if it's cold, i can wear a coat - thoughts on my brain not always/rarely doing exactly what i want it to do
in my personal life, i am well known for not being dressed in a way that is weather-appropriate. i hate wearing socks, wear sandals WAY past the first frost, often feel that a long sleeved shirt is fine if it's not below freezing.
but, last year, i discovered that wearing socks meant that i was less distracted by my cold toes all day. if i wore a coat, i could take longer walks before my body got real mad, and hats definitely kept me warmer than i would have thought. i don't LOVE wearing them but i definitely don't hate being more comfortable, and with a little bit of effort, i can go out and enjoy my favorite season just a little bit more.
sometimes, i think about my brain as having weather patterns of its own. in fact, brain weather is my favorite term for everything that happens up there! there are some weather patterns - hurricanes! tornados! - that require our full attention and presence, and my brain can definitely throw up a hurricane or two where it's all i can do to stay safe and supported until the worst of the winds have passed. and then there are moments of absolutely gorgeous weather, where my brain just feels so good that i can't imagine what rain was even like! blue skies baby!
i've always been better at handling extremes than the in between - and my brain is no exception to that. i know what to do when i'm feeling 0% good, and what to do when i feel 100% good - easy! but what about when it's like, 60% good? what if i'm in the middle of brain weather that's cold but not life-threatening so? a steady drizzle of brain weather? a too-hot for comfort but not too hot to stay inside day? that's a lot harder for me to adjust to, just like it's really hard for me to decide whether or not i want to bother with a coat when it's just a little chilly.
weather - brain and earth - is something i can't really fight. i can definitely refuse to modify my behavior (not wear a coat, not get extra sleep, you get it) but if it's cold, the earth truly doesn't care if i'm wearing my coat or not. it keeps doing its weather thing, and i'm left to decide if i want to adjust or not. thinking about my brain as having weather systems, and flowing with them instead of fighting to try and get to a 100% sunny days optimism only pattern that is neither real nor sustainable, has really helped a lot.
if i'm having a high anxiety day, i can either bolt myself to my chair and SIT THERE UNTIL THE ANXIETY SUBSIDES AND THE WORK IS DONE, or i can go for a walk, or move my body a little bit, or swap out a coffee for some water. it doesn't knock out the anxiety, but it does make it more comfortable to exist with it. wearing a coat doesn't make it NOT winter, just makes it more comfortable to live DURING winter. i can spend a lot of energy BEING MAD that i'm anxious, and stop everything until the feeling subsides, or i can know that there are short, medium, and long term things i can do to work with it, all of which will both increase my empowerment and my comfort.
we are conditioned to view ourselves as problems to solve, but accepting our current reality doesn't mean that we won't ever feel differently - in fact, showing ourselves care through the sticky moments usually does the opposite, and helps us move onto what's next more quickly, more completely, more gently, more supported.
and that's what i want for me and all of us - more gentleness, more support, more tools to help meet us where we are, with the weather we have. so maybe you offer yourself a hat or a coat, or a little bit of something that makes it just 1% easier to live with your weather - making it all the more likely that when the weather does change, you're not so burned out that you can't appreciate it.
grumping it out: what to do when you just have to grump
last night, as i was laying on the couch, watching STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION and wondering if three cookies would fill the emotional need that two cookies had not, i said to my husband:
”everyone i know is hitting a wall right now. i can’t tell if that makes me feel better or worse.”
i’ve had so many conversations - in my community, with one-on-one sessions, with friends, with colleagues - about how tough the start of the year has been, and how we expected it to be smoother, and how we were all throwing temper tantrums about it.
i myself just…..didn’t write tweets or schedule posts for instagram last week. i kept having it on my list for the day, and then i played Stardew Valley and read a lot of books and articles about ADHD and the emotional impacts of executive dysfunction and i drank a lot of tea and i showed up for all my clients but i still didn’t write the tweets.
the coach voice in my brain keeps trying to step in and suggest other activities to try - “what if you actually planned your vegetable garden for next year rather than farming a digital garden full of a made up fruit called Qi Berries?” or “what if you worked on your knitting while you listened to one of these books on audio rather than scrolling the web endlessly?” or “what if you made it a really delicious bath with candles and epsom salts and a good meditation session instead of watching all of FIREFLY LANE?” and the louder, clearer part of me kept coming back with:
NO. Don’t want to. Don’t feel like it. Stop suggesting things! I will just play more Stardew Valley to SPITE YOU.
