6.8 it just needs one more week and then i can submit it
you said you'd send the chapter on friday, but if you just had one more week....
do it once? okay. but no one ever presses snooze just once, right?
let's talk about this loop - and how you can get out of it, in this week's episode
mentioned:
if i work hard enough on this draft, i won't have to revise it
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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.
This season is called Just at Me already, where I go through all of the different kinds of people that I run into and have been myself as a coach for academics. And we talk about how to shift that if you want to. I.
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's episode is called, it's Not Ready to Send right now. I just need one more week and then I'll be ready to submit it. And this is one of the most requested episodes this season because so many people come to me and they say, Hey, I really need to submit this draft. I said it was gonna be done a couple of weeks ago, and when I asked the person I'm working with, you know, what's stopping you?
And they think, man, I just, you know, I just need one more week, and I think I'll be able to get there. The last couple of weeks have been totally bananas, but one more week. I'll definitely be ready. I'll definitely be ready by Thursday. I'll definitely be ready by Monday. And on and on and on. Now, there's a couple of things that feed into this.
Number one is perfectionism and misunderstanding what the role of revision is in the writing process. This is something that's come up in a bunch of the episodes this season, and it's not because I really like repeating myself. It's because it's that common, it's that prevalent, and it's this idea that we need to shift from the, I write it once.
I polish it, I maybe do a little bit of adjusting, but then it's pretty much ready to go. It's ready to be graded, which is how we used to approach papers, seminar papers, even in grad school. But definitely before final papers, term papers, you work on it, you build up to it all semester, you submit it, and then you get graded.
Life as an academic writer is completely different because up until that last submission deadline, you are always submitting your work with the expectation that it will get feedback and that you'll need to revise it. And that's not a punishment. That's not something that you've been sent back to do because you didn't pass this hurdle.
It's how academic work, which is complex and needs a lot of attention in order for it to be clear and readable and persuasive. And you can't get it all in one go. It can be really scary to submit things knowing that you're gonna get feedback. So of course you think, huh, I'll do that next week.
I'll make sure that I spend this next week really working on it. There's that fear, there's that sense of being unclear. Is this ready? Is this what other people send? Is it not? And we just don't really know when the point is that somebody else wants to see it. We know they probably don't wanna see a stack of notes all jumbled up with no complete sentences, but.
There's a big space between, here is a bunch of completely unorganized paragraphs, and here is a publishable journal article or a publishable dissertation chapter. There's a lot of space in between there, so how do you know when it's ready for that feedback?
The problem with the one more week. Is you set a deadline.
Usually you're trying to make yourself accountable to somebody else, your advisor, your writing group, and then you press snooze on that deadline, just like an alarm clock. It goes off at 7:00 AM and you press snooze and you think, okay, I'm not ready right now, but I definitely will be in 10 minutes. I'm not ready to send this to my advisor right now, but I definitely will be in a week.
The problem with this cycle is that there's a hit of temporary relief, right? You press that snooze button and you think, okay, I get a couple more minutes of sleep. I was feeling really anxious about getting ready to submit this, and now I have an extra week to make sure that it feels better,
like the fourth or fifth time, or maybe even a little bit more that you press that snooze button, it gets harder and harder 'cause that temporary hit of relief hits less strongly. The first extension feels like an amazing relief, and the third one feels. Less powerful, more anxious because you know that time is getting away from you and it's harder and harder to submit it because you think, okay, well I've had X number of extra weeks.
It needs to be that much better because it's late. It needs to be that much better because I'm behind. And so every time you get there you think, okay, I definitely do just need another hit of time because this isn't gonna be what I want it to be when this person sees it. Now. What are some ways to get out of this loop if you find that you're in?
The first one is to outsource this decision. This is something that we did talk about last week with editing checklists, and I will make sure that I link to last week's episode and also some of the checklists. In the show notes, but if you can outsource this decision to a checklist, amazing. Where you say, okay, here are all of the things that I wanted to get done on this draft.
I wanted to make sure it was all complete sentences. I wanted to make sure that all my topic sentences were really fresh and crisp and sharp, and I wanted to make sure that all my references were in there. I hit all those three things. It must be ready to submit. Now, if you like me, can think your way into and out of a checklist where you say, okay, this is definitely gonna be it.
And then you don't feel quite ready anyway. You can also outsource the decision to another person. Have a trusted friend or colleague go through and read your draft and say, okay, is this ready to submit to my advisor? Is this ready to go to a writing group or not? And having that friend check means that it's somebody else's responsibility to help you make that decision.
And then they can even help you press that submit button if you need. They can attach the file to an email, write it for you, and send it. Maybe not that far, but you get what I mean. Your friend can help you make that decision. If you are like, I just, I think I need one more week. They check in, they say it's ready.
You trust them. The other thing to note thing number two is that that done feeling is. Almost never an internal state or a switch that flips. I never work with any writer who says, yeah, I sat, I worked on the draft. I worked steadily through my revisions, and it's 100% ready to go. Everybody is always submitting because.
It's the deadline because that's when their advisor wanted it, because they need to keep moving because they need to move to the next section because they need to have the time off at the end of the year. A thousand different reasons. These things come to administrative ends, not content-based ends.
You're submitting it because it's due, not because it's done, and that distinction can be really uncomfortable, but it's the one that helps you move forward faster. Because if you accept as a premise that you are gonna have to do some revision, you are gonna have feedback, well, then the earlier you submit it, the earlier you can get started on that feedback and get it to the next hurdle.
The third thing that I wanna share with you. Might feel like a little bit of tough love, but I think it's one of those things that if you can wrap your heart and your head around it, it can make a really big difference. And that thing is that what you're avoiding.
The feedback, the criticism, that awful ego hit of not doing a good job is survivable. But avoiding that thing, avoiding that vulnerability is what makes it a harmful situation to you and kind of the overall life scheme of things. It is completely understandable that nobody wants. To get a bunch of criticism, a bunch of feedback, even if it's the most kind, gentle, constructive feedback in the world.
It's not fun. Nobody likes looking through somebody's red line edits on their work, but it is survivable. It is something that you can support your way through. You can have a friend look through those comments. You can take a break after you read them, you can read them, process them, put them in your task manager and then move on.
It is survivable, but the more you avoid it, the more it turns into this trap where you can't move on because you're trying so hard to avoid a thing that you can survive. It's not fun, but it is. Something that if you can commit to doing it, to sending that draft, to moving forward, to letting other people see your work and give you feedback, you might be able to shift your writing process away from this system of perfectionism and avoidance and feeling stuck and into a conversation, a conversation between you and the draft between you and advisors, you and your writing group, and eventually you and your readers.
