've behaved in a way that's in line with our own personal, like code of ethics, our own personal ways of being, other people are allowed to have that, those emotions and the reason that has to be true is sometimes us just existing can have those impacts on each other. Okay? We all know, and I agree with the kind of the sensitivities around this, we all know, you know, companies who give you the option of opting out of Mother's Day celebrations, for example, if that's something that is really upsetting for you, for whatever reason. It doesn't mean that we can't celebrate our mothers. Those of you who have had children, there will be people who will be upset when they see other people having children, having families, because that's something they weren't able to do. For those of you celebrating professional success, there will be people that will find that upsetting because it will remind them of the things that they haven't done. We can be compassionate, we can be understanding, but it doesn't mean we have to not celebrate ourselves. [00:08:00] People are allowed to have emotions about whatever they have emotions about, and we don't have to micromanage ourselves in order to eliminate that entire possibility. Because apart from anything else, it's not possible. You just existing means that people will have opinions about it. If you never celebrate anything, people will have opinions about that too, right? There is no way of avoiding other people having emotions, so we get to check in and say, is this an okay way to behave as far as I'm concerned? And then we can just be compassionate to other people's responses to it. Now, why is it even important to celebrate? Well I think there's a bunch of reasons it's important to celebrate. We wanna make sure that we are getting a nice reward for the hard work that we put in. Now, I'm a big believer, this is why I talked about tiny wins first. I'm a big believer that we should focus on enjoying the process as well as [00:09:00] waiting for that end goal. But we can give ourselves a lot of positive reinforcement by then celebrating that end goal. What I see in academics and PhD students so much is the second that thing has been achieved, we somehow discount it in our heads and move on to the next thing that we haven't done. And what that does is it doesn't give us any positive reinforcement for having achieved the thing that we've achieved and if we don't get positive reinforcement, it's much, much harder to work towards these things in future. So we wanna be positively reinforcing the process on a day-to-day basis by celebrating our tiny wins, but then also celebrating the actual achievements so that we get that bigger scale positive reinforcement as well. The second reason I think it's important to celebrate is so that our wins are just as memorable as our losses. I want you to think about how much time you have spent, thinking about times where you failed or where you got embarrassed 'cause you did something wrong or you didn't live up to [00:10:00] your expectations or whatever it might be. I want you to think how much time you have spent ruminating on those experiences, I bet all of you can think back to times in your childhood and the ones that will be very vivid, that have popped into your head many, many times, are the ones where something really embarrassing happened. Where you were ashamed, where you were, you know, where people were judging you, where you were getting to hold off. Those things live rent free in our heads so often, and we reinforce them by rehearsing them over and over again. One of the things that celebrations can do is make the wins more memorable too. So that when we are feeling a bit nervous, we also have vivid memories of times that we've celebrated. Celebrations also give us the opportunity to learn from our experiences, and I'm gonna tell you more about that in a second when I give you some ideas about how we can celebrate. But when we just move on quickly past our [00:11:00] wins, without truly celebrating them, without truly analyzing them, we often miss the opportunity for a lot of learning and self-improvement as well. Finally, I don't want you to underestimate the extent to which you can serve as inspiration or example to others. So for everybody who sees your win and goes, oh no, I've never achieved anything like that. I, you know, I feel bad about myself now because they celebrated their win. There's somebody else going, oh is that possible? Is that possible for someone like me? And this is particularly, this is true for everyone, right? But it's particularly true if you come from demographics that are traditionally underrepresented in academia. Every time you see somebody who looks a bit like you or comes across a bit like you achieve something, you get to go, oh this is something that's an option for me. This is something that could happen. Somebody else who [00:12:00] looks a bit like me or sounds a bit like me or experiences a bit like me has done these things. Maybe I could do this too. Now I'm gonna give you an example there. And this is a combination of tiny wins and celebrating success. So when I