5.5 objects in motion - ways to get moving
if you find yourself curled up like a shrimp in your desk chair, or stuck making ever more complicated plans and to do lists - this episode is for you. i take newton's first law of motion and use it to give you the permission you need to start - anywhere - because once you're moving, it's easier to stay moving. and moving is where the magic is.
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📍 Welcome to Grad School is Hard, But... A Thrive PhD podcast. I'm Dr. Katy Peplin and this is a show for everyone who's doing the hard work of being a human and a scholar.
In this season,
I'll be sharing the anchor phrases, tools, and strategies that underpin all of the work that I do with clients as part of Thrive PhD, and of course, the things that work for me as I attempt to be a human and a scholar.
And make sure you check out the link in the show notes for my working more intentionally tool kit. Which is available for you totally for free. Now let's get into it
This week we're talking about the phrase objects in motion, or the full phrase, objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Now, I'm not a scientist, but I believe this comes from physics, and it's the idea that it's a lot easier to keep something in motion once it's already been in motion, that there is a startup cost to getting started, like the friction between a ball.
The ground that you need to overcome with a push in order for it to stay in motion, but that once that energy has been applied, it usually tends to stay applied unless something else acts on it. Now, like I said, this isn't about physics. This is a metaphor like so many of my other ideas are, but this is a metaphor for how I notice a lot of clients' energy works throughout the day.
So how might this look for you? I personally can get a little bit stuck. Especially when I am in a season of overwhelm, or if time is short or if I feel any pressure whatsoever, I can do something that looks a lot like freezing or staying in place. Now, sometimes this looks. From the outside, very productive.
I'm planning, I'm making notes in my notebook. I'm reorganizing my to-dos. I might even be investing in a new to-do list manager, but I am not in motion. I'm not making much. I'm not. Doing much. I'm sort of stuck in that pre-launch phase of thinking things through and trying to figure out the best plan.
Sometimes this actually looks really physical for me, where I am stuck at my desk scrolling. I am stuck in bed scrolling. I might be sitting on the couch. You guessed it. Scrolling scrolling is my go-to stuck activity. Yours might look a little bit different. The idea is that I sometimes am stuck and I can get really in my head as a lot of us can about what the best thing the right thing is to start.
But the thing that always helps me get started is to remember that. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion, and that it often doesn't even really matter what I do. But if I start doing things often, I do things after those initial things. Once I get started, things keep going. So this does look different on everybody as I mentioned, but the, I'm going to talk about two different categories.
When the body feels stuck and when the brain feels stuck, because. It looks different for everyone and sometimes it helps to have strategies that are specific. So this is an episode that's almost a corollary to the what feels possible episode. What feels possible is the warmup question that I ask myself when I notice that I'm stuck.
But the theory behind it is that once I get going, it's easier to stay going. So start anywhere. What feels possible if you tend to be or are in a state of feeling body stuck, where you can't quite get up, you're feeling sticky, you are maybe scrolling or doing whatever your avoidant activity is, I invite you to physically move your body.
This, I say with full awareness is this can be one of the hardest things in the world. And then if it were as easy is me just saying, Hey, find a new place to work, or Why don't you try that coffee shop? Then I would make a million dollars because they would've fixed all of your problems. But I often feel a huge burst of energy.
If I do what I call, start moving the body first and let the brain catch up. I get up, I start doing the dishes, I pick things up off my desk. If I'm feeling really ambitious, it might look like going to a new location. Sometimes it's as big as just changing the position that my body is in. If I am like a cooked shrimp, I'll curled up in my desk.
I might try just starting to put my feet flat on the floor unhooking a little bit of that body curve that I'm normally in and putting some hands in a more stretched out position. I might actually stretch. Sometimes it's about just physically starting any task. I like to start with tidying because my brain gets overwhelmed pretty easily by clutter.
So I will just start picking stuff up. And now that I have a toddler, there's always stuff to pick up. But let's be real. I was a mess before that anyway. But the idea is that if your brain is feeling stuck, move the body first. I don't make any grand promises to myself. Like once I do the dishes, I'm gonna start writing.
It's just I'm gonna get started. And usually once I put a dish the sink, I usually then find it a little bit easier to put some dishes in the dishwasher. I might then move on to tidying some counters, and eventually I build up enough momentum. That is a little bit easier to get started on maybe my main priority tasks for the day.
But when in doubt, move the body first and then see if the brain wants to follow. And if not, at the very least, you've picked some mugs up. You've put some of your massive mug collection in the dishwasher, and that's not nothing. That means you'll have some clean mugs for tomorrow, and that's always gonna help.
If you are feeling just some intense brain stickiness now this can look a lot more subtle than the body things because like I said, it might look from the outside like you're doing stuff. I look quite on top of things when I am in my planner picking the perfect shade of blue pen to match this week's layout, looking at my tasks, copying them ever so beautifully into my preferred to-do list manager of choice.
But. It's not doing the things, it's getting the pre-launch stage is beautiful and as aesthetic as I can make it. . You might just wanna know for yourself what your treading water looks like. For me, it's definitely planning using my planners, using my pens, making the to-do list, perfecting the to-do list, prioritizing the to-do list just perfectly.
And that's what it looks like for me. But for you, it might look like reading yet another article. It might look like making sure that there isn't been anything published that you needed to be published. It might look like free writing for you, where you sit down and you draft and you draft and you draft.
It might look like revising. Like I said, it's gonna look a little bit different for everyone. So if you are a reader in your treading water stage, you might want to take a few notes. By, by hand can be a really great way to feel a little bit of motion that can kinetic sense of the pen on paper, but maybe it's about typing some notes in the same window just to keep the friction as low as possible.
If you are a planner and you really like to spend like me, then you pick a task, any task, and you just start it. You say, that is a beautiful enough plan for today, and you pick a task. But. The idea is that you start something that feels like it's moving more than what you're doing already because objects in motion tend to stay in motion, and what I find is that once you get kicked off into the sort of doing phase of whatever your day is, it's easier to stay in that phase. It is so hard to manage your time, especially if you, like all of us can't have a consistent writing schedule every day.
Maybe don't have a body or a brain that produces the same energetic or physical or emotional conditions every day. So these are some easy ways to kind of make it so that you can feel that motion, even if it's not the exact same set of conditions that you experienced the day before.
I hope that this has been helpful. It's certainly been helpful for me, and I can't wait to see you next week.
📍 Thank you for listening to Grad School is Hard, but... You can find more information and resources in the show notes and at thrive-phd.com. Every month, I'll select one reviewer for a free 45 minute session with me. So please subscribe, rate, and review to help spread the word about the show. Thanks so much and I'll see you again soon!