Because you're not going to have that piece of writing enter the world if you're hanging onto it for just one more week, perpetually at the end of every week. I hope that this helps you. I have heard from lots of people that it's helping them, but the most important thing is that you are not alone in pressing that snooze button.
It is scary to submit something that you're not a hundred percent confident in, but it is survivable. And if you can survive it, then the writing can keep making its way through that cycle, through that repetition to get it to be the most clear version of what you want it to be out in the world.
I'm hoping that for you and I'm hoping that for all of us, and I'll see you that, and I will 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!
6.7 if i just do it perfectly now, i won't have to revise it later
sure, it takes longer up front to get the draft as close to perfect as you can, but it will save time when you don't have to revise it, right? right???
taking on one of the most common writing fallacies in today's episode - this is for you if you've ever justified not sending the draft by saying you'll just get it to a better state first. you are not alone, but there are other ways <3
mentioned:
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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.
This season is called Just at Me already, where I go through all of the different kinds of people that I run into and have been myself as a coach for academics. And we talk about how to shift that if you want to. I.
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's episode is called, if I just do it perfectly right now, I won't have to revise it. And it is for all of my people out there who are working on making their drafts as good as they possibly can because it's efficient, right? If I just submit a really good draft now to my supervisor, to the editor, to whomever.
I won't need to revise it. It's taking me longer now. Sure. But I'm saving work in the long run. Oh, how I wish that this worked. I wish that this was an effective strategy because it is a logical strategy. It does make sense that the more that you polish something ahead of time, the less time you're gonna have to spend on the backend, revising it, responding to feedback, et cetera.
But more often than not, what I find happens is what I call the half drawn horse phenomenon. I'll link to this in the show notes, but I'm sure that you've seen that meme of a drawn horse. Somebody's sketch of a horse and the back legs and tail are rendered perfectly. They're so detailed, they're beautiful, they're realistic.
And then by the time that you get to the front of the head of the horse. It's a stick drawing. It looks like a kid did it. And often this is what I find when people are really working to make the drafts quote as good as they can before they submit it. There might be a chapter, a section, a part of it that is perfect or as close to it as you can get, and you eventually run out of time for the rest of it.
Chapter two and three are really, really solid. And chapter one you wrote over a weekend there's nothing wrong with this. Plenty of dissertations have been submitted as half drawn horses. I know that there are definitely parts of my own dissertation that are much more finished and polished than the others, but it is.
A beautiful example of this kind of fallacy that we have, which is that the time that we spend upfront, the time that we spend on the earlier drafts, working just with ourselves, where we're protected, where we don't have to have this feedback, we don't need to be as vulnerable, that time is going to pay off by something in the end
and I wish that were true, but usually what happens is that you run out of time. You run out of time to respond to the feedback that you're inevitably going to get. You run out of time to write the pieces that don't exist yet, and it feels more uneven than it could or it should. So I this week would encourage.
To think about the cycle of book development. This is a term from Dr. Laura Portwood Stacer, whose book I'll link to in the show notes. But it's brilliant. But the idea is that your manuscript, you're writing, it's always a cycle. You're always clarifying what the piece is going to do, soliciting feedback, and then adjusting to that feedback and.
You cannot prevent that cycle from running at all by just writing better. You can't prevent your advisor from having feedback by double checking every single sentence because invariably, you want your work to be out in the world. You want it to be something that people can respond to, and whether that's your writing group.
Your advisor, a peer reviewer or an editor, you can't guarantee that they're going to always have amazing feedback, but you can make it so that they can help you move forward faster than you would on your own. I have three strategies that help me when I'm feeling really stuck in this kind of efficiency trap where I feel like I have to keep going and make this draft perfect even though I'm running out of time, because the more I spend now, the less I'm gonna have to do later.
The first strategy that's really useful for that is having a feedback panel. Graduate students especially don't have access to a lot of writing feedback. Maybe your advisor, maybe a committee member, but. Sometimes your peers, and it's really difficult because your advisor might be busy, they might not be skilled at giving constructive, useful feedback.
And if you have a panel of people that you can go to, if you have a writing group, a peer group, a person that you do draft swaps with an accountability group, even a non-academic who can read and proofread things, you'll be amazed how much easier it is. To get feedback and to practice sending your work for feedback earlier if you have more people to try it with.
It's probably not going to be your best strategy to increase the frequency of feedback, solicitation with your advisor. They might be busy, they might not be that good at it, but if you can broaden the team but more people on the team get more support for your writing, it can really help.
Because yeah, you're right, it might not be the most efficient path forward to give your draft to your advisor right now, but that doesn't mean your writing group can't look. At it. That doesn't mean that somebody in your program can't take a look at it. It doesn't mean that you can't give that draft to somebody else, get their feedback, and then move forward.
Strategy number two is to outsource some of that. Is this done or not? Anxiety to a checklist. I there are lots of different checklists that are floating around. I'll link to a couple in the show notes. But the idea of this checklist is that you say, okay, I'm not going to know maybe when this draft is done or ready for feedback, but if it has all of the content that I wanted to include, if I've proofread it for sentence fragments, if the citations are all correct, then I'm ready to send it.
And that way the checklist is in charge of whether or not it's ready to send and not your internal feeling, which may or may not be an accurate representation of if that draft is ready to go. In my experience, very rarely do people send work because they have an internal feeling of, yes, this draft is ready to go.
It's, I've taken it as far as I need to. Almost all of us are sending it because of some external force, whether that's a deadline or a writing group swap, or a, an editor who needs it, or your funding is running out, so you have to submit the dissertation. It's that external force that makes it done, not the internal.
Qualities of the document. So you give yourself more chances to incorporate feedback, more chances to strengthen the document if you send it more frequently and earlier in the process. And last but not least, I really encourage you to examine the premise of how you're thinking about revision. So many of us we're really good writers as undergraduates.
It's earlier in our career, you might be really good at seminar papers or short blog posts or newsletters or other forms of writing, but academic writing is complex and because it's so complex, it often is difficult to get it clear, concise, content filled, compelling, all in one pass. So if you think about the premises of your writing cycle, are you.
