2.13 define done-ness - it's less obvious than you think!
lately, i've been asking people to define not just the tasks they want to focus on - but how they'll know when that task is done. and it's a LOT harder than you might think it is! this week's episode gives you two strategies for figuring out doneness, and debunks a PERSISTENT myth about how other people know when they're done. get into it!
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If the answer to this question was easy. I wouldn't need to record a whole podcast about it. Let's talk about how to know when you are done on this 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 if you like what you hear on this podcast, you're going to love what I have cooked up for you in summer camp. More details in the show notes. Now let's get into it.
As part of the planning process for the sprint kickoff that I run in the summer camp program, I ask people to define not only what tasks they're going to work on over the course of the two weeks, but crucially how they know when that task is done. And you'd be surprised, or maybe you wouldn't be by how difficult an answer that can be.
If it were easier to know when things were done. I think a lot of academic planning, estimation, deadlines would be a lot easier because it'd be a concrete finish line. You're done preparing for exams when you've read all the books. You are ready to turn in that draft when it exists. But as we know those questions, aren't as clear cut. They aren't as black and white as we might want them to be. And that gray area invites in all kinds of new friends to play like perfectionism, avoidance anxiety, because your definition of done and everyone else's might be really different from one another.
So let's get into what kinds of tasks it's really important to define and done point for and how you might go about doing that.
Now. Raise your hand. Or don't, I mean, you're listening to a podcast, so I can't really tell, but raise your hand if you have ever thought. Okay. I wish that somebody would just give me a to-do list for everything that I need to do in order to have this project be done. Just give me a to-do list for my dissertation. I don't care if it's 600 things long. I want to see every single step so that I can check it out.
So that I can check them off one by one. It might take me years, but I will have my list and I will feel secure in my list hood. Now I have begged for such a list. I've had clients beg me for a list themselves and I regret to inform you that it really doesn't exist. And partially because there is no standard for when something is done.
For example. Take something like a draft of a piece of writing your advisor might leave you with a common refrain that says, come back to me when your draft is done and I'll give you some feedback and you say, great. That makes sense. As soon as the draft is done, I'll come back and then you work on it.
And you work on it and you work on it and then it's not really clear to you when it's done. Is it done when all of the pros exists, even if some of it is a little bit rough, is it done when all of the citations are there? Is it done when every table and figure is complete and in the document? Is it done when it's copy edited? Is it done when it's formatted or is it done at some other mysterious time that you don't really know about.
In just that one example, we can see where there are multiple invitations for your brain to jump in and either tell you that something is done way before it is. Or much more likely to stall you from the next step because you are pretty sure that your version of done isn't as good as what other people are expecting.
So in this week's episode, I really want to give you a couple of tools to define doneness. Not because they will protect you from feedback. Not because they are guaranteed to be the same definition of doneness as your advisor. Or your editor or whomever else you're submitting work to, but because they bring clarity to what can otherwise be a foggy finished line.
One way to measure doneness is to measure against the requirements. This is one of those situations where on paper, it seems really simple. Yes. Find the requirements for what a dissertation chapter must be, meet the requirements. And then I am done. But I don't know about you. Nobody handed me a list and said, here are the requirements for your dissertation chapter. It needs to be this number of pages. It needs to be this number of citations. It needs to be this level of formatted. People just said, come back when your draft is done and expected me to know what that meant.
Now. If you're in a program that gives you really clear guidelines. Enjoy them. Uh, feel free to skip ahead a couple of seconds, but if you don't. There's two ways to go about defining the requirements. The first way is to find a completed object that is similar to what you're trying to do. So in the case of a dissertation chapter, this might be somebody else's chapter that you're looking at, maybe an older graduate student who's a couple of years ahead of you is willing to share, you know, an in progress drafts so that you can see it.
But that's one way, find an example and then extrapolate backwards. If there's was 50 pages, then yours is probably going to be about 50 pages. If they cited 15 different sources, then you know, that 15 sources is probably closer to the ballpark than 30 or 50 or a hundred sources. It's not perfect.
But it will give you a ballpark estimate around about close enough estimate that will help, you know, when you've met all of the requirements. And if you meet the requirements, then you're done. The second level. The second way to know if you are done is to measure it against a deadline and your ideal plan.
