2 - Why is collecting data about how you work so hard?
In our second episode, we talk about one of the most important pieces of the way I work: collecting data about what works, and what doesn't in your work life. If you've ever thought "maybe I'd like to know where my time goes during the day?", or "what hours actually do tend to be easier for me to focus?" but stopped because that sounded really hard and vulnerable, then this is the episode 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. We'll talk about why some of these things are so hard, and how that difficulty is showing up for you. Each episode has practical strategies to experiment with -- just because it's hard now doesn't mean it always has to be.
And stay tuned for more details about some free writing resources coming your way in November. But for now let's get into it!
A cornerstone of the Thrive PhD process is experimentation. I think it's really important that everyone figure out what works for them and under what conditions. To try things and see: does it actually work for you to get up early and write first thing in the morning, or does that experiment not work with the conditions of your specific life?
But one of the things that's really hard about experimentation is that it requires you to collect data. And I assume that some of you, if not, most of you listening to this podcast have some experience with the topsy turvy, never straightforward process of collecting data for your own experiments and research.
And I'm sorry to say that it's no more of a straightforward process when you're collecting data on yourself. So let's get into why this is so hard, and some things that might make it a little bit easier to notice and adjust when your own data suggests that it might be a good thing to do.
One thing that can be really hard about collecting data about yourself and the way that you work, especially, is It can be really hard to think about your own work habits without guilt or shame. I know that I carry -- even to this day as a coach who works with this stuff and other people all of the time --, a lot of guilt and shame about how hard it is for me to get started. See episode one.
And so if we already feel a little bit or a lot of guilt and shame about how we work, then it can be even harder to look at that directly, square in the face. So if I said, "Hey! spend the next week tracking where exactly your time goes every time you sit down to the desk. And I want to know how many minutes you spend on Twitter."
Well, if you already feel a little bit of background guilt about how much time you spend on social media, I guarantee that getting an exact number won't make that feeling any better. So it can be really hard to gear yourself up for collecting data about stuff that you're already feel pretty vulnerable about.
It also can be really difficult to do this sort of self-evaluation in a world where we're taught that it's important to be optimized all of the time.
It's good, of course, to spend time trying to improve the things that are tough for you or build skills where you don't have them, but so much of the wellness, support and coaching industries, quite frankly, are built on the idea that you're not doing it right. And you could be doing it a lot better.
We are all conditioned to spend a lot of time and energy improving ourselves and so if that's already just floating around in the soup, it can be really intense to spend even more energy noticing things about ourselves. -- especially if those things are related to behaviors that we might want to change.
If we're already feeling vulnerable about taking a deeper look, collecting our own data, it can also be a huge barrier and definitely a hard thing T M to actually find the time and space and energy to do it during the day. It can often feel like one more thing on the to-do list. Not only do I have to do my work, but I have to figure out how I'm doing it and how much time it takes and what my mood is doing?
No thank you! And of course it can really disrupt your workflow to start to do things like integrate a time tracker or record your mood. Or find a way to quantify your focus. But our felt sense of how those things are going, can really diverge from the actual reality of how those things are going. You might think that every day you sit down to write is the worst day of your life. And that might be how it feels in aggregate, but collecting the data and noticing that, "Hey! Actually, I feel pretty good when I'm working in my outline, but it's really revision that makes me feel like trash." Well, that's the kind of data that you can't really get, unless you're looking for it.
And so if you're on board with the fact that it could be hard, but valuable to collect some data, here are a couple of questions to consider about how you might go about that, and where you might want to start looking for data first.
Question One: what parts of your day, do you have the least visibility into? What are the projects, tasks or times where you just aren't sure what happens or at least you're not sure what happens with any amount of detail.
Question Two: If I could wave a magic wand, what is the one thing you wish you knew about your day? Where your time goes? What your writing pace is? How fast you read? Maybe it's how work shifts your mood. If there isn't just one thing that you want to know, maybe make a list and then rank it. What's the first thing that you'd like to know?