Thinking about it as I need to get this to 80% before people see it, or 90% or a hundred percent, or if I just work really hard at it, nobody will give me any feedback at all. Those are really beautiful ways to protect yourself from the vulnerable moment of getting feedback, but they're definitely slowing down the process in ways that you maybe don't want to or don't need to.
So I encourage you to think, okay, if I start from the premise of I will get feedback whether I want it or not, I will. Use other people's feedback to strengthen what I can't see clearly about this draft that I've been staring at for weeks or months, or maybe even longer. If you start from the premise that that feedback is part of the process and not an additional add-on that you trigger because you didn't do it well enough the first time, how might you plan that cycle differently?
Who might you invite into the process that you wouldn't have otherwise considered? Feedback isn't a punishment. Feedback is the way that all of us get stronger as writers as communicators. So I encourage you to think about how you are leaving yourself out of spaces and places and cycles that will help you be a stronger writer.
It might not be the most comfortable, but it is going to move you forward. Thank you so much, and I'll 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!
6.6 if i'm invisible, you can't ask me about my draft
if you have ever:
ducked into a bathroom to avoid your advisor
gone days (or longer) avoiding your email in case someone asks you where your draft is
worked furiously through a weekend so no one noticed you didn't send that draft in on friday
this episode is for you. let's talk about why we go so hard into avoidance mode when writing is late, and why that often is the least helpful way to go about it. plus we talk about ways to soften that feeling, and things you can do intsead.
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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.
This season is called Just at Me already, where I go through all of the different kinds of people that I run into and have been myself as a coach for academics. And we talk about how to shift that if you want to. I.
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
Close your eyes with me and imagine you told your advisor that you would have that draft to them by the end of the week, Friday at the latest, Friday arrives, and it's not done. So you think to yourself, ah, who's checking their email on Friday? Anyway, I'll just work this weekend. I'll get it all wrapped up.
Send it Monday morning. It'll be like nothing ever happened. And then you work over the weekend, you get closer, but it's still not done. And you think, yeah, Monday's like Tuesday and that cycle repeats Wednesday, Thursday. Then maybe you think, okay, well I'll have it to them by this Friday, and I'll just pretend that's the Friday that I mean, and eventually it keeps snowballing and snowballing until you are actively avoiding your advisor. Maybe you're just avoiding talking about your draft when you see them in the hallway, or maybe you're even avoiding looking at your inbox in case they're in there asking for the draft. I've even seen people hint, it's me not go into their department building.
They won't be seen on campus. They're hiding. They're sneaking around corners afraid that somebody will ask them about that draft that's overdue. If that's you this week is for you. I'm sure that almost everybody listening relates to some part of this dynamic where you say that you're gonna have something done, it doesn't quite get there, and then you just withdraw and withdraw and withdraw until you finish it, which creates this kind of double edge cycle where a.
You need the support more than ever because it's behind and the anxiety is ramping up and the stress is ramping up and it's getting harder and harder to finish it, and B, you're more and more ashamed of the fact that it's not done. So you pull even further and further away from maybe not even your advisor, but the other places that help you, your communities, your writing group, anywhere else.
It's a really tricky cycle. I get it because. That's me. That's a lot of us who wants to stand up and raise their hand and say, Hey, I have this thing. It's not done yet. I have this thing and I know you need it, but I haven't gotten to it. It almost doesn't matter if it's not done because life has been lifeing or if, because you're working really hard on it.
It's not done, and so you're withdrawing and you are more and more alone. The draft is more and more behind, and it's almost impossible to see yourself out of the bottom of that hole. I have some strategies for you. If this is you, maybe this is you in the future. Maybe this is you in the past. Maybe this is you right now, but the first is to communicate.
And I am gonna just straight up acknowledge right now that this is not the easiest thing to do. Nobody wants to send an email that says, Hey, this thing is late, or it's due, or, I know I was meant to send that to you, but that's part of what being a professional academic is. I had a beloved mentor who used to say, listen, the problem isn't being late, the problem is ghosting.
And I have taken that lesson so much to heart I've worked a lot of different jobs, whether that is for myself as an academic in teaching and learning centers and a bagel shop. I've worked a lot of places and things get overdue.
Things are late. It's a fact of life, especially right now when things are so hard, and you've got so many things to do, but the best way to head off that isolation. Cycle is to own up to it and communicate. I always recommend that people communicate when they know that the draft is gonna be late, where it's Wednesday and you said it was gonna be due Friday, and you just know that between now and Friday, there's no chance that it's getting finished.
You can send an email that says, Hey, I am not gonna have this draft done completely on Friday. Would you rather look at the part that's polished? On Friday like we agreed to, or wait until next week when more of it is finished. Or you could send an email that says, Hey, X, Y, and Z happened This, this draft is late.
I hope to get it to you by next Friday, but either way, I will reach out. These emails are tricky to send and I understand why nobody is rushing to put this podcast down and send that email. But the more that you can give people the information that they need, the better. If you've ever taught undergraduate students, you know that.
Yeah. Is it annoying when students don't have their essays submitted on time? Absolutely. But would you rather know if they're struggling so that you can, A, help support them, but B, schedule your time better so that you know, okay, I don't need to be waiting for this to grade. I can check back in with you in a week and grade the ones I already have.
It's about recognizing that you are in a community with your advisor, with your writing group, with anybody else that's waiting for your writing. There's often flexibility and you are entitled to that flexibility. The worst they can say is no, but the best they can say is yes, and then you can spend.
All of your energy getting that draft over the finish line and not half of your energy panicking that somebody will ask you about it before it's done. A pro level tip is that I often encourage my clients to send their advisors an email every week or every other week no matter what. A quick update email, this is what I've done, this is what I'm planning to do the next time, and this is where I'm stuck.
Those kind of emails are a great track record to kind of low state. They're a great thing to have in writing so that your advisor has evidence that you are moving along, even if you're not meeting with them regularly, or even if you haven't shown them any new writing in a while, and they help make it so that the update, the communication, the support isn't tied to the thing being done.
It is tied to a regular occurrence. In the calendar that arrives no matter what, so you're never going too long without being in communication.
Support works best when we're really stuck, and unfortunately that is some of the hardest times for us to ask for it, and I do wanna just acknowledge that maybe your advisor isn't the place to get that support. I know that for me, my advisor had very strict ideas about when and where they wanted to read my writing, and so I.
Ended up usually sending writing to anyone but my advisor. I sent it to my friends in my cohort. I sent it to people above and below me in the program. I sent it to people in my writing group. I got that writing support that I needed from other places, and I will be honest, it was easy to hide from them too when I was feeling bad about the fact that the writing wasn't done.