So I sometimes refer to this is the Jedi mind trick effect. I had an advisor who only wanted to see what she described as polished writing. She didn't want to see anything in new draft version. She didn't want to see any bullet points or any placeholder references. She really wanted to see something polished, which meant that the space between when I could use feedback on my writing and what it was actually done enough to send to her was a pretty big space, months sometimes even. And so I had to build in a couple of extra deadlines and supports for myself, whether it was through a writing group or exchanging drafts with friends. Or doing what I would call a Jedi mind trick where I would finish up the chapter. I would know there were big holes in it. I would know that certain sections weren't as defined as other sections or that she might have feedback about things, but I would stop it at like 70% complete content-wise and then I would spend three or four days polishing up what I had.
I would go ahead and do all the formatting. I would add in the footnotes. I would make the tabs the way they were. We're supposed to be, and then I would send it to her. Knowing that it wasn't a complete draft, but it looked like a complete draft and it read like a complete draft. That way when she invariably had comments, I would go back and say, great. Thank you. That's awesome.
It was the only way for me to get feedback on my work in progress, and actually be able to revise it according to these requirements, that for whatever reason she was unwilling or unable to give me outright.
So, if you can't measure against the requirements, you can go with way two, which is do your best to make sure that it looks like it's done and acts like it's done. And then get that feedback. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. It doesn't feel good to send in work that, you know, could be better. But more often than not the earlier you engage the feedback. The earlier you engage the next step of the process, whatever comes after being done with the phase that you're on. So if that means being done with the research, it means the sooner you can start writing it up.
It might be that the sooner you get a draft, your advisor, the sooner you have comments to revise, or the sooner that you send something out to a journal, the sooner they send it back to you. With, you know, their journal Lee. Judgment. The idea here is that being done- even if it feels a little uncomfortable, even if you receive feedback that things need to be improved- is ultimately a much faster way to move through the process .
Because I'm here to let you in on a little secret. I have not. In all of my years of working with clients of working on things myself. I met anyone who has an internal switch that flips and says, ah, yes, this thing is done. This paper's ready. This chapter is complete. This dissertation is ready to go.
Everyone's doneness this is at least partially. Constrained by an outside force, whether that is your funding running out or your maternity leave or your advisor going off break for the summer, there's a thousand things that could create an external circumstance, but often your doneness is defined at least in part by this external circumstance that may or may not even be related to your work.
Your dissertation is done because you need it to be defended in August so that you can start your job in September. Your journal article is ready to go back to the journal because they asked for it to be backed by this specific date. So, if you're waiting for this kind of mysterious sense of satisfaction to know that something's done, then, in my experience, you're going to be waiting a long time. But overall. If you have a task that's on your task list this week, or for this summer, I really encourage you to take a couple of extra minutes and decide how you will know when that task is done.
It won't guarantee that you don't spend an extra couple of days polishing or that you don't have some sort of emotional wobbles at the end , worrying about whether this is actually good enough, but by defining doneness, you won't be waiting around for this abstract, somewhat mysterious sense that this is ready to go.
Now you will have an outside list of requirements, maybe written down, maybe in your head that will help you judge that doneness. And then you can be on to the next thing. Because if there's one thing that's true about grad school, that there will always be a next thing.
And if this is the kind of thinking that really appeals to you, then you might want to check out summer camp.
Summer camp is built around two weeks, sprints that are going to help you work more intentionally and also rest more intentionally. Join us for the sessions that work for your schedule. Skip the ones that don't and know that there are all sorts of benefits and perks. There are planning courses, live events, small group cabins, so that you can get to know people, A camp fire to work around chat, share resources and much more. The link in the bio has all of the information about various packages. That'll save you money, sliding scale payment plans.
Session one is already underway, but session two starts on May 29th. And like I said, these are going on all summer long. If you are interested in joining us. Use the code podcast for 10% off. Any sliding scale level or payment plan. Thanks so much. And I hope to see you around either the camp neighborhood or back here in this space 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!
14 - Why is it so hard to know how long things will take?
episode 14 - Why is it so hard to know how long things will take?
