5.10 reset or rest - getting past resistance
if you've ever sat at your desk, willing yourself to get unstuck, and not having it work, this episode is for you. i give you my two step formula, reset or rest, for getting past resistance, because belting yourself to your desk chair (actual suggestion i received once from a prof) isn't 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.
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
If you have ever found yourself sticky, distracted, frustrated, or worse, this episode is for you. This is a saying, , an anchor phrase that I like to use, which is called reset or Rest, and it is a phrase that I use when re. Comes up now. Resistance looks different for different kinds of people. It can be when you're sticky, you're distracted, you are spinning your wheels, you're frustrated, you can't land.
For some people I know it looks like scrolling. It could look like switching between all of your tasks all at once. It could look like tab hoarding. It's as individual as the snowflake, but almost all of us have. Experienced resistance when we just don't wanna do it or we can't get into it, or we can't seem to figure it out.
We're just stuck. Now, many people will tell you to push through and there is some merit in that advice, I guess. If you keep pushing, sometimes you do get there, but I find that it is a recipe for burnout much more frequently than it's a recipe for success. So push through methods often look like, ah, set a timer and make yourself stick to it.
I had once a professor who recommended that you belt yourself to your chair if you were finding it hard to write because you would eventually have to do it if you were belted to your chair.
Now. There is some. A theory behind strong arming yourself into doing something. But what I find much more often is that that actually feeds the resistance. It makes it harder to keep going because not only are you, trying to do something that's very hard, which is why you're experiencing resistance in the first place, I guess.
But you are also now stuck in this loop where you're trying to do a hard thing. You find it hard, you feel some resistance, and then you amp up all of those negative feelings. By forcing, by cajoling, by punishing, by removing good stuff. It just leads to more frustration, more fear, more anxiety, because if every time you sat down to write, you had to physically belt yourself to your chair in order to do it, then of course you're going to avoid that.
You're going to find it harder to get excited for the next writing session. You are gonna find it harder to settle. It just doesn't work long term. You might get a short term gain, you might be able to do it that time, but as a sustainable solution, a sustainable strategy, I find that it does more harm than good.
Now, I of course, am not gonna leave you there and be like, this thing doesn't work. Good luck out there. Bye. But what I do find that works is if you offer yourself the choice to either. Reset or rest. This is part of a loop where you notice that you're getting distracted. Where you notice that you're feeling the resistance.
It is difficult to learn how to do that because for many of us, it feels like multitasking. It feels like busyness. It feels like we're at least removing something. But if you find yourself just sort of circling the task and never quite landing, noticing that. Next, accepting that and being like, yeah, I'm feeling it again.
Harder than it sounds. A skill to practice and then taking action. So as part of this notice, accept, take action strategy, that last part, the taking action is where the reset or rest comes in. A reset is something that I love. I love a good reset. I've talked about it on this podcast before. I will share links in the show notes, but basically to quickly sum it up, there are two types of reset.
In my vocabulary, there's a soft reset where I just say to myself, okay, we're resetting. I like to couple it with something physical a little bit of stretching, some wiggling, doing a lap around my office, or maybe a lap around your workspace. Switching tasks and being like, okay, this one doesn't work, but maybe this other one will.
But you basically give yourself the permission. To reset the vibes. You reset them physically, you reset them in terms of what you're working on, what you're focusing on, but instead of just staying stuck in that loop of resistance, you do something else. Now, soft resets work for me through the like gentle resistance.
If I'm really not feeling it that day, if it's really sticky, then I often need what I call a hard reset. Now a hard reset is definitely body forward. You need to do something different with your body. In order for this reset to really take, I find my go-to is a shower. I basically am just declare it a new day and do whatever I'm gonna do In my morning routine.
I take a shower. I sometimes go as far as to getting a new cup of my favorite hot beverage. I can offer myself a snack, but basically I'm giving my body a chance away from my desk to do something different. I find that the more overwhelming the difference, like the difference between my shower and my desk is pretty big, so that works really effectively for me.