But their help moved me further faster when I asked for it. Than it ever did with me hiding and hoping that I would just be able to catch up and they wouldn't notice that I was behind. In any case, isolation is one of the biggest contributors that I see to people being stuck frozen, not advancing, not moving forward in the way that they want to.
You don't have to reach out to your advisor if you know that things are gonna be stuck. But if you reach out to someone, if you remember that you're not invisible and that people can help you, you often can unstick yourself and keep going. And just so that you know, everybody gets stuck. Everybody has drafts that are due and they miss that deadline.
Everybody has. Things that they wish were moving faster, things that they wish weren't so behind. The secret is learning how to communicate before or when you know it's due, getting the support that you need so that you can meet that second best deadline, which is whatever one you set after that. Thank you so much for listening and I can't wait to see you next week.
Bye.
📍 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!
6.5 research exquisite...draft non-existent?
this is for all my friends with 123908 open tabs of things to read, a pile of ILL requests to pick up at the library, four unwatched webinars on how to do academic things in their inbox....who are still feeling stuck turning all that research into writing.
we talk this week about why it happens, and how to move forward, on this week's episode. get into it!
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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.
This season is called Just at Me already, where I go through all of the different kinds of people that I run into and have been myself as a coach for academics. And we talk about how to shift that if you want to. I.
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
All right. If you're sitting on piles of research, so much data notes up the wazoo. If you're guarding it like a dragon guards, its hoard. This one is for you. I call this episode research exquisite, draft non-existent, because this is one of the most common things that I see, especially in early writers.
It could be that your research is around the content of what you're working on. It could be that you're actually researching the process. Like how to write a dissertation or how to write a book proposal, or maybe you're even still in the data collection phase.
One more experiment. One more trip to the archive. But this pattern looks like you are waiting to start writing. You're purposefully holding back on the writing until you hit some point where the research feels done, where you feel like you know how to do it, where you feel that you are ready to start writing from a place of confidence.
I see three different flavors of this. One is the kind of underwriting question of did I find everything? Is there another article out there that says what mine says that I need to cite, that everyone will be so embarrassed for me if I don't cite.
That's so key to the conversation that I'm having that by not finding it and reading it and citing it here, I'm gonna be laughed off the face of the subfield that I'm in. That's one version. Did I find everything? The second version is, I'm not ready. I don't know enough yet. This is a variation, but it's often like, oh, well, I was researching this idea and then this method came up, and then I'm researching the history of this method, and you're following each one of the links,
like you're on a Wikipedia deep dive. You're just clicking the backlinks and the backlinks and the backlinks, and they keep going, and so you assume that you must not know enough because you keep finding new ideas, new pieces of evidence, new research, that are important for you to at least be aware of before you start writing.
And the third kind of iteration of this looks a lot less explicit sometimes, but it boils down to, I feel safer here. I feel safer behind my desk, reading articles, doing notes, looking at books. I am not ready to write. It seems scary, seems hard. I don't want to do it. I don't have time to get into it. It seems like it's gonna be really difficult, so I'm just gonna keep doing more research because I know how to do that.
I feel confident in that and I know I'm not going to mess that up. So any of these three flavors can really stall you because no one is going to accept your mental download of a research folder. For publication, not as a chapter, not as an article, not as a conference paper. So you eventually do need to move into the writing phase, but there's a reason that so many of us get stuck here, and it's because there are these persistent thoughts, these ideas that if I just find the secret thing, it's all gonna feel real.
And a lot of that boils down to this idea that when I'm ready to write, I'm gonna know it. I'll feel ready to write. I will feel full. I'll feel confident. I'll be ready to go. And I really hate to share this with you, but it also could set you free. That ready isn't a feeling ready is a decision, and that it actually is a lot faster to start to teach yourself, train yourself, support yourself in writing earlier than you feel ready with less research than maybe you feel ready because that that act of.
Putting your thoughts onto paper where you can read them, where you can read them back, and when maybe other people can read them is going to move you further faster than endless loops of research. So. In terms of strategies that you can walk away with right now, the first is to start writing earlier. I really encourage you to have some sort of active writing process that goes along with your research, whether that is taking notes, answering questions, putting things inside of your citation manager, or a little bit of free writing to warm up or end a research session.
Practicing synthesizing those ideas in a low stakes way. That's not for anybody else, but you can be a really excellent way to get the kind of writing juices flowing earlier in the process. But just in general, start writing earlier than you think you should, than you think is reasonable, because it is almost always going to be the thing that helps you refine your research questions or show you how much you already know already.
So. Start writing earlier, push it back by a week, push it back by a month or maybe right the whole time. The second strategy is to write around the gaps. I am a big fan of putting in parenthetical notes to myself when I'm drafting, like insert reference here, or a question to my future self, like, does this need a citation?
Or, which one of these papers should I use? I then go through at a various stages of my draft, and I fill in those parenthetical resources, or I decide that I don't need them, that it was actually extra evidence or. Extra support that bogs down my argument instead of making it clearer. But the more that you can practice writing around the gaps, writing a paragraph that says blah, blah, blah, insert big idea here, and then keeps going.
The more you're going to let yourself stay in the writing flow, instead of reaching for a book, reaching for A PDF, looking for your notes. You can always go back and add, and that is the skill that many of us have never been taught how to do, how to write in more frequent, shallower passes than I took this class and then I stayed up all night to write the term paper.
Your academic work probably won't follow that same pattern, so this is about practicing writing in a different way. Ultimately, this boils down to the idea that writing and research overlap much more so than you might be familiar with from other kinds of writing that you've done in even your academic past.
But because of the way that academics are expected to have multiple projects going. Projects that branch off from each other, that overlap, that intersect, that maybe are parts of collaborations or solo authored. But when you have so many different things in your quote unquote academic pipeline, it is a skill and a benefit to be able to have the research process and the writing process.
Not follow one after another where you wrap up all of the research and then you start the writing, but that they happen in tandem, so that as you write and the argument develops, you know what research you need to do further, and then you can do it in a more targeted, efficient, effective way. Ultimately, that feeling that you're not ready to start writing, it might not ever go away.
I know that I felt that way on the day I was defending my dissertation. When that project was as done as it ever was gonna be, I was like, I'm not sure I'm ready. I don't know that I know enough, but ultimately that feeling isn't a fact. It's a sign that what you're doing is vulnerable, that it means something to you, that it's high stakes.