The question on almost every mind I encounter is why is it so HARD to know how long things wil take? As a scholar, you'll be asked to do a LOT of self-directed work and it's really hard to plan and adjust if you can't estimate how long something we'll take. We'll talk about how this shows up, and why some of the most common advice (add in buffer time) can really backfire. Get into it!
Extra resources:
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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.
You can get my free working more intentionally toolkit@thrive-phd.com or the link in the show notes. If you want to go even deeper with the work.
You asked, I listen a viewer request episode of this podcast, all about how hard it is to know how long something will take. This is hard for everybody. I don't care if you're a scholar. I don't care if you have never written a long form project in your life. It is really hard to know how long things will take. Here are a couple of the reasons why.
Number one. Optimism. We truly believe - and there's a lot of evidence to suggest that the more times that you do something, say, write a dissertation chapter or grade a final paper - that you get better and faster at it as you go along.
However. That sense that we're getting better at it can cause us to make optimistic deadlines for ourselves. Often, these are grounded less in the amount of time or the amount of energy a task will take and more in the, when we would like to be done ism of all of it.
I know that for me, I often say things like, ah, this should take me until the end of the day. Not because I know that there are X number of hours left in the day and I need X number of hours to do this project. But because I want to be done at the end of the day. So there's the sense of optimism and also a sense that we're building around when we'd like to be done versus when it will actually be done.
But it's also true that rarely are we focusing on one thing at a time, at least not over the course of a day or even a half day. So, yes, you may be objectively to getting faster at reading or writing, but if you are arriving to your appointed, writing time with, Hey. Real grading headache then. Yeah. It's going to take you longer because you have more things going on. So it's really hard to estimate because the way that you show up for the task is dependent on what things you did before, what things you'll do do later, and also the brain and body resources that for some of us really fluctuate.
As a person who has a chronic illness, I'm used to things really fluctuating in terms of what body shows up, what brain shows up. But, yeah, it's frustrating to not be able to know this'll take four hours, but four good hours four medium hours four I'm bundled up on the couch, but still theoretically working hours.
All of those different measurements are things that I work with, but they're also not the same.
The last thing is that specifically for scholars or people in academia? Things that are done don't tend to stay done. So you might be done grading for the semester, except for those two students that took an incomplete that you have to grade four or five months down the road. Things might feel really done and buttoned up with your manuscript. You sent it off to the journal and then it comes back for revise and resubmit. And you've got to find time in your schedule to do that. So estimating how long things will take is really hard because so many of these projects are overlapping happening at the same time.
And we don't have control over when actually they're done and acceptable to other people, because that's just the way that so many of these big complex projects work. It's not solely up to us.
Let's use these questions to drill down a little deeper into how and why, and for what reasons you're estimating your tasks and what goes into that. First question. What is your estimation pattern? Do you set a deadline? Do you tend to start with the task and break that into smaller pieces and assign deadlines for each of those?
Do you avoid a project until the anxiety becomes so intense that you have no choice, but to work on it. But what are your practices right now around estimating how long things will take and building that into your schedule?
Second question. How do people around you set time estimates? Are you working in a lab where not only are your deadlines pretty murky, but your PIs deadlines are pretty murky and the postdocs deadlines are pretty murky? Is your chair, somebody who says that they'll have something back for you on Friday or Monday, and then we'll also go dark for a couple of weeks when it's not done?
How are you seeing other people set these deadlines and what messages are you absorbing about that?
And last but not least. What data do you already have about what time it takes for you to do things? Do you have a planner that you can flip back on and see how long that you've worked on certain projects? Do you have a sense on your LMS, like canvas how long it takes for you to grade a paper or how many hours a week you're actually spending on a course site?
Maybe you have time logs, but what data do you have about how long things take you?
All right. The juicy stuff. Let's get into those experiments to try to see if we can't make estimating time just a little bit easier. So the first one is a suggestion that I have mentioned before, but in this case, I think it can be really helpful and it's keeping a time log. This can be as high-tech or low-tech as you needed to be.
I have done this with browser extensions, like toggle. I have set timers on my desk using a manual. flip timer that counts down for me. I've used pom trackers. I have used a printout to say start time, end time of various tasks, but you don't really know how long things are going to take you.