was a academic, you have all these sort of admin, leadership service type jobs and one of the ones that I have for quite a long time was a sort of welfare tutor. Now, this was back in the day, right? This was way before the university had kind of minor counseling services, but beyond that, there really wasn't the focus on wellbeing that there is now. And so a lot of that really fell on academics. And I took my job as welfare tutor probably a bit too well, but anyway, that's a story for another day. And we're also personal tutors, so we have people who don't necessarily have problems, but they're allocated to us throughout their undergraduate degrees and we're like their first point of pastoral care. Anyway, so I was welfare tutor, I was personal tutor, and that meant I got thank you cards, right? And I loved my thank you cards because frankly, I am not organized enough to ever write. I write [00:13:00] thank you cards for my Christmas presents. Thanks, mom. I definitely do that. But beyond that. I rarely get round to it. So if anybody ever thinks to send me a thank you card, I absolutely love it. And they used to say really lovely things and so I used to stick them on my wall and I didn't stick them on my wall to show off. You know, some people may have thought that, that I was saying, oh look, students love me. I stuck them on my wall because when I was having bad days, I would notice them and I would remember why I do what I do. So it was very much positive reinforcement of tiny wins for me. I'm sure some people had opinions about it, but I knew that I benefited from it and I knew that some people probably had opinions about it, that I was trying to demonstrate how popular I was with the students. That's fine, they can have opinions. But the bit I had underestimated until somebody said it to me was the extent to which they also served as inspiration for my students. So I had a gorgeous personal tutee who I loved. She was a really, really lovely girl. And she didn't have many particular problems [00:14:00] as we went through and stuff, but she was good at turning up for her personal tutorials, which anyone who's personal tutor will know that's not necessarily expected. So I knew her reasonably well anyway, when she was ready to graduate. And it was her final post, final personal tutor meeting of her degree program. She came to see me and she'd got a card and that was really, really lovely and she said to me, I remember coming in here for my very first personal tutor meeting, and I looked at all those cards and the first thing I thought was that I'm gonna be well looked after, because if all these students are saying thank you, then I'm gonna be well looked after. And the second thing I thought was that I can't believe in three years time I am gonna be giving her a thank you card having done my degree, it feels like such a big thing. I can't believe I'm gonna get there. But seeing those cards reminded me that I will. And she said, and every time I come from my personal tutorials, I look at the cards and I think I'm going to give you a thank you card. When I finished my degree [00:15:00] and it became her, like it was her symbol that she was going to get there, and I had no idea. They had never been put up with that intention. But that little mini celebration of myself, that little mini, I'm proud of the impact I've had, that little mini, I want to remind myself of this, when things are tough was also unbeknownst to me acting as inspiration for somebody else. And anytime you celebrate anything, that is also true. So if I've sold you on, then it might feel a little bit uncomfortable, but there might be benefits from it. What are ways that we can celebrate without this sense that we are bragging about ourselves. So the first question I want to ask you is, what would be a really you way to celebrate? And you might be going, the you way to do it would be not celebrating, but if we look at you and the things that make you different, the things that make you interesting, the things that make you, you, what might be a really you way to celebrate. As an example, I was celebrating a good [00:16:00] launch last summer. I went for a flying trapeze lesson. I can't think of anything more me than going for a flying trapeze lesson. It's something that people go, what really? At your age about, it's something I'm not. I'm o, I mean, I say I'm okay at it. I'm okay at flying trapeze compared to the population. I am not okay at flying trapeze compared to flying trapeze people, but compared to most people, I've done it a few times. I can vaguely. Do it. Um, if people want me to, you have to have to reply to my emails and tell me you want this. If you want me to, I will post a video on Instagram at some point and you can see my best catches anyway. I booked that, that was a very me thing to do. That might, that is probably not a very you thing to do, although if it is, I recommend it. It's incredible. So what would be a very you way to celebrate? Are you a crafter? Could you make something to commemorate your success? Could you, you know. Do a little embroidery or make a piece of art or something like