That there are things that need support inside of you. Maybe you need somebody to give you some feedback and say, actually, this does need a little bit of development. Or, I think that you're really bogged down in the weeds here. Maybe you need something really cozy to kind of help support your nervous system while you sit down to write.
Or maybe you just need, like almost all of us do a little bit more practice building a writing. Habit or writing practice that's going to serve not only the kind of writer that you're becoming, but the kind of projects that you're being asked to do. Thank you so much, and I will 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!
6.4 always firefighting, no fire prevention
you're careening from due date to due date, and still, everything is due in the last three weeks of the term. you know that you're supposed to be working ahead, and making time for important projects that aren't due yet, but.......how?
let's talk about this pattern - maybe one of the hardest ones to shift - and concrete things you can do to try and shift it. because you CAN do things to shift into a less due-date driven life, but they're not nearly as simple as "just schedule time for your writing".
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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.
This season is called Just at Me already, where I go through all of the different kinds of people that I run into and have been myself as a coach for academics. And we talk about how to shift that if you want to. I.
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
All right. I call this one all firefighting, no fire prevention, and this is maybe the one I see the most. Okay. If this is you, this is what your day life week semester ends up looking like. There. Are constantly due dates. There's always something due. There is something due Friday, there's something due next Tuesday.
There's something due the Tuesday after that. It's grading. It's submissions. It's your service. It's your teaching. It's the dissertation chapter you need to finish. It all has a sort of next urgent thing, and you never really get a chance to catch your breath. There is always something that is due. Or maybe even overdue, and you're never quite doing any of the work that you feel like you need to.
You are not getting that next conference proposal planned. You aren't working ahead, and you always feel like you're behind, even if you're getting things done on time or nearly. Let's talk about why this pattern happens and why so many of us are careening from due date to due date without getting a chance to catch our breath.
Part of it is that academic work is on its face, usually extremely important, if not for the broader world than at least for you in you and your own career progression. There's very little innate urgency to it. The one exception for this is teaching, which is why if you go back a few episodes, we see so many people who are completely on top of their teaching because that has a built-in rhythm and urgent. To it. The students need their grades back for assignment one before they can finish assignment two and so on.
There's a natural temporality to it, which is easier to keep it on track as opposed to a dissertation chapter where your advisor just says, okay, come back when you have a draft that you want me to look at. And that could be in two weeks or two months, or much longer for a lot of us.
So there's these important projects that we're expected to be self-directed on, and the only thing that really works for a lot of people all the way down the chain is to have a due date. Academics and the systems that they create often require these due dates to add urgency. Your advisor needs a due date in order to prove to their boss the chair of the department, that you're progressing on time.
And so they say, I need to have your chapter by the end of the semester so that I can say with good confidence that you're on track. But all of these systems, the writing system, the conference system, the grading system, the human system, they're overlapping. They're not talking to each other. No one sits down at the faculty meeting, at least as far as I know, and says, okay, let's sit down and make sure that all of these due dates aren't coming at once. People, right? Nobody's saying that the advisor is setting the due date because that what works for their schedule. The student is setting the due date for themselves because. It's what their advisor gave them.
Nobody's thinking, Hey, let's make sure that not all of this happens on midterm week or finals week. Maybe it would be nice if we didn't expect people to have to work through their break or their summer completely full out in order to just catch up. These conflicting systems mean that there are always due dates.
There always are fires to put out, and who's gonna get a chance to work ahead, work more systemically if they're always chasing that next due date. That's just another two days, another three weeks or something really big, comes up with a due date that all of a sudden is really soon, and they haven't done enough work along the course of this semester or the month to make that even feel feasible.
To add insult to injury in a firefighting system where you're careening from one important thing being due to the next, if you get a spare moment, you're not gonna work ahead. You're not gonna pull reading for that next project. You're not gonna make sure that your systems are all tagged out and filed.
You are gonna crash your butt right down on that couch. You're gonna crash and you're gonna get the rest that you desperately need, or at least part of it because you've been working full out in this high pressure, high stress, high urgency environment. All right. That's why it happens. Now, how do we shift it?
And I'm gonna be really honest. This is one of the hardest patterns to shift. It's why your advisor, to some degree, works like this. It's why a lot of people work like this, and it's why everyone kind of puts the due date up, give me a due date, or it won't get done, right? That's what everybody says at the end of these meetings, and it's because this is an incredibly difficult pattern to shift.
One is that if you're going to do the common piece of advice, which is schedule time to work on these projects, schedule in your writing, protect time, that is actually not an administrative ask as much as it's a boundary ask, right? Not only do you have to block off time, you have to protect it. Sometimes defend it from people who feel entitled to it, your own self or in a lot of cases, just the natural stuff that comes up in the course of working on complex projects in a complex world.
You need to be able to not only make the structure to work on these projects a little bit at a time, but protect that structure once you do it. And that is harder than it sounds. That is putting your phone in the drawer that is dealing with the discomfort. Of, I know that there are really important things that I could be doing right now, and I am not.
I'm working on this thing that I know will serve me well. The other part is that if you are going to work a little bit at a time, most of us have zero faith whatsoever that that system pays off. I know that it was literally years into my PhD program before I felt like I knew how to write in another way that wasn't just a massive all-out writing push.
It was usually a couple more days than the all-nighters I was doing in my undergrad and let's be real, and some of my master program. It was maybe a writing push that lasted for a couple of days, maybe even a week, but I didn't know how to do it any other way. I only knew how to maybe do a little tiny bit of prep work and then all out push at the end.
And so if you asked me to say like, okay, see if you can write a couple hundred words a day, see if you can write two hours a week. What if you did two hours, two days? There was no part of my body that believed that was a reasonable way to do my writing because I'd never done it before. So how could I trust that it would work?
And there was something really unsatisfying. If you are used to writing a whole chapter in a week or getting a ton of work done right before a deadline, there's something kind of unsatisfying, right? About sitting down and being like, oh, I just did my 500 words. I just did my tiny palm. None of this matters, which makes it even harder to commit to those sessions moving forward because they don't feel satisfying.
So you need to be able to not only block the time, make the resources available to yourself, protect them from the people that you want. Then you have to sit in the discomfort of, I don't know if this is gonna work. This feels unsatisfying. This isn't how I've done it before, and be able to still move forward.
So this is. A podcast episode where I say, this is a hard pattern to shift. This is something that you have to actively work on and it's going to be uncomfortable. If this is something that you wanna work toward, here are two or three things that I would do in the next couple of weeks to see if you can shift it just a little bit.