If you don't know how long it's already taken you to do a similar version of that task. So, yeah, it can be a little bit confronting to be like, wow. I thought that it took me 20 minutes to grade a paper and it actually takes me 40. But if you are spending 40 minutes and truly believing in your heart of hearts, that it's only taking you 20, that's never going to help you fix that estimation problem. And ultimately that's what we're trying to get at here. So the better data you have, the more realistic those deadlines can be.
It's all going to be based on optimism unless we base it on data. So even if it's a little bit sticky, Let's collect some data.
Number two. This experiment is for all of my out of sight, out of mind, people or out of this week's calendar out of mind, people. Where, if a deadline isn't in the zone where I call it sort of like immediately tangible for me, that zone is about 72 hours. I can hold about two and a half days in my brain at once. And then things start to get a little bit fuzzy. So if it's not due by the end of the week, or maybe even a little bit longer or shorter than that, but if it's not in that zone of tangibility, it doesn't make sense to me. So it really doesn't make a difference if it's due in a year or in six months or in three weeks, they're all in that "not now" time category, and I'm not focused on them. Your zone might be a little bit bigger or a little bit smaller, but if you have a zone where things are tangible or they don't exist, it can be really helpful to counter those disappearing deadlines. You can maybe have a scheduled countdown where it says, okay, two weeks until this happens three weeks until this happens, or maybe you have a monthly planning practice where you check in every week and say, okay,
These are the things that I'm doing here are the things I want to get done at the end of the month. How much time do I have to sort of do that?
Scheduling a weekly check-in can really help counter those disappearing deadlines. Sending update emails to your advisor can help counter those disappearing deadlines and even starting a practice where you keep a done log or a planner where you notice what things you've checked off, and also what things you're not working on can be really helpful to make those projects that just don't feel real to you because they're not in the right now time.
Feel a little bit more tangible. Of course, and there will be other episodes in there already been other episodes about breaking things down into smaller pieces or giving yourself little dopamine hits in terms of rewards to help you through those middle stages where you've planned it. And it's not quite due yet.
But anything in that zone is going to be useful.
Last bit, at least is an experiment that I personally love, but I know it can be a little bit tricky for people. So let's actually dig into when giving yourself some extra time before a deadline - when you're estimating, how long things will take- when that actually helps. And when it can be a little bit counterproductive,
So the first thing that anybody reads on the internet, if they Google, how to get better at estimating deadlines. Is the stock advice to add in some buffer time. If you think it's going to take you two weeks double it. That's common academic advice, however long you think it's going to take, make it two times that length that you actually expect to work on it.
I find that the math isn't that easy and different tasks in different people use different multiplication factors. But that sense of, yes, I do want some flexibility and if this plan will only work. If every day is perfect and every day has the exact right amount of hours and there are no snags and no difficulties. Well then it's not a very robust or resilient plan.
So I like to add in buffer points around my check-ins. So if I'm working on a project that I expect will take me two or three months. I might have check-ins every two weeks and I might schedule a buffer day at the end of every two week period to. To catch up where I don't schedule anything. I don't have anything on the calendar, but I, you know, work on all of the things that got left by the wayside in the intervening 13 days before.
You might want to schedule a buffer day. Regularly. I can sometimes have seasons where I have them on Wednesday afternoons and Friday afternoons where I just catch up. You might want to have a whole week or maybe two weeks of buffer time before you submit a really big draft or before a big conference where you're traveling so that you're not working right up until the last minute.
But thinking about that buffer time as time that helps you surf the unpredictability of it. So whenever you're doing those estimations, make the estimation based on the results of your first experiment, the actual data, and then add buffer to that to help you prepare for the unexpected.
The thing that actually really hurts people when they add in this extra time is that they assume that they can spend it. It's sort of like having a flexible budget. Where, you know, if it's the beginning of the month and you're feeling flush and you know that you have X number of dollars in sort of like your fun money, you might spend that a couple of times early on in the month because you're like, yeah, you know, it's early! I have fun. I'll get it from other places.
And I find that buffer time and flexible deadlines can be like that too. That the earlier you are in the process, the harder it is to spend that time responsibly, so to speak. So I like to add in a lot of support in the beginning and middle of the projects, like I mentioned at other episodes, so that I'm not spending that buffer time before I actually need it.