But going in through my body, giving it a break, giving my mind, my literal eyes, a chance to do something different, hear something different, feel something different, and then coming back to it often works so much better than trying to think my way through it. That reset acknowledges that I'm not doing what I wanna be doing.
It gives me a chance to breathe, do something different, and then try again. You might say, oh, I don't have time for that. But what I find is that it actually is faster to acknowledge that you're stuck. Take a step to a ameliorate that situation and then come back to it than it is to try and sit and soldier way, soldier your way through it, and figure out how best to move forward without taking an action.
Now that's the reset side of the reset or rest equation. But more often than not, a rest is actually maybe what you need even more profoundly. I don't necessarily mean going back to bed, although sometimes a really good nap can do it. There are lots of different kinds of rest. There's community, rest and creativity.
Rest and sensory rest. I will link to a great article in the show notes to help you explore the different kinds of rest, but giving yourself a chance. To replenish can often make much more of a difference than punishing yourself until you feel ready to work. My therapist likes to say that we're all just big toddlers and that a snack and a nap fixes most things, and I wish that that were less true.
But for me, it really is, and for you it might be as well. So give yourself that chance to say, okay, I am probably finding this even harder than normal because I'm tired, because I'm sensory overloaded, because I'm burned out because I had a really intense few days. I had a really intense situation this morning, and I need to rest before I can try again.
And like resetting where it often is faster to take care of yourself and come back to it. I find that adding rest into the flow of your day or your week can be much more effective than waiting until you absolutely collapse and then resting all at once. So taking some time to give yourself some physical rest to go and stretch your body, to take a fitness class, to have a snack.
All of these different things help you notice, accept where you're at and take action as opposed to just trying to do everything through your brain. This can be hard advice to take sometimes. It's definitely stuff that I am still working on, but when you find resistance, I encourage you this week to reset or rest.
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!
2.19 sometimes you can't avoid it - how to make working on vacation suck a little less
of course, i want everyone to take completely work-free time off this summer. but the reality remains that summer is often some of our most precious time as scholars. so how do we balance the immoveable deadlines of work with the very human, very necessary time off that can also come in the summer?
this episode has some of my best tips for negotiating boundaries, setting schedules, and dropping into focus mode quickly! enjoy!
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I wish that I could promise you that you will never have to work when you're traveling or away from your desk or on vacation. But if you ever need to, because academia does not sleep. This episode is for you.
📍 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. And in season two, I'll introduce you to various tools that might make the hard stuff from writing to managing your time to taking care of your brain just a little bit easier.
And make sure you check out the link in the show notes for a brand new summer planning template, all available for you for free. Now. Let's get into it.
Summer is usually a time for traveling home. Taking a little bit of a break. Being able to see people that you care about. Sitting in the sun. At least for me going to the pool. And there is also this alternate pressure. There is something so seductive about starting the new academic year. The new term with a fresh slate. And so many of us try to balance.
Work and time off during this time of the year so that we can get the best of both worlds a summer that's restful, and also a fall term or new academic year that isn't going to kick us in the butt immediately. Once it starts.
All of this is so complicated because we are often burned out after a long academic year. We're tired. We're exhausted. And we also put a lot of these human milestones, whether that's vacation with the family or time away or chores that we're going to catch up on or life projects to the summer season, too. So.
Of course, I want for you to take intentional time off over the summer. And that is a really good plan. And I wish that for all of us. However, if you can't just take two or three weeks to completely disconnect. Or you do have pressing deadlines. Let's talk about how you can balance both. How did, can you be a human and still get some things done over the summer?
The first area that I think is important is to think about setting boundaries with the people that you may be traveling with or with yourself. So step one is to communicate what you need as clearly as you can. When I go home to visit friends and family and I live about five hours away, so I don't get to see them as often as I like it is so easy to fill up every minute of my time.
With family. Visits with friend catch-ups with eating all of my favorite foods and seeing all of my favorite places. And if I need to get work done, it can be a huge obstacle because every minute of my waking time is filled. And I don't have any other brain focus hours available to do any work. So I find that it's really useful to let everybody know the impacted parties, so to speak.