that. I [00:17:00] also did that. I don't even know where it is now actually, which is bad. I'm looking around my office madly. I made a piece of art to celebrate the people that entered my very first round of the quarterly membership, so I did that as a little mini celebration 'cause I love craft too. What could be things that just make you stay in that moment a little bit longer and commemorate it in some way so that you are sort of spending more time on it at the time, and so that it's something that you think about more regularly than you would if you haven't got something that exists like that. And the nice thing is it can be different every time. I tend to do something different every time, 'cause you know my brain. But you might find that you wanna be somebody who has a little tradition that maybe you do a little mini cross stitch every time you get a paper published or you add a crochet tile to, to a blanket every time you get a paper published or something, um, they might have to be quite big. 'cause otherwise that's gonna take a while to make a blanket unless you're a genius, but you get [00:18:00] my point, right? You can set up little traditions where you do something like that. I've seen people get their abstracts printed onto mugs and things like that so that they remember when they got their first paper published, for example. Could you start or continue some sort of collection? So if they're, you know, I don't know by yourself, a little Lego figure for every time you get a new paper or each time you get an achievement of some description. I keep my, I Haven hadn't even thought about this celebration, but it's totally true. I have a whole row of champagne bottles in my lounge. People always think I'm an absolute alcoholic, but they represent many different achievements generally in my life. So I've got one from when I got my undergrad degree. I've got one from when I got my PhD. I've got a couple from two different PhD students. So my first PhD student and then another PhD student bought me a bottle of champagne. So I'm gonna keep it. I've got it from when I got my professorship, that was a little tiny one 'cause it was during the pandemic and so I was on my own and one of my best friends came and put it on [00:19:00] my door step and then retreated an appropriate distance with a party popper. So that was a mini one. And so I always remember that that one's my professorial one 'cause I drank it on my own. Could you start little mini collections of something that you only get when you've got some sort of big achievement? And these don't have to be big, expensive things, right? In fact, often it being something little that kind of accumulates over time can be a really nice way of doing it. Essentially what we're trying to do is you celebrate as the verb that means to recognize and make special. It doesn't have to be shouting about it to other people. If you find the idea of telling other people really uncomfortable, then you know, I think we should probably coach on that. But we can start from these kind of quiet personal celebrations. The other thing is they can be a route to sharing, right? 'cause it's very different matter what you think. You're scrolling LinkedIn and you're saying, I'm happy to announce blah, I'm happy to announce blah, and you're going, yeah, whatever. [00:20:00] Anyway. Or then somebody posts, um, I dunno. Here is a cushion I made to celebrate getting promoted, whatever. It's such a different vibe, right? People are gonna engage with that in a Oh, it's beautiful. You are so clever. Oh, and by the way, congrats on that. It's gonna change the nature of the interaction. Others of you, you might be like, I'm not crafty. I don't make things. That's okay. Let's make it memorable in other ways. So maybe you love hiking. Okay. Maybe every time you get a big celebration in your life, paper, published, promotion, whatever, you hike a new hill. So some new summit that you haven't been up to before, maybe you take with you the paper. So you have a photo of yourself at the top of a hill with the paper pointing at it grinning like a maniac. So that you've got a memory and a photo where you are doing something very you to celebrate it. Maybe, you know, you're a canoeist, you go to a new river every time you get published or something. Anything that makes it memorable, [00:21:00] recognizable, where you are commemorating it in that way. Now, I also mentioned that the other really important reason to celebrate is so that we can properly learn from the experience, and this is not to take the joy out of it, right? I don't want you to be like, oh, this is a learning experience. But we dissect our fails. What should I have done beforehand to avoid this? What should I have done during it? How could I have been better? How can I be less crap next time? I want you to bring that level of forensic analysis, but I want you to bring it positively to your wins. This is something I do in the coaching sessions all the time, and I can see people get uncomfortable with it because it feels weird to talk about it, but I promise it is super, super rewarding and that is I want you, when