The first, I would go on your calendar and I would find the first two hour block where you think you could reasonably work on a project before it's due. And protect it, block it off. , put whatever title on it that you need in order to know that this is serious. It might not be. Let's be real. Next week, it could be in a couple of weeks.
It might not be till December. It could be maybe even after your classes end. But I want you to block that time off and make sure that you maybe make it recurring. Block it off. Now, if you need to flip ahead to winter 2026 semester in January and February and block off then, but the idea is that if you never start blocking.
It's never gonna appear in your calendar, right? Because if you can't find a two hour block this week, it's reasonable to think that that's gonna still happen the next week and the week after that. So block far ahead and then practice protecting those when they do come up. The next thing is I would like you to practic.
Small amounts of discomfort around smaller writing sessions that maybe feel less productive. So the best way that I like to do this is having a kind of writing log. Where I have a journal and I can say, okay, today I sat down, I did two palms. It was 500 words, and then I rate it on a scale of one to five.
One to five. Five being, this felt really good, this felt useful, and one being, this feels stupid. Why do this? But being able to track those sessions over time is the only way that you're gonna see that data for yourself. I can tell you on this podcast until I'm blue in the face. That it does add up that there are real benefits to working on a project consistently.
Even if you can only get 25 minutes, even if you can only get 50 words, even if you just read a page or two, but your brain's not gonna believe it until it sees it right there on the page. And in the absence of being able to zoom out and zoom into the future and see the whole process with a done chapter or a, a big project where you can look back and say, ah, yes, this really worked.
A journal or a lab sort of notebook approach where you say, okay, this is what I did, and you kind of quickly jot it down. It's gonna provide that data. So if you're out here fighting fires and never doing that important work of building toward the future, that strategy that everybody says works, but you can't really see how it works, know that there are millions of us out here who are struggling with the same thing.
But there are concrete things that you can do right now to try and shift this pattern and a few things a little bit starting slow. It does get easier. All right, 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!
6.3 just a quick check of the email.......and it's 3 pm
this is for all my folks who love to warm up, sit down to check their email......and the whole day is gone. we talk about the cycle, places to interrupt it, and three specific strategies to try - all in less than ten minutes. hop on in and let me gently roast you for the good of your draft.
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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.
This season is called Just at Me already, where I go through all of the different kinds of people that I run into and have been myself as a coach for academics. And we talk about how to shift that if you want to. I.
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
Now, I might be coming for you. I'm definitely coming for myself. But this week's episode is all about the people who sit down with all good intentions to do their writing and they think, okay, let me just do a quick check of my email. I'll just make sure there's nothing bad in there. And then I'll of a sudden they look up, hours have gone by, the writing hasn't been touched, and they think, man, I guess I'll just start again tomorrow.
This is a really common practice for a variety of reasons, and I know some of the reasons that it happens to me. One, I don't have the willpower necessarily to start a really heavy work task without giving myself a little bit of a warmup first. I have never been able to sit down and write first thing. I probably never will be able to sit down and write first thing, but when I check my email.
Or any other place where tasks tend to stack up for me as that warmup task, ugh. Things can quickly go south because I start thinking, man, I'll just take care of this. Take care of this. I'll clear the decks, right? I will make sure that nobody needs anything from me before I start writing. And the problem is.
That in this particular day and age, everyone is going to need something from you all of the time, forever, probably. Or at the very least, the emails will keep coming. The tasks will keep piling up, and we're almost always going to have at least an invitation to do something that isn't our writing in these corners of the internet where people can get into contact with us.
I'm not saying that you should never check your email. I'm just saying that a lot of times when we sit down to warm up, we do this quick check, we start to work on things. There's actually another second thought pattern that goes on, which is, okay, I'll just get some of these quick wins out of the way.
I'll clear the decks, right? I'll make sure that my writing conditions are perfect. These are the kind of sneaky ways that we can avoid our writing.
Who doesn't have a thousand other things that they need to get done right? And it makes perfect logical sense that it would be easier to focus on your writing if you had those annoying tasks that anyone could stop and interrupt you and ask about out of the way before you do this. Deep dive into a high focus, high energy draining activity. The problem isn't the emails, the problem isn't the warmup.
The real problem in this whole cycle is that little voice that says, Ugh, it's too late now. I don't have enough time. I'm not gonna be able to do this. I might as well start again tomorrow.
It's what I call the snooze button, where you're like, okay, I will clear the deck and then everything will be better tomorrow. I will get this done and then I'll, I'll really get down to it after lunch. And the problem is that every time we do that, we build up a little bit more of avoidance. We build up a little bit more of that sticky, this is hard, I don't wanna do it feeling, and it makes it that much more difficult to try again the next time.
And if we're only giving ourselves one or maybe even two chances a day to try that really hard thing, then that's one or two chances where it's really easy to press snooze. Then we do all of the things that of course, need to get done, but maybe don't need to get done with the very best of our time, energy, and deep focus blocks.
I'm not gonna just leave you there and say, good luck. This is a terrible pattern. I hope you figure it out. I'm, of course going to share with you three things that I have found to be really effective for me, for my clients to interrupt this pattern and think about other ways to structure your time and protect those writing blocks that you went to.
All of this trouble to schedule. Number one is eating the frog, which is. A time honored tradition. I'll be honest, sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't. This is one of the tools that often doesn't work for me because like I said, I like to warm up, but the idea here is that your willpower and your ability to resist.
Temptation, resist invitations to do other things is going to be the highest when you're the best rested. And so if you wake up and you are the most focused, the most caffeinated you're ever gonna be, use that energy to do your hardest thing. Eating the frog, for example. Like I said this is mixed benefits, but for the people that it works, it really works.
So if you've never tried doing your writing first thing, or with at least a very minimal warmup, then experiment with it. What's the worst thing that's gonna happen? The second tool that can be really useful are restart times. I like to do these on the top of the hour.
I think that the, the zero zero is a crisp number. It appeals to my brain, so if things don't happen at nine o'clock when I'm meant to get at my desk, then. At 10 o'clock, I can start again at 11 and 12. This is particularly useful for people who have a lot of uninterrupted time, which is its own blessing and curse.
But I find that if you have a lot of time and only certain amounts of energy for writing then give yourself a lot of chances to start it. And so if it doesn't happen at nine, you can try again at every top of the hour and giving yourself five or six chances to start is just statistically gonna work a lot better than giving yourself only one or two.