and so i have been, as one of my favorite instagram follows Yumi Sakugawa would put it, grumping it out. rather than trying to force myself to “be productive” or “rest better” or “be more positive about it all” i am being GRUMPY about it. i’m eating some cookies. i’m watching my favorite shows. i’m making dates with friends over zoom so that we can be grumpy together. i’m sleeping a little bit more and actually really leaning into some yoga, which is surprising but i’m going with it.
and while i wish i could share that this has been really creatively useful time for me, and that i expect i’ll be back soon with new courses and workbooks and a renewed understanding of rest, i don’t know that any of that is true.
what i do know is true is that everyone - me, you, everyone - has been going through a series of interlocking and concurrent traumas in the past year. and there is grief that is building up. and anger, and frustration, and sadness, and fear, and worry are maybe building up for you, too.
grumping it out won’t make substantial change in climate policy and it won’t shift the balance of power in more equitable ways. it won’t end lockdowns and it won’t fix the job market and it will not undo the fact that there will always be an unequal distribution of pain, violence, and resources.
grumping it out is an acknowledgement that there is a limit to the amount of work we can do, consoling and cajoling ourselves to keep going, when things are hard. grumping it out is a way to deal with the unfairness of it, the pain of it, the grief of it - to feel it, to give it attention, and start to unpack it a little; so many of us have been shoving these situations to the side to focus on publications and work and family, and sometimes it’s going to bubble up.
i do feel the grump starting to lift a little bit - i only needed one bribe of truly disgusting but also oddly satisfying dunkin donuts mocha latte cereal to make it to my desk today! i can focus a little longer, wake up a little easier, find a little more spark in it all. i’m not all the way back, but some of the way is much better, and grumping it out got me there. may you find a little bit of solace and comfort as you grump it out, and move into the next phase of whatever this year wants to be.
using your brain for both: when you have to do the anxiety (or your brain weather of choice!) and work in the same brain
On one of my more dramatic days, I complained to my therapist that I hated that I had to have anxiety happening in the same brain where my work was expected to go on.
"It seems like too much to process at once! How dare I have to battle my anxiety WHILE ALSO creating new knowledge!!!!!"
The reality, she gently pointed out, is that everyone has to do many things in their brain at once. Anxiety thought patterns, and the bodily responses that go along with them, run in parallel with all kinds of work, play, rest, and creation. That's just the way it works. Annoying, but true I guess.
But in my defense, it can feel overwhelming when your primary task for the day is to input a bunch of information, or draw connections between information sources, or translate your thoughts into language and your anxiety is kicked up at the same time. Other tasks (washing the dishes! tiling a back splash! walking the dog!) have a more concrete presence in the world for you to focus on and thus, you have several ways to know if you're doing it well. When you're reading, writing, or crafting an argument, you just have your thoughts. And when your thoughts are also of an anxious flavor, it can be difficult to pull the tangles apart.
And when brain weather (hyperfocus! anxiety! depression! ADHD! autism! neurodivergence of all kinds! brain fog! trauma! and all the other kinds of weather out there!) is your norm, and not just an “around the deadline” condition, it’s important to know that you aren’t making it up - the weather impacts you! If I’m having a stormy weather, I can either take an umbrella (take care of the situation!) or stand out in the rain and hope I won’t get wet. Planning works better, and is a good chance to practice self care, and the idea that you can show up and do what you can, when you can.
So, here are a few of the things I do to help that "busy brain" feeling - I can't always make the anxiety stop (although my tool belt also includes: talk therapy, medication, exercise, sleep) but I can make things a little bit more concrete, making it just a tiny bit easier to be mindful.
Make your brain weather process more visible. Sometimes, this means doing a word dump where I pull out my journal or a blank word processing document and just write out the contents of my brain. It can be a little bit overwhelming to see the contents of your anxiety thoughts spilled out onto the page, but seeing the thoughts for what they are can help bring them back down to size (they're just thoughts!) and help you combat any misinformation you might be giving yourself.