Of course, if you wake up and you feel like trash, or you have the completely unexpected thing happen and you lose two weeks of it, then yeah, go ahead and spend your buffer time. That's what it's there for. But having more regular, check-ins seeing what things you can do. Moving in smaller pieces more frequently can help you not spend it right away, especially if it's burning a hole in your metaphorical pocket.
But let's reiterate that this will be hard probably for the rest of your life until you figure out how to control time. And if you figure out how to do that, please let me know because I'm in the market to control some time. But. All jokes aside. This is one of the things that is most difficult. And I find that so much of the anxiety comes from the idea that, oh, I can't be accountable. I never meet my deadlines.
When in reality, the most severe consequences, the ones that feel really awful, come from us not communicating about our changing deadlines, not the fact that the deadlines changed at all. So I hope that a couple of these experiments might help you make more accurate estimations in the first place.
Might help you adjust when you notice that they're starting to drift, but most of all, they help you to build in some compassion so that if, and when you do get off track, because we all do, you know who to reach out for, who can help you and what things will be useful as you get back to where you wanted to be.
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. 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!
5 - Why is it so hard to push for a deadline?
episode 5 - Why is it so hard to push for a deadline?
If you're anything like me, you used to be great at deadlines! Undergrad you might have waited a little long to get that paper started, but you always clicked into gear and got things in on time....and then you hit grad school. I get into why it's really hard to get the energy to push for a big deadline - any why the tools you've used before may not work like they used to, but most importantly, what you can do about it to push in a sustainable way. Enjoy!
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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.
There's still time to join us in AcWriMo. And there'll be more details about that at the end of this podcast.
But for now, let's get into something else that's really hard about grad school: deadlines; and specifically finding enough energy to push when we have them. So if you're anything like me, you're probably in grad school, because some part of you was good at handling deadlines. At least when they're school-related.
Maybe you were good at studying at the last minute or spreading it out, but we got good at doing our work and producing it under time pressure. So why does it suddenly get so hard when it's a dissertation chapter? Or a conference paper or a journal article, or any of the other things that we have going on in grad school that in theory should feel pretty close to what we've done before, but in practice feel pretty far away.
So I think that pushing for deadlines is hard for a couple of reasons, but one of the big ones is that pushing hard toward a deadline when you're already working pretty hard is ...it's hard. It takes a lot of effort to keep pushing and pushing, because there's so much in grad school that you could be doing.
Even if there isn't a specific deadline, many of us walk around with this sense that we should be working on that journal article. We should be turning that seminar paper into something we can publish. There's something in a couple of weeks that we should really get ready for. The work is constant.
And it's not like it was on a semester or a term schedule where there were lulls built into the syllabus. If you want more work to do during grad school, you can always find it. So if you're already feeling that sense of "I should be working all of the time," a deadline isn't going to make that feel any easier.
Another reason that deadlines can really add some stress and pressure is because they reset the baseline for what we expect of ourselves during any given work week. Raise your hand (or don't, you know, it's a podcast,) but raise your hand if you've ever had a really gigantic Workday. You know, you were stressed out about something that was due the next day you got up, you worked for 10 hours, you finished it.
And you're like, "wow!. First of all, that was terrible. Let's never do it again, but also I just proved to myself that I can focus for 10 hours straight. So why aren't I doing that every other day?" When there isn't a deadline?" That's what I mean by resetting the baseline. A lot of us will pull out these kinds of magnificent feats of adrenaline-fueled achievement and then say, "well, I did it once. That's what I should be able to do every day no matter the condition." So we don't really get the sense that a push is anything special. A push becomes something that we expect of ourselves.
And lastly. I think that pushing for deadlines can be really hard because we don't always get a chance to take a break afterwards.
Or at least not a substantial one. There's always something else to do. You might be pushing for your own deadline and then have to turn around and get all of the grading done. You're working toward the end of the year, all of the deadlines tend to coalesce. And unless you really plan and advocate for a break afterward, there's always something that you could be doing that make it feel really hard to completely disconnect and get back to a place of feeling rested after a deadline push. So to go a little bit deeper into why deadline pushes might be a little bit tricky for you, why your expectations might be a little bit shifted, let's get into our questions to consider.