As soon as possible that I'm going to need to do some amount of work when I'm traveling. Because it can help set that expectation in advance. I tend to say things like I am so excited. To be coming home or going on a trip with you are going to stay. But as you may know, I also have this really big deadline coming up.
I'm planning on working for an hour or two every morning when I get up. So between eight and 10:00 AM or between nine and 11. And after that, I'll be all yours. So two hours in the morning, but then the rest of the time is yours.
The second thing to think about is compromised. Is it easier to skip one whole day of festivities and get everything wrapped up, really get into that deep focus zone, get some time and some energy and some space to really focus. Or to scatter that work throughout your break. I like to make the bargain with myself personally, that if I worked for an hour or two every day, I can make the rest of the time present and focused with the people who matter.
With no phones or computers. But you might find that it's actually easier to just clear one day of your schedule and get that deep focus instead of trying to work more regularly. It can also be helpful to remind people that by skipping a quote-unquote low level event, you know, not the main thing, the wedding that you're traveling for, or the most exciting day of your vacation.
But by skipping something that's slightly less of a priority. You can be there for something that is a really big priority. The work is a moveable. Usually that's why you're doing it. I'm breaking the first place, but the timing of it can be flexible.
And lastly, inside of this boundary category, I really recommend that you develop a signal, your own personal signal for do not disturb. Will you be in a location where it is easy to be distracted? I know that when I try and work at home at my kitchen table, it is very difficult, both for me and for everybody else to respect that I'm working and not to be disturbed because I'm right there in the middle of it.
So develop a way for people to quickly and quietly know that you're in a focus zone without them having to ask if you're working. This could be a sign on your bedroom door that announces that when your door is shot, you aren't to be disturbed. Or wearing headphones or sometimes even leaving the space.
A little bit more on that in a minute.
The next category of suggestions that I have in this area are about setting up your work conditions quickly and easily so that when your work time does come, you can drop right in. Step one in this process is to use your work rituals.
My brain, for example. Associates certain visual and taste cues with working. Yeah, I almost always will sit down in a chair, put in a piece of peppermint gum. When I'm trying to get ready to work. So when I'm traveling, I make sure I bring that ritual with me. Proper mint gum, my playlist, sometimes even a candle. If I can manage it.
Even if I'm in the busiest airport. By brain slips more easily into these work modes because it knows that peppermint gum equals go time.
It might also be useful to find a work zone. Is there a new coffee shop in your old childhood neighborhood? Does your uncle have a sweet home office that you can borrow? Are the libraries open? Sometimes you have to go to a new location to totally escape the, Hey let's make cookies right now, or, Hey, do you want to sit down and watch the new episodes of love island?
Be creative. So many places have wifi or better yet wifi and coffee, and they can help you make the most of a few hours and really reinforce that space between vacation you and work. You.
Last in this category is something that all of us struggle with and for good reason. Trying to avoid some time traps. So if you only have a few hours to work and get really important things done while you're traveling or while you're on break. Then try to avoid the time consuming tasks that don't necessarily have a huge impact and move right into the high value work.
This might mean putting in a website blocker that blocks Twitter or Instagram or the new threads or wherever you hang up. Maybe even your email. And setting up a vacation autoresponder can give you some space to respond to emails in a delayed way. Maybe you put your social media on pause, use the short work hours for the most pressing high impact tasks to make it feel like you really accomplished something when you snuck away.
Last, but not least this category be mindful. Be compassionate. Because this thing is really hard to do.
First step, take a few centering breaths. Are you having a sticky encounter when you're rushing to finish this essay before the deadline feeling guilty, maybe about missing some of the festivities, maybe you are resenting every life choice that ever led you to be at your high school library, grading student papers.