Make your work thought process a little more visible. Sometimes when my mind is spinning, I make an extra effort to make the work thinking more concrete. I make a mind map, or I start a new document where I write out what I know so far. Taking notes can definitely help keep me focused if I'm reading, or highlighting or underlining. Anything I can do to connect the abstract process I'm working on to a concrete action can help to ground me.
Have some scripts ready. I like to talk back to my anxiety, literally speaking words in my head or out loud, to counteract some of the feeling of spiraling. Here are a list of some of my standard responses to anxious thoughts while I'm writing - please know that I can repeat these MANY times an hour, but acknowledging the anxious thoughts rather than pushing past them, hoping they go away, usually is more effective for me.
Thank you for your input, brain.
We will decide if the work is quality when it is finished/on the page.
I am working at the pace that I can work.
Focus is not an objectively measured state - I will measure my work by the tasks I complete, not how easily I felt I completed them.
That is an anxious thought.
Add in a little movement. When my anxiety is high, it often can feel like I have a lot of extra energy in my limbs/torso/head, neck, and shoulders. Moving my body can help to disperse that feeling, even if it doesn't shift the anxiety itself. I love to do inversions (downward facing dog, folding in half to touch my toes, or sitting with my legs up the wall) or put on some jams and have a mini dance party. Regular exercise also helps!
Spend some time with my brain/breath. For me, this normally looks like laying flat on my floor and breathing deeply, or meditating. For you, it might look like a taking a screen break and doing 5 deep breaths, or a yoga practice. Tuning into how I feel right now, in this moment, ironically helps me anchor more into that moment, instead of swirling into the future or fixating on the past.
perfectionism: or the danger of being pretty good at most things pretty quickly
Hello, my name is Katy Peplin, and I'm a perfectionist. I've been in "recovery" for about a decade, but this is one of the biggest battles I've faced yet. It's a mental pattern that I (still) easily fall into, and that, when I really dig into it, touches the very core of what I believe about myself.
Here are some of the ways that perfectionism pops up for me:
Extremely high standards for my own work
Tendency to "redo" the work of others to make it fit my standard (assuming that it's the best, of course)
Mismatch between the level of frustration I feel about a task and the actual level of challenge/difficulty I'm facing (for example, feeling mega frustrated when a small thing doesn't work the way I think it should)
Mistrust in my own evaluation of my work - constantly seeking outside opinions and validation, consciously or otherwise
Fear about letting others see my work before it's ready
Missing deadlines because the work isn't ready to be seen
Constantly shifting definition of what "done" is
Hitting one goal and immediately setting another, even higher goal without pausing to feel good about meeting the first one
Abandoning activities if I'm not instantly competent/proficient
Taking activities that were expressly intended to be hobbies and turning them competitive/measurable (focusing on stats for exercise, extremely critical about things I make for fun, from dinner to doodling)
Inability to take compliments gracefully because it feels uncomfortable to get praise for something I'm not satisfied with
Needing to obsessively plan out and make milestones/goals/targets for big projects and being immediately and deeply discouraged if I'm forced to be flexible with those internal deadlines
(and probably a lot more!)
When I list them out like that, it's easy for me to see that perfectionism is more than just "wanting to do well" - it's a coping mechanism that is designed to protect me against the uncertainty and possible pain of not doing well. Brené Brown describes perfectionism like this:
In the research there’s a significant difference between perfectionism and healthy striving or striving for excellence. Perfectionism is the belief that if we do things perfectly and look perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame. Perfectionism is a twenty-ton shield that we lug around, thinking it will protect us, when in fact it’s the thing that’s really preventing us from being seen.
Perfectionism is also very different than self-improvement. Perfectionism is, at its core, about trying to earn approval. Most perfectionists grew up being praised for achievement and performance (grades, manners, rule following, people pleasing, appearance, sports). Somewhere along the way, they adopted this dangerous and debilitating belief system: “I am what I accomplish and how well I accomplish it. Please. Perform. Perfect.” Healthy striving is self- focused: How can I improve? Perfectionism is other-focused: What will they think? Perfectionism is a hustle.
Last, perfectionism is not the key to success. In fact, research shows that perfectionism hampers achievement. Perfectionism is correlated with depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis or missed opportunities. The fear of failing, making mistakes, not meeting people’s expectations, and being criticized keeps us outside of the arena where healthy competition and striving unfolds.