you have had a paper published, when you have got promoted, anything like that, I want you to ask yourself, what strengths did I bring? Then enabled this to happen. If it helps you feel less uncomfortable, also [00:22:00] express gratitude for the support that you got. But I want at least as much time on what am I grateful that I did? What strengths did I bring to this? What difficulties did I overcome in order to achieve this? What can I take from this to move forward? Okay, and I want that. What can I take from this to move forward to be two different elements? Firstly, how can I replicate what I did? So where did I use my strengths? Where did I overcome difficulties in a way that I liked and in a way that feels sustainable so that I can replicate that? How can I basically reinforce that this is evidence that I know how to do this thing? The second bit that I want you to do though is I also want you to notice where you achieve this in ways that aren't how you want to achieve things in future, because some of us are still a little bit stuck in that I achieved it, but I beat myself up, I [00:23:00] worked hours that weren't sustainable, but I hated that were unhealthy, I thought in unhealthy ways, et cetera, et cetera. Right? So we also get to learn from, if I achieved it in ways that aren't how I want to achieve things in future, what can I learn from those lessons? Okay, but don't go straight to that. Strengths first. Okay. Strengths first. What you're proud of first. And I want you to talk to somebody else about it or write about it or speak into a voice note recorder about it. Anything that really kind of emphasizes that stuff so that it really reinforces it in your mind. You then, if you have got a kind of planning and review process, like the one that I teach in my membership I want you to insert this into there, okay? I want you to have some notes. These are strengths I used when I achieved my last thing, so these are things I want to do more often, and you can build that into your planning and review process. Finally, and I suspect most of you [00:24:00] are a long way from this, but finally I wanna reiterate the same advice I gave the people who were actually in danger of appearing a bit arrogant, which is we try not to associate our wins with our self-worth. So what I want you to be doing, I want you to be celebrating the wins for the fun of achieving those wins. For the fact it was a challenge and you met the challenge and you made it happen. What we don't want to do is take lessons of, this is evidence I fit in academia. This is evidence I deserve to be here. This is evidence that I am a worthy person, because the downside of that, if you use objective achievement as evidence that you are a worthy person. If you have. A period of time where you have fewer objective achievements, then you are gonna use that as evidence that you are not a worthy person, that you don't deserve to be in academia. You all deserve to be in academia. You are all capable of being in [00:25:00] academia. So we wanna separate those two things out so that we are super happy that this thing's happen. 'cause isn't that fun and exciting and it's out in the world and I'm doing my thing. Yay. And yeah, it showed some of the strengths that I have. But it's not the reason I deserve to be here, and it's not the reason I'm a worthwhile person. All those things, I have intrinsic worth. I don't need to achieve things in order to have intrinsic worth. And so I want you to make sure that when you are celebrating, we're staying in the, I'm celebrating this fun thing that I've put out there that I'm really proud of, not, oh, finally, I'm good enough. Finally, people might believe that I'm enough. Again, if that side is something that you really, really struggle with, then that is a little bit of evidence that maybe you need some coaching and you could consider looking at the membership in the future. My final tip, and this is true for everybody, the best way to feel comfortable about celebrating yourself is to celebrate everybody else at the same volume you celebrate yourself. If we all [00:26:00] celebrate each other's successes, if we all spend more time feeling proud of others, reminding them of their strengths, emphasizing, commemorating, making memorable their achievements, then partly it just makes it such a nicer place to be. And then it also makes it much easier to celebrate our own successes 'cause it all just feels like the same tone, right? We are people who celebrate, so celebrate each other's successes, celebrate your own successes, and let's make academia feel like a much more fun and pleasant place to be making these achievements and making our contributions to the world. I hope that's useful. Let me know what you think. If you have any questions or wanna let me know what you think, you can always reply to my newsletter, or if you're not signed up, you know how to do it. Go to my website, PhD life coach.com. You'll find a sign up for my community button right there on the front and I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you all so much for listening, and I will see you next week.