And last but not least, a tool for those of us who just are exceptionally busy and there almost always is a catastrophe in that inbox. And so there are good reasons why we check it, and there are good reasons why we get pulled into it. I suggest leaving some open time in your calendar. I really like wednesday afternoons and Friday mornings for this. But your mileage may vary, but leave them blocked off, but unscheduled. I call these buffer times. The idea is that you have some time in your calendar to work on the things that are going to inevitably pop up, and then you don't have to steal time from other places to deal with the catastrophes when they emerge.
So you might get an email on Tuesday that says, ah, this terrible thing has happened. I need you to drop everything and do it. And you can then email back and say, you know, I don't have time today, but I do have time Wednesday afternoon. I promise to get back to you before the end of the day. The idea here is that you're not stealing time away from your writing, from your sleep, from your family, from anything else in order to handle those emergencies.
You've got some time blocked off for you to use on the things that come up, and then you aren't cannibalizing the rest of your intentions. And hey, worst case scenario, you have two extra hours, and if no emergencies appear, then it's two hours you can use. I hope that this episode gives you a little bit of perspective about why this pattern starts and things that you can do to interrupt it.
We're all just here trying our best, and I can't wait to try again with 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!
6.2 a+ teacher, colleague, friend....c+ writer
you're a rock star teacher. you're everyone's favorite colleague. you show up in your community and you never miss a chance to help out. something has to give....is it your writing?
if you're checking a million things off a day and somehow, that pit in your stomach about your writing getting snoozed is only getting bigger, this episode is for you.
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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.
This season is called Just at Me already, where I go through all of the different kinds of people that I run into and have been myself as a coach for academics. And we talk about how to shift that if you want to. I.
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
Today we're talking about one of my most beloved avatars. I have been this, and maybe you have been this person too. You are an a plus colleague, teacher person, community member, family member, you're a plus at all of it, and you're a c plus writer, and by that I mean you are the most available, present, responsive person in all of these areas of your life. You show up, you do the things, you're on time, you help people.
Except for your writing, which gets just enough to get by. It's not that you're failing at it, you're just giving it just enough to kick the can down the road ways you might know that you're this person is if you are constantly checking things off, you are present. You are making all of your commitments work.
Your students love you, your family loves you, your community loves you, and you also have this sinking pit of dread all the time because you know there's something major that's not getting done. Your. Pressing snooze on things like writing, research, that longer term project, publishing, all of these things that are self-directed and don't have the sort of immediacy and freshness and vitality that your more in-person work does.
If you are checking off the tasks that are due, if your grading's done on time, you are in the meetings, you're responsive, you're collegial, and your work is snoozed. I have three questions to help you unpack it a little bit.
And maybe see if there are ways to move forward and bring that grade up just a little bit.
Because after all, it's not about the grade. It's about that pit of dread in your stomach and what we can do to lessen it so that you can take your best self to your most important projects. Question one. What are the things that make tasks move up in urgency and priority on your to-do list?
What are the things that you will set aside everything for. Now, this isn't an accusatory question. This is simply a data collection question. Do you always set time aside for students? If a student emails you and needs help with a paper or needs support in extra office hours, if a colleague asks you to cover, if somebody asks you to, you know, help out with this conference or join this panel, or share your expertise, what are the things that always move up the list?
For me, it's often things like, this is going to help another person. This is covering a need, this is paying forward. This is being part of a community, and like I said, this isn't accusatory. This is about noticing what triggers that instant priority switch in your brain. Number two, how can you reinforce some of the habits, plans, and tools that you know work for your longer term projects?
For example, I am a person who, if you put me down in my chair in front of my computer and you give me 10 to 15 minutes to get my tantrum out, I almost always will start writing if that's what I'm meant to do. I need uninterrupted time in order to get my writing done.
I can do it in snack size bites, but if I have those blocks of time, I will do it however. It is hugely easy for me to schedule over my own blocks of time if something more pressing or urgent comes up. If I need to take somebody to the doctor, if I need to cover a class. And sometimes that's appropriate, and sometimes that's absolutely what you need to do.
You're the boss of you, you know your own values, and I am in no way encouraging you to abandon those. But if you are always running over those blocks, then it might be worth it to see how you can reinforce them. For example, when I am really busy, I use something that I call the 24 hour request rule, where if people ask me to volunteer my time, my services, will just hold off on responding to the email for 24 hours because my first instinct, whenever I receive a request is to be like, yes, absolutely. Of course I can do that because it's true. Some of it is because I like being needed, and some of it is because I like being part of a community, but it often does mean that I go over my own boundaries.
I give more than I mean to, and I don't have enough left in the time or energy tanks to do the more self-directed work. By instituting that 24 hour pause, it gives me a chance to let that initial rush of, there's a problem and I can fix it, or they invited me and I'm so special. Ego hit. It gives it a second for that to dissipate, and then I can truly evaluate.
Okay. It's not that I can't do this, but is this the best use of my time and energy in this specific instance,
and the third question that I want you to dig into as you're thinking about how to shift some of that energy from the a Triple plus job that you're doing on campus into your writing is how can you support yourself when things are feeling uncomfortable?
I mentioned a few minutes ago that when I sit down to write, I need about 10 to 15 minutes to get over my tantrum about how hard writing is. You can go through any of my group chats, especially in the last couple of weeks. And there I am being like, writing is stupid and hard and I don't wanna do it, and does anyone know what my writing is about? And if they could just tell me and also write it down, that would be great. I write it in my free writing sessions. I scribble it on my notebooks and my journals. I need to get some of that foot stamping.
This is hard and uncomfortable energy out before I can keep going. And as soon as I scheduled that in and stopped trying to rush myself through it, I can settle myself down and write a little bit more effectively. You might need to schedule in co-writing sessions or add in a little bit of community or visibility.
You might wanna start a writing group or a writing or a work together at your campus or in your department. Add some accountability, add some visibility, add some external people. But if you know that there are things that are really uncomfortable for you, think about how to support that. Because often we're jumping to these other tasks, not just because they're quick, not just because they're helpful, but because they help us feel a little bit less.
Not skilled at something. I don't feel confident in my writing skills a hundred percent of the time, but I feel very confident in my ability to show up to a meeting and be responsive and helpful and be in community. And I like feeling good at things more than I like feeling not so good at things. So of course my brain defaults to saying yes to opportunities that I know are gonna give me that hit of dopamine in connection and checking things off in momentum that I'm really craving. So if it's feeling a little uncomfortable, instead of thinking, how can I get more comfortable? Because you might never, I've been writing as an academic for longer than I care to admit at this point, and it is still uncomfortable for me.