So much of this resonates with me, and with what I see every day with my clients. This is not a well-balanced desire to do well - this is an unconscious (or sometimes conscious) belief that we ARE the work, and therefore the work must be evaluated well by others because that means WE are good in the eyes of others.
As an experiment: imagine that you were working on a big project - a dissertation chapter, a journal article, a book, a website. You work on it for months under the impression that you will eventually share it for feedback with an advisor, editor, supervisor, or boss. Then at the very last minute, that person says "no need for me to look at it,” and asks you to move onto the next task. How would that make you feel?
Would you still celebrate a job well done? Would you be able to look at your work and know how to feel about it without the feedback? Would you feel completion, accomplishment, pride?
This isn’t, of course, to suggest that all feedback is evil and that we should just do what we want without ever asking for anyone to evaluate it. That’s not how this works. But, I find that that exercise helps people see that in the absence of validation from others, many of us don’t have robust mechanisms, or any mechanism at all, to consider, appreciate, and evaluate our own efforts.
If you’re in grad school, or if you’re an academic, or if you have a PhD, it’s more than probable that some things came easily to you. Maybe you were pulled out in elementary school and given books from the next reading level, and it felt good to be special. Maybe you were valedictorian. Maybe good grades got you ice cream at the end of the year. Maybe you could write papers the night before (or morning of) as an undergraduate and they still got glowing comments from your TA. That’s not all we are, obviously, but if we come to associate parts of our identity with academic or intellectual achievement, grad school is a natural next step.
It is also a perfectly designed system to turn that perfectionism and expose all it’s toxicity. For me, something broke down when I made the jump between 15 page papers and 50 page chapters. I simply couldn’t organize my thoughts clearly enough - my writing wandered and I couldn’t fix it. My perfectionism SCREAMED at me all through my dissertation process - don’t let people see this! They’ll think less of you! They’ll take your acceptance away! You’ll never get a job! Everyone else figured out how to do this! Why haven’t you??
But under that noise was the reality: I wasn’t immediately good at writing dissertation chapters, and I hadn’t had much experience with having to work to get better at something in the “school realm.” I wasn’t used to "SEE ME” comments. I was completely unhinged when faced with the idea that I wasn’t good at school, because such a huge part of how I saw myself was “a person who is good at school.”
So I did what I’ve always done: worked as hard as I could to be good so that I wouldn’t have to feel “not good” at something. I went to the writing center, I got involved in writing groups, I worked with editors, I had friends read my work, I turned into the most ruthless self-editor. And unsurprisingly, this did not go well. I became so anxious at the very idea of writing that I would sit down at my desk to do it and feel nauseous.
Looking back, I know that it didn’t feel good to work at writing, even when I was getting better, because I wasn’t interested in the process of being a better writer. I was working that hard to avoid bad feedback, and so my sense of myself hinged on what others thought of me. It would have felt more empowering, I’m sure, to be working hard to be a better communicator, to improve my writing so more people could access my ideas, but instead, I was working hard so other people would think I was good. And even when the feedback came, because I had no inner foundation to see my own value, I was utterly dependent on what other people thought of my work. Negative feedback was crushing. Positive feedback was regarded with suspicion. I never felt good about it.
The first step in the perfectionism recovery journey is being aware of it. I read two books that changed how I think about perfectionism: When Perfect Isn’t Good Enough: Strategies for Coping with Perfectionism, and I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn't): Making the Journey from "What Will People Think?" to "I Am Enough". I got into therapy to deal with my anxiety, only to find out that my perfectionism was kerosene thrown on the fire of my brain chemistry. And then I did the most radical thing of all:
I tried to be bad at things on purpose. I told my students in class when I didn’t know (and promised to look it up and report back.) I opened up and told people when I was struggling with something. I tried to get better about accepting help. I did things just for fun, like knitting, and brush lettering, and gardening. I put things up on my walls that I made, so that I would look at both their mistakes, and my hard work, at the same time. I focused explicitly on my processes for work, rather than the results. I focused less on the time it took me to do things, or any other metrics I was using to measure my work, and focused more on how I felt WHILE working. I made messes. I learned that screwing up wasn’t the end of the world.