As always feel free to pause this recording, get your journal out. Maybe talk about it with a trusted processor or a friend, but here we go.
Question one. What reasons feel good enough for a push? Is planning a big push for yourself a special occurrence, or is it something that you do regularly? Put another way. How big does the deadline have to be in order for you to push?
Question two. What do you rhythms of work look like overall? Are you a push crash push person where you work 10, 12, even longer hour days for a couple of days in a row? And then you crash for as long as you need to? Are you a person who goes steady, steady, steady and then a push? Maybe you are an avoider who has other flavors of busy until the panic about something specific sets in, and then it's a mad dash to the finish. But what do your rhythms of work look like overall and how to pushes fit into that?
And our last question. How much room do you have or would you have for a push? Are you at capacity right now? Are you at capacity time-wise? energy-wise? support wise? How about your body? Your brain? Are you at capacity or how much do you realistically have to put toward an over the top, beyond your normal efforts, push toward a deadline or some other piece of important work?
So now that you have that own personal data about what pushes look like for you -- what you expect of yourself when you do them -- let's figure out how to push in a little bit more of a sustainable way. How do we experiment with what it feels like to push? Not as a matter of course, and not as something that we only do when we're panicked, but a tool in our toolbox that we can use with intention.
So experiment one. Define the duration of your push. So putting this another way - make a rule for yourself that you will not push without an ending. So the way that this might look for you is saying, "okay, I will push until this deadline, but then no further. I will stop doing my bananas hours, days, I will stop eating lunch at my desk after this push has done."
How will you define it? Is it toward a deadline? Is it a milestone of completion? I will stop pushing like this once I get a rough draft done. But as a side note to this experiment, I also encourage you to build a backup plan. So if you're experimenting with a time limited push, a duration limited push, it might be useful to make a backup plan. So what happens if the deadline's passed and you're not ready? How long will you go before you give yourself a break? If you don't hit your milestone for the rough draft, how much more will you keep pushing in order to get that milestone before you let yourself rest and recalibrate?
Of course, we're all aiming for best case scenarios, but it can be very useful to have a backup plan.
Okay. Experiment two. Change one variable for your push, but not all of them. Lots of people will sweep everything off the table for a big push. It can often be really counterproductive to stop exercising, canceling all your plans. You stop grocery shopping, you don't do the laundry. It can be counterproductive to do nothing but work during that season because suddenly all of your rhythms are different. Everything is new and you're making a million decisions a day!
Not just in your work life, but in all of the routines that you've kind of pushed off the table for this very specific season. So the next time you have a push. Try changing one thing at a time. Maybe you change when you write. Maybe you add a little bit of extra duration for those writing sessions. Maybe you add in more exercise before or after a work session, but rather than making a push about changing your schedules, your routines and your habits all at once, you pick one thing to help you get the most of what you need for that specific push..
So if you need more time, you add more time. If you need more energy, you add more energy, but you're changing one thing to see what the outcome of that experiment is rather than changing everything all at once.
And for your last experiment. Try and create a little bit of visibility. One of the hardest things, about a push -- especially a push in the sort of academic world where it seems like everyone is pushing all of the time on everything -- one of the hardest things about it is that it feels like a lot of effort and no one really notices, but you. And that that effort can be really hard to sustain without that external validation of getting that grant in, having somebody notice how much you're working.
So create a little bit of visibility for yourself. Maybe you make a sticker tracker and you add one for every 50 words that you write so that you can see the stickers fill up the page. Maybe you color in a square of an Excel spreadsheet for every pom that you do so that you know how many hours you've spent and you can celebrate it when you get to a hundred cells.
There are reasons that toilet training charts work right? We see the progress. We see the rewards. Getting in the habit of noticing and celebrating our own achievement can really help us get out of that loop of "this will feel real once it's accepted or once I get to this big external milestone," this is about cheering yourself on during the push, because the effort is what you want to reward and not necessarily, or not only the outcome.
This is a time of year when lots of people are pushing. So I am hopeful that at least some of the strategies that I've shared or the questions to consider will be useful to you. And otherwise, I hope that your work continues in a way that feels just a little bit more sustainable. Until next time!
📍 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!