Well, everyone else is enjoying time at the pool. We've all been there. Take a few deep breaths and get re-centered. Rather than letting all of that bubble up and be a low. Or maybe high key distraction during your work sessions, it sometimes can even help to free write it. Write it out in your journal or maybe even a Google doc so that you can revisit those thoughts or not afterwards.
Be compassionate with other people too. Many of us come from backgrounds that don't totally understand all of the work that goes into a grad degree. And it can be so vulnerable to explain that you're behind on a deadline. To others, it might look like a sequence of typing activities that you are doing into various windows.
But that work is important enough for you to take time away from other things to finish it. Being compassionate with others that might not understand how important the work really is. Can help you feel not quite as attacked when those well-meaning, but probing questions and comments, start to roll in.
And last, but not least be compassionate with yourself. Missing out on a long awaited and often expensive trip or travel opportunity, it can be hugely upsetting for me. I start to feel really guilty about not finishing things earlier about having to take time away from the people who I've traveled so far to see people who care about me and that I'm not having this like idyllic holiday season.
Where I'm really making the most of every summer minute, or even sometimes I can feel guilty about not resting enough.
Having to work during the summer break or any other break doesn't necessarily mean that one high priority is higher than the other. It just means that you have a full, complex life with values and roles that sometimes overlap. We all wish that we could take perfect summer breaks and be there for every minute of all of our exciting trips and time together with our families and loved ones, but finding a way to fit the work into the whole picture of our lives.
And try new things out to support ourselves can be a gift. All on its own. And if you're looking for a little bit of structure, I really do encourage you to join us in summer camp. We're about halfway through, but you can still sign up. We are taking new members all the way through the end of August. Don't forget to use the word podcast for 10% off. Thanks 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!
2.18 i'm back, baby! - coming back to your desk after time away
whether it was a vacation you looked forward to all year, or an unexpected break from work, coming back to your desk after time away is not as easy as it sounds. i give you two strategies for combating the dislocation that can happen, all through the lens of jet lag!
resources:
blog post on shut down routines
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Whether you're just coming back from a break or about to leave for one. Let's talk about how to ease back into your work when you get back. On this week's episode of
📍 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. And in season two, I'll introduce you to various tools that might make the hard stuff from writing to managing your time to taking care of your brain just a little bit easier.
And make sure you check out the link in the show notes for a brand new summer planning template, all available for you for free. Now. Let's get into it.
I'm a big fan, as you probably know, if you've listened to this podcast of taking a break and sometimes those breaks are super intentional, like time off in the summer. Or a vacation or time off in between terms. And sometimes they're a little bit less intentional. Like when you have to go away unexpectedly because of a chronic illness or an emergency, or just a sickness that you didn't predict.
And I talk a little bit about that in a blog post that I've put in the show notes, but whether you want to weigh on purpose or it was unplanned, you then do have to deal with the inevitable coming back. Now. I love coming back to my desk. Usually. If the break was long enough and I got enough rest and recovery points in the old system, I often am really excited to come back, but that doesn't mean that my brain and my body are totally in sync when I do. . So in this week's episode, I'm going to share some of my theories about how you can tackle this little bit of brain, body dislocation when it comes to being back at your desk.
I approach coming back to your desk a lot. Like I approached jet lag. Or that sense of time dislocation when you travel and arrive in a location, that's a different time zone from where you started. Now, if you've experienced jet lag, you know, that it is a mind body phenomenon. And I truly believe that transitioning back to work after time away is the exact same thing.
So there are two different ways that you can deal with jet lag. But either way it's going to happen. And whether you're traveling cross country or around the world, or coming back after a break. But I want to normalize the idea that very, very few people I know am hopping into their desk chairs the day after vacation wide eyed and bushy tailed and ready to go with no sense of kind of weirdness or sluggishness jet lag happens. You can prepare for it. You can shift your schedule, you can try and sleep while you're traveling. You can take a sleep aid and you're still going to be a little bit off and it's the same way with work.