And now, a few miles down the road, I can work with clients around their perfectionism. In Thrive PhD, we talk a lot about feeling good about what you’re doing, while you’re doing it. Turning in your dissertation proposal is a MASSIVE deal, even before you get the feedback on it! Showing up to work regularly is a HUGE accomplishment, even if the work wasn’t perfect or you were in your pajamas. We track our days so that we can see that “good days” and “bad days” productivity wise tend to balance out if we show up regularly. We remind each other that trying again is the key to everything. We try to improve for our own sense of pride, because it feels good to try your hardest and do your best, not because we want our advisors to swoop in and shower us with praise. We practice the skill of viewing feedback as suggestions for improving for THE WORK, not suggestions for improving OURSELVES. We cheer when people do things for fun.
It isn’t easy. But it feels better than carrying around that armor all the time. Sometimes you don’t know how heavy you feel until the weight is gone.
getting out of quicksand
some days, i feel sticky, heavy, sluggish. the reasons change, and sometimes i can’t pinpoint the reason at all. but when the heaviness descends, it activates a whole sequence of things:
aversion to the important tasks i have that day
aversion to any planning at all
guilt about not working when other people “have it worse”
shame about my own inability to “be resilient” and bounce back
feeling like i have to “catch up” the next day
avoiding my desk because i have so much to do
REPEAT
it’s a tough way to feel - especially when you have things that need to get done. but it’s also a normal way to feel when you’re confronted with a lot of insecurity and loss and fear and sadness and grief. so, i have a two pronged approach to it:
accepting that heaviness is part of the cycle and i don’t need to “fight it” all the time. i will literally put my hand on my heart and say: you are allowed to feel this way. this is allowed. there is nothing to fix here.
figuring out what i can do, and doing that on purpose.
the dual approach means that i’m not forcing myself to move out of a feeling any faster than i naturally would, if i move out of it at all. i meet myself where i am, and work from there, instead of hoping that a magical new to do list will reinvigorate me and i’ll be even MORE productive than i was before.
there are a few things though that support me when i’m in the second phase - trying to figure out what i can do.
try doing something that moves my body - if i’m in my bed doom scrolling, it’s really hard to get out of that mindset. even if i move to my desk, i’m still likely to be consumed by the heaviness, just on my laptop and not my phone. so if i wake up feeling heavy, i try and shift to do something physical. a workout is ideal but lol that doesn’t always happen, so i will also clean up dishes, pick up clothes from my floor, start a load of laundry, clean a toilet, stand up and work on a puzzle. anything to get the body moving.
start with the easiest thing - easy wins feel good. checking things off the list feels good. the hard thing is normally the hard thing for a reason - warm up to it. and even if you never get to the hard thing, at least you did get some things checked off.
pick a task, any task - sometimes i will run my finger up and down my to do list with my eyes closed and just pick something to try. you could work from the bottom if you normally start at the top. sometimes a random chance helps shake up the energy a little.
try a new workspace - couch office isn’t my preferred working space, but if the choice is between nothing and couch office, couch office it is!
work on a long term project that isn’t urgent - sometimes we need a little hit of creativity, and projects in the planning phase can often give us that. try it.
set a timer and try again later. sometimes i just need the morning off - i decide to try again at noon, or 2, or at 4 pm. be present for the time off, and be open to the idea that you might be feeling differently when you try again.
the heavy feeling is a lot like quicksand - the more you fight against it, the quicker it draws you in. the more you tell yourself that you can’t have any feelings, the more you’re going to feel them. but if you take a few deep breaths and stop thrashing, it makes it easier to find your footing. you can be where you are without it pulling you under. and eventually, something, someone might come along and throw you a rope to get out of it - and that person could even be you.
do it on purpose.
i’m a human and i watch netflix just like everyone else. i also wander away from my desk to do one thing and do six more and forget the thing i meant to do, and eat a whole bag of chips before i notice that i had more than a handful.
we all do things on autopilot - or we keep doing things without making a conscious decision to do them. it’s actually really hard to do something on purpose.
especially right now. when we’re stressed, and who isn’t, it makes it easier to be doing things in zombieland, and then boom, it’s may.
so i keep coming back to one of my foundational life rules - do it on purpose.