So it's not about fixing the feeling, it's about supporting yourself so that that feeling can pass. I love that you invest in your teaching. I love that you invest in your communities and no part of me is saying don't do those things. This is just a call to say, how can we shift some of that energy from the a triple plus parts of your work into the parts that might need a little bit more attention going forward?
Thank you so much, and I will 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!
6.1 intricate plans, instantly abandoned
welcome to season six of the podcast - this time, i'm going through the kinds of behaviors and patterns i see as a coach (and in myself, too) in a series i'm calling "just at me". we'll talk about how they show up, and how to shift them - with love and humor, of course.
this week is for any of us who are spending, ahem, a lot of time on making intricate plans - in our notebooks, planners, apps, and project management software, and then instantly abandoning them because life is going to life. if your weekly plan is already out of date when you're listening to this, this one is for you!
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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.
This season is called Just at Me already, where I go through all of the different kinds of people that I run into and have been myself as a coach for academics. And we talk about how to shift that if you want to. I.
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
today. I'm lovingly, gently roasting all of my favorite people who make intricate plans down to the second color coded, look beautiful, highly decorated. Everything's in there, and then they're instantly abandoned. Let's talk about why this happens and what you might wanna do to shift it.
So, like I said, I have been all of these people. I am still some of these people and I am an intricate planner. Planning is one of my favorite ways to take my anxiety out for a walk. I like to look at all of my tasks all in one place. I like to look at my calendar. I like to match them up.
Like if I can plan it and it's all there, then it's definitely doable, and then my anxiety calms down for a second. A famous story about me is that once in the middle of one of the busiest points of my PhD program, I was getting married in two or three weeks and about to start my comprehensive exams, which I took on the weekend.
So I would teach and work all week write my exams on the weekend, and then the very last weekend of that three. Weekend cycle. I got married, so I was busy to say the least, and I came into my therapist's office with a chart of two weeks of work, literally mapped out to the 15 minute increment. I was like, okay, this is when I'll go to yoga.
This is when I'll drive home. This is when I go to the grocery store. This is when I will make dinner. And I was so proud of myself because I was like, look like I scheduled in seven hours of. Sleep, and I included all of these things that are so great for my body and my mind and my therapist looked at me and then said, okay, but what if you hit traffic on day two?
Which is something that often happened to me on the way home, and I realized that there was so much effort and work that I went into. That went into making this intricate plan and I was going to have to abandon it at some point because there are always things that are gonna come up. There will always be things that are gonna shift that schedule.
Internal things, external things, and. I find that once you abandon that initial plan, you fall into one of two categories. You might be the kind of person who feels such urgency and such a need for the plan that you stop everything and you redo it. You get a new page of your planner, you get a new to-do list, and you start all over again.
And all of that effort gets shifted into this cycle of plan shift, plan shift, and there's less and less time for the actual work. Or you tend to be a person that once you make the plan and you have to abandon it, you avoid it. You put it in a drawer, you try not to think about it, you then drift oftentimes further and further away from what you meant to do because you are afraid to even look in and see what you had planned to do.
Both of those categories have their pros and their cons. All of them are emotionally driven and all of them make it a little bit harder to use your best energy toward your most important tasks, which is all that a plan really wants you to do. If you find yourself using planning to manage your anxiety and not your work, your tasks, your time, your resources, your energy.
Here are three questions that I want you to check in with yourself. Question number one is what I am doing with my planning, helping me see what the highest priority items are. Is your plan a. Thing that you can look at it in a glance and say, okay, if I only have time to do three things, these are the most important three things.
If I only have time to do one thing right now, this is the most important thing to do. Oftentimes our plans devolve into lists, and I'm not saying that a to-do list isn't important or that there aren't seasons where a bucket of tasks are all that you can manage. But if all your plan is is a list of things to do or a list of times and appointments, it can be really hard to see the most important thing to use your best time and energy for.
Okay. Question two. What is going to help you plan out the various resources that you have to manage throughout the week? Now anybody who's ever heard the advice to block out time for your writing has thought about resources, right? When do you have a couple of hours without any meetings or just an hour?
If you're like most of us, when do you have childcare? When do you have time in a library? When do you have time away from campus? When do you have time? That also overlaps with the hours that the bank is open that you desperately need to go to. Thinking about what kind of resources you have, and the resources are gonna be highly dependent from person to person.
You might want to manage your best brain energy. Maybe your most limited resource is time in the lab or time in an archive. But whatever those resources are, is your planning strategy or what you're doing to help kind of think through what needs to happen next, helping you see what resources you have and when they are and aren't gonna be available to you to the best of your ability.
There are some resources, like for me, as a person with a chronic illness, my energy is something that I have sort of vague inklings about, but I can't plan it in advance. Which leads to question three, what is going to help you in your planning process, assess what you have in the moment? This self-assessment step, I find, is the one that we overlook the most frequently.
So if there's only one question that you're gonna take away from this podcast and think about, I want it to be this one. What's gonna help you Check in with yourself. Am I tired? Am I hungry? Do I need to take a rest? Am I doing what I'm meant to be doing? Am I in a space where I have everything that I need?
Am I. Ready to do this right now. These kinds of questions might seem silly or like the answer's not important. Who cares if you're tired, right? Katie? Like we're all tired all of the time. But if you are tired and you know that you have space tonight to have a good night's sleep, and tomorrow might be a better rested day, and it might be more useful for you to do some of those low energy tasks like go to the grocery store or fold your laundry or update your citations or click through and grade your discussion posts, whatever falls into that category for you. This isn't about giving yourself a pass. It's about noticing what you are, what you are, and how you're feeling and matching up what you need to do with the you that has showed up.
It's okay if you make intricate plans. I myself this morning sat making a list that is a rainbow colored and a bazillion pages long because it helped me think through everything that needs to be done this week. But I know that that energy is going to help me see the most important things that are on my plate this week.
It's going to help me make decisions about how to use the energy that I have, and that's all that I need my plan to do. Bonus points if it's rainbowed, bonus points if it's sparkly and makes me feel good. This isn't about never planning.
You're gonna find the system that works for you. I'm just offering some questions so that you can use your best planning energy to have your best week. See you soon.
📍 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!