When you get back to your desk, no matter how well you planned and prepped to be a way you're going to be a little bit off when you get back. And that's okay. So there are two strategies that I use to try and deal with the sense of just location when it comes to being back at my desk. And the first one is the similar to a way that I handle jet lag, which is trying to get my body on the schedule of the place where I wanted to be in this case, my work routines.
This is a common strategy for dealing with jet lag. Like I mentioned, You do your very best to keep your body doing the things that it should be doing. And it's new time zone. So if you fly and suddenly it you've lost a whole day, you might try and stay up until bedtime, even though you missed a night of sleep.
You might try to eat meals around mealtime. Your brain might not be fully there, but you just adjust the body as much as you can. And hope that the brain follows. In a return to work context. This looks like trying to keep your schedule. So you get to your desk. When you want to, you keep your meetings and you worry a little bit less about your brain following suit.
You do what's possible and your body helps to guide your brain back into work mode. So you might show up at your desk at the appointed hour, nine or 10:00 AM. You might check your emails. You might noodle around on the internet. You might make sure that your files are backed up. You might do any of that kind of fluffy admin work that sure. Isn't the big stuff. But the goal on that first day of the trip is just to try and adjust to the jet lag.
And the goal on that first day back is just to try and get your body where it wants to be. Strategy too. Is to worry a little bit less about the schedule and focus on the tasks. Sometimes you get to your new location in a jet lag context and staying up or keeping a schedule, just isn't an option. When I was in grad school, my dad lived and worked in London. And when I would fly from California or from Michigan to visit him most times I would try really hard to stay up and beat the jet lag. But sometimes probably two or three times, I just crashed out. I got to his flat, I fell asleep for eight hours.
It's not ideal. But it's what my body needed at that particular time. In a work context, this looks like identifying the most important task or to. And working on that, no matter when or where you can get to it. So if you know that you really need to get that syllabus finished up this week so that you can send it to your department, you don't really care if you do it hat 10:00 AM like you would ideally do. Or if you work on it from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM, because that's when your brain feels like it's ready to function.
You worry less about the schedule. You'll get there eventually. And you focus on the tasks and stuff.
Either way in either situation. I really encourage you to give yourself time to adjust. If you are planning a really big trip, you save for it, you plan it. Ideally, you're not going to do the most important things. The things that you're really most looking forward to right away when you land, because jet lag will make it harder.
If you can't wait to visit that museum and you do it straight off the plane. Chances are you're going to be at least a little bit dislocated, if not full, improper suffering. So it's the same way. If you're getting back to work.
In the same way, if you're getting back to work and there's a way to avoid it, warming up with some adjustment days can be really helpful before you launch into the most important stuff. I often spend the first day back catching up on emails, doing some planning and getting things organized. If I tell myself the day after time away.
That. Okay. You must arrive at your desk five minutes before the appointed time drink one cup of coffee and then do the hardest thing on your list. When I am already feeling a little bit weird, a little bit off. That's a sure fire away for me to spend that whole day being annoyed and frustrated.
And it's very unlikely that I'm going to get that writing done. I know though that the second day is a little bit better. And the third day's a little bit better too.
Basically all of this boils down to no matter how you left or how long you've been gone coming back to work as a transition. And transition's always go a little bit more smoothly when you support yourself through them, rather than wishing you weren't going through it. I know there are very few things that I can just think my way out of and that post vacation slump is one of them.
So, if you need to reread the whole chapter that you were working on to get oriented. I do it. If you need to plan a half day and then take a nap in the afternoon planet. If you feel. The way that you feel that first hour back is not the way that you're going to feel forever, but it is the way that you feel in that moment.
I encourage you to support it and be open to it. Changing. And if this is the kind of advice that you're looking for, or if someplace with a little bit extra support. Fun and excitement sounds like a great way to ease back after your first half of the summer. And I encourage you to check out summer camp. We are starting our fourth session on June 26th, but you can join us every other Monday.
As we are going to be going all summer long. So, if you're looking for something with a little bit of support to help get you back to that desk, after some expected or unexpected time away, we would love to have you. And make sure you use the code podcast for 10% off. Thank you so much for listening 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!