(i talk about this a lot on the podcast season i did with dr. katie linder - coach to coach!)
if you’re going to watch netflix, really watch it. close your computer, get some snacks, get a blanket, watch every frame.
if you’re going to nap, do it in your bed on your on your couch rather than just dozing off at your desk.
if you’re going to eat some chips, put them in a bowl and enjoy them! savor them! be present for them!
if you’re going to do emails - set some time aside and put all your attention on that task, rather than just mindlessly refreshing your inbox all day and not doing the work you need to.
and if you catch yourself in autopilot - i’m there so much during the day! - then you can recenter and ask:
am i doing this on purpose?
rest feels more restful when you commit to it, instead of just working at 20% and hoping that you feel rested at the end.
work will feel more focused and efficient if you’re doing tasks on purpose, with all your energy focused like a laser beam on it - even if it only lasts for 15 minutes!
and when we continually check in with our intentionality, it becomes much easier to see the traps we set for ourselves, the beliefs we’ve inherited that don’t benefit us.
are you watching netflix in the background as you write because you’re so tired that the only way you could convince yourself to sit down at your workspace is to have your media friends on in the background? why not actually watch, and actually rest, and then try again in a few hours?
are you trying to work but doing so in a place and time that really isn’t set up to help you thrive? do you need to make some changes - block twitter, hide your phone, close your email tab - so that it’s easier to do what you want to do?
there’s no bad or wrong thing to do. everyone needs to rest. everyone needs to answer their emails. everyone needs to get their writing done. but if you’re going to do it, do it on purpose - because when we snap into the autopilot, our programming might not be lining up with what we need to do, or the condition we’re actually in. doing things on purpose lets us tune into what we’re actually working with in the moment, so that we can make changes if we need to.
Journaling - a #MindfulPhD tool
I have never kept a traditional journal. When I was little (and let's face it, I haven't changed that much) I always wanted to have a journal just like Harriet from Harriet the Spy, but that was less of a journal and more of an exercise in voyeurism. But the habit of sitting down, every day, to record the day's events and my feelings always seemed appealing, but out of reach. Who has the time, or the supplies, or the life interesting enough to record?
But as I moved through life, and various journeys (the PhD, mental health, marriage, an obsession with One Direction ;) ) I realized that I was journaling, just not in the ways I had seen it done. I've also grown to appreciate the mindful aspects of journaling - taking a minute to pause and reflect on the here and now, big and small. During the PhD especially, my life seemed to move unevenly - big, huge professional goals set, but day to day life was marked by a sense of waiting - waiting for the chapter to be done, waiting for feedback, waiting for the seasons to change, waiting for the publication to come out. And everything seemed to take a back seat to the dissertation. When I think back on those five years, I think about what I accomplished, but not always about the life I had in the process. I got married, I made friends, I cooked dinners, I practiced yoga, I adopted cats, I moved, I traveled. Journaling helped me, and helps me, mark down the smaller things that happened alongside the big milestones.
So in this post, I'm introducing you to some of the ways I "journaled" during the PhD, and how I journal now. I'm also including a ton of resources to help you build a journaling practice that fits your life. I've grouped them into a few types of journals: long-form, productivity, 1-line, visual.
LONG-FORM JOURNALS
This is what people imagine, I suspect, when I mention journaling - people writing in bound notebooks with fountain pens transcribing the day's events and their emotional responses to it. But there are definitely variations here! Here are some things to consider about the long-form journaling form.
Journaling is another form of free-writing! As I went back through my Scrivener free-write files, I realized how much journaling I was actually doing, and how valuable that information was in tracking my progress through the project. Being able to track how I was emotionally processing the work of the dissertation, as well as how the ideas shifted and changed intellectually, became extremely valuable. I captured small tangents, interesting leads, and marked how much I was learning about myself as a scholar and professional in my "freewriting dissertation" journal.
You don't have to go back and reread your journal. When I was in therapy, practitioners often suggested that I journal, and I vigorously objected to the idea of writing down how I felt. I worried about having to go back and reread those entries, written at times when I was not at my best. It was liberating for me to learn that often, the value of writing a journal was not in the long-term information capture, but the in-the-moment processing. I could write and write and write, and then never look at it again. Writing was an valuable act of its own.