And lastly, what kinds of data do you already have? Do you use a step counter? Do you have a journal? What about a planner? What methods -- digital, analog, wearable -- work the best for you when it comes to collecting any kind of data?
The answers to those questions will help you know what kind of role data is already playing in your life and maybe what role you'd like it to have in the future. So, let's move on to a couple of experiments to try in the next coming week, maybe two, or whenever you hear this, that might make it a little bit easier to collect some data about you and your work.
Experiment one: pick a thing to notice. Before you start to track, download an app, get a new journal. (Although we'll get to all of that in a second.) Before you start to actually collect the data, practice step one, which is simply, and so complicatedly, noticing. Just practice, noticing. Maybe you notice how many times a day you click on Twitter?
Or you notice when you're on Twitter. Maybe you notice the difference between how your writing focus feels in the morning versus the afternoon. You don't necessarily need to write it down or capture it in any way. The skill of noticing is at the foundation of collecting data which is at the foundation of this experimental method so practicing that first step can only serve you well. And it's a great place to start if you're new to this world of real time self evaluation
Experiment Two:. Track one thing. And one thing only. This is, as you might've guessed a further step in the collecting data process. I find that it's really overwhelming to start tracking every single thing all at once. It's really big "January 1st. I'm a whole new person, time to totally redo my life" kind of energy.
So instead of embarking on a new chapter where you track your sleep and your focus and your mood and your water content, and how many steps and how many emails a day you answer and how much time you spend on social media.... you take a deep breath. And you pause, maybe you go back to that list of the things that you really want to know about your day and the way that you work and you pick just one thing to track.
I find that easier is better here. So jot things down on a post-it note. Maybe get a phone app if you're a big phone person. There are browser extensions that can help . Maybe you print out a tracker. But you track one thing and one thing only. And you not only get the data about that one thing, you also get some data about what ways are easier for you to track and which ones are harder to keep up with.
And experiment three. Potentially the hardest, one of all: practice -- and please know that, I mean, practice and its fullest sense of the word -- practice disentangling data from judgment. This is so hard, everybody.. I find it hard. My therapists have found it hard. People on earth find it hard to notice things about themselves without jumping to what it means. "I never get up before 11:00 AM. So that means I am a sloth pretending to be a human in grad school."
"I have trouble staying off Twitter. That means I'm the most weak minded, least disciplined person on the ole internet." It is so easy for us to not only notice things about ourselves, but wrap them into the bigger story of who we think we are, how our work feels and what we feel like we need to improve.
So for this experiment, practice noticing the data and seeing what stories come up. It is probably impossible - or at least it is for me - to completely disentangle the data that I gather about myself, from the stories that I tell about myself. But the more that I practice being an objective observer and noticing the time I spend on Twitter, just as I would notice how many times a certain word comes up in my archival research, the easier it gets to see when I'm not doing that, catch myself and release that narrative a little bit quicker than the last time. So definitely a hard experiment to try, but a worthwhile one, not just for grad school, but for life too.
I think data is really important. And lucky for you. I have a whole month where the data that you collect in the next couple of weeks is really going to serve you well, So part of what I do during AcWriMo, which is that month of free writing resources that I do almost every November, is we use your personal data to help build and strengthen a writing practice that actually works for you.
So if you have data that says that your brain really doesn't click into deep focus until after lunch, well, AcWriMo is going to be a place for you to test out what it means to do all of your admin work in the morning and really protect those afternoons so that you can use your deep focus time when your actual deep focus brain is in the building.
So get a jumpstart on an excellent at AcWriMo and practice collecting some data this week, maybe in the next couple of weeks. I promise that you'll be glad that you did 📍
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, where you can also sign up for AcWriMo 2022, a free month of writing support and resources. And if you're liking what you're hearing, please subscribe, rate, and review to help other people find the show. Thanks so much and I'll see you again soon!