PRODUCTIVITY JOURNALS
I've blogged a few times about my bullet journals but in addition to keeping me productive, they also serve as a record of what I was up to, and what I was working on. In this vein, you could also consider using other productivity tools as a "productivity journal":
I run my life with a Google Calendar, and have looked back at various months and days to remember where I was, or what I was working on.
A moment in time, where I can see clearly that I was trying to set boundaries by working anywhere but on campus
Keeping a hold of old planners (I have all of mine from High School on) can be a great way to remember the day-to-day minutiae that would otherwise slip from memory.
Try taking picture of your to-do list every day, and archive in Evernote or Google Photos. Keep track of important tasks, but also record the moments in time more permanently.
1-LINE JOURNALS
These can be a great compromise for those who want to build a journaling practice without committing to a large chunk of time or energy. These take a lot of forms but here are some of my favorites:
One Line A Day Journal: Five Years of Memories, 6x9 Diary, Dated and Lined Book, Floral Sketch
This journal builds over time - one sentence a day about the highlights, with the bonus of building in a bit of reflection as you see all the previous entries for that day. Think of this as the written version of Facebook's "On this Day" algorithm!
This is also super easy to build on your own - I've seen versions on notecards, or in notebooks - just write today's date (including the year) and a quick note about the day.
Gratitude journals can also be quick and simple. Try closing off your free-write for the day, or writing in a planner, or separate notebook, a few things that you're grateful for. Finishing the work day on a positive note can help to reframe difficult or challenging work sessions - bonus!
Write down one idea, scholarly or otherwise, that struck you that day. How cool would it be to flip back, 10 years after the dissertation was defended, and see how your ideas changed over time? Other variations could include: a mantra, devotional, song lyric - the ideas are endless.
VISUAL JOURNALS
My personal favorite! I am a visual person, and now that I have a camera with me at least 70% of my day, it is so easy (and fun) to take pictures of my day as a form of visual journaling.
On Instagram, I tried to take a picture every day that I was actively writing my dissertation. You can see that series starting here but in this moment, I'm trying to take a picture every day for 100 days of a moment that I tried to be fully present for:
Lots of apps will prompt you to take a video or picture every day, and store them in a more private place than Instagram or Facebook. My favorite is 1 Second Everyday, which compiles one-second videos over the course of a week, month, or year. It might not seem like much, but the videos made over a month, or even a year, are evocative without requiring a huge amount of work on your part.
WHY JOURNAL DURING THE PHD?
In my work with clients, and my own personal experience, I see how dominant the PhD can be in the overall narrative told about life during that period. I felt that so many days were absolutely, 100% defined by my work on the degree, and for the degree, and it became hard to notice, let alone value, the other parts of life that were happening concurrently. Taking a few moments, maybe as short as one second, to document life as the PhD happens can help redirect some of that tunnel vision impulse.
But it's also a powerful tool for the degree itself. So much of the progress in our thoughts, tools, and skills during the degree can be lost when we just focus on the finished output. Tracking some of these things can not only save fleeting thoughts and ephemera (and the hard work they represent!) to the busy mind of a PhD student, but also be a good record of that work to reflect on when you feel that no progress is being made.
My co-host and partner Rebecca Enderby in all things #MindfulPhD and I are looking forward to talking on Twitter 8/7/2017 about all things journaling - follow the hashtag to hear all the wisdom that we hold collectively!
What is mindfulness?
People started recommending meditation to me when I was in high school. I, because I am at heart a contrarian, resisted the idea forever - I had no desire to sit "with my mind" because my mind was often a hostile place, swirling and negative and anxious.
But then, a therapist introduced me to a similar but distinct concept: mindfulness. Her basic explanation was that mindfulness was any time that you made an effort to be present and notice what was happening right now. Sometimes this is physical, and sometimes this is mental, and sometimes both, but it was always about what was happening now, rather than what had happened or what will happen.
(A note: I am, for the purposes of this write-up, presenting mindfulness as it exists colloquially or in a therapeutic context. I am aware of, and actually a practitioner, of mindfulness as a Buddhist practice, but that is another post for another time.)
The opposite of mindfulness is distraction. For me, this can look like: scrolling through Twitter, and looking up to see that 20 minutes have gone by, going for a run and replaying the conversation I had two weeks ago, or sitting down to write only to find myself answering emails and shopping for a fountain pen I have no intention of buying. It isn't bad, necessarily - we all spend most of our days in some version of this state. No one can be perfectly mindful all the time. But, the thinking goes, the more distracted we are, the harder it is to identify, and eventually change, unhelpful patterns, habits, and thoughts.
Okay, I said - how do I get to be less distracted? How do I get to be more mindful? And, most importantly, why would I want to be mindful about something that objectively sucked (difficult emotions, challenging situations, pain of any kind, etc)?
THE MOST FREQUENT PATH TO MINDFULNESS
The first, and most common, path into mindfulness is some kind of attention to the breath. Lots of us have (probably) been told to take a deep breath at some point in our lives, often as a remedy to an overwhelming situation. It is no surprise, then, that many mindfulness practices take the breath as the starting point. We breathe all day and all night with little to no conscious intervention - like blinking - but we can also choose to breathe on purpose. Long, slow, deep breathing has also been shown to slow stress responses, and by paying attention to the breath, one can shift towards a longer, slower, deeper breath. For me, at least, the breath is helpful because it is always there, and I can always choose to pay attention to it, or not. Even a few seconds of breathing in and out can help me get out of my head as it spins in a thousand different directions and focus back on the task at hand. And if I wander off, I can check in on my breath again with no one around me being any the wiser.
Common places/activities that can benefit directly from a mindful breath:
30 seconds during a writing break
Yoga
Before bedtime
Cardio activity
In transition points between activities
Any time you feel stressed or anxious
WHY WOULD I WANT TO BE MORE AWARE OF THINGS THAT ARE UNPLEASANT?
This continues to be my most vexing question about mindfulness. It seems counterintuitive to pay attention to how your body and mind feel and react during stressful or unpleasant situations. Everyone has their own experience, but I have absolutely found that mindfulness has helped me work with/around my anxiety.
I have a few physical giveaways that I am feeling anxious. I start to fidget, I pull on my left thumb, I start to tense up in my shoulders and back. I can also start to have headaches, or stomachaches, or even nausea. Before a more conscious mindfulness practice, I would surface from a day of writing or teaching feeling physically drained, sore, and not hungry at all. Despite those symptoms lasting for a good part of the day, I was only aware of them after the fact. I literally wouldn't notice what my body was doing, or how I was physically feeling, until after the period of stress or anxiety was over, or had abated a little bit.
Mentally, it was much of the same cloud. I would be working on something but my mind would be wandering. I would sit down to read a book and all the sudden remember that I hadn't planned dinner, and off I went. Or I would be writing, and feel so anxious about the writing that before I knew it, I had responded to every email in my inbox in excruciating detail. I wasn't disassociating - I knew that I had switched to email, or I knew I was surfing for recipes, but I wasn't always aware of the choice I was making to switch tasks, or how long I had really spent on any task.
Mindfulness gave me the tools to stop myself and say "okay, how did you get on to Twitter again?" I would notice that I was on Twitter, and stop myself to say - what made me open the tab? Did I have a research question I needed to answer or was writing starting to feel uncomfortable in some way so I switched tasks. Or, if I found myself tapping my leg, I could take a few deep breaths and say - "what is making you feel anxious right now?" To be perfectly clear, I still feel anxious sometimes. I'm just getting better, through mindfulness, of noticing the concrete symptoms of my abstract mental rhythms, and adjusting my behavior more quickly than I would have before. Rather than avoiding my anxiety, or pretending it didn't exist, I am more familiar with it and its rhythms, letting me recognize it, and deal with it.
ARE YOU MINDFUL?
There's a great measure that I have been given in various therapeutic settings to measure mindfulness. I am NOT offering this as a diagnostic tool - only medical professionals can do that - but as a way to check your own practices. Here's the link to the study about its effectiveness as a tool, and here's the sheet itself for you to fill out.
If you find that you're circling a lot of low numbers on the sheet, I encourage you to think about incorporating some mindfulness into your routines.
Follow me and Rebecca Enderby, of Enderby Yoga, as we talk mindfulness on Twitter every other Monday under the hashtag #MindfulPhD . We start Monday, 8/7, with a day of questions, conversation and resources!