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!
13 - Why is it so hard to manage our nervous systems?
episode 13 - Why is it so hard to manage our nervous systems?
After nearly three decades of actively attempting to think my way out of anxiety and other nervous system concerns, I am here to report that it is hard! And it is especially hard to manage our nervous systems in a world where there's never enough time to do it, and we all believe that we'll feel better ONCE the work is done. This episode is about going body first to support our scholarship - because sometimes, our brains can't do it all.
Resources mentioned:
How to complete the stress cycle
Burnout book
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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.
In this week's episode, we're going to talk about something that I consider one of the secrets of scholarly work, at least sustainable scholarly work. And it's not your task manager. It's not your citation manager. It's not even the way that you outline your work. It's how you take care of your nervous system. The reason that this is so important is because it's one of those things that we're just not really encouraged to take a look at much less take care of throughout The day
and when those days the scholars could be filled with literally more work than you could ever complete in a lifetime, it makes sense that it doesn't always shoot to the top of our to-do list to check in with our nervous system, see how we're feeling and see if we could be feeling better.
Another reason that this can be really difficult is because so many of us have been conditioned to think that if we just finish our to-do list, if we just finished writing that chapter, if we just get that draft off our desk, If we just finish we'll feel better. And so I don't need to deal with my anxiety or the fact that I feel really shut down or lethargic because if I just work harder, I'll feel better.
But working through nervous system events often leads us to working less effectively. And most importantly it can cause some pretty serious short and long-term consequences. When I start working with a new client, one of the immediate first things that I do with them is I ask them to check in, okay.
How are you feeling? Not just today, but over time. And I am going to take you through the questions that I asked them and the experiments that I try with them. These are all things that I've used myself as a person. There are things I use with my clients, and I think that they're a really good set of tools and questions to help us get at what's happening with our bodies. When our brains are doing so much important work.
So let's hop right into those questions to consider. Number one. What does your body feel like when you're working? Do you have a protocol for monitoring how your body feels when you're working? It could be an app or a journal, or maybe it's just a little bit of a check-in before you stop or start a work session.
But what is your body doing while you're working? Do you even know. And it's okay if you don't. I hardly ever do. It's something I have to physically. Will myself to check in on. So. Question number two. Do you notice any trends in how your body feels. Maybe before or after work. The beginning or the end of the week, different points in the year.
Not just, how is your body feeling right now? Although that's a great place to start, but how does it change?
And lastly. The third question. If you have a list of activities that make you feel better. Exercise sleep walks meditation, a breathwork practice journaling. All sorts of things can be on this list, but do you consider those activities to be contingent on work? Do you put them in the category of great. If I get to it, it's a bonus.
Are they part of your literal workflow? how do these categories, the ways that you think about things like exercise or sleep or taking care of your mental health? How do the ways that you categorize them as things that you do at the end of the day, things that you do, if you get to them, make it easier or harder to do those things.
I've left a lot of time this week for the experiments to try, because there's a little bit of explanation needed, but I really hopeful that there'll be just as powerful for you as they have been for the people that I work with. And for me too. So the first experiment is called tracking your window of tolerance.
The window of tolerance is an idea that was coined by UCLA. Researchers early in the 2010s. I believe I'll have the exact dates of facts and figures in the show notes for you. But there's this idea that we all have a window, an optimal window that inside of it, when our nervous system is in this window, when our bodies are in this window, we're able to feel centered.
We feel grounded, things are easier. We're AB able to function to regulate. Great to self-regulate and be present. And what I mean. Our nervous system. I'm talking about that system in your body, that controls basically your response to external stimuli. So I have lots of resources in the show notes to help you get to know your nervous system a little bit better, but it's the.
The adrenaline part, the brain part, the anxiety part, the calm part, that whole. What is my body doing in response to the external sometimes internal stimuli. But if we all have this window where we're at our best, this optimal window. There's also nervous. System states above and below it. So if you're above it,
That's what we would call hyper arousal. And the waste that this can look and feel are high energy, anxiety overwhelm. It can feel a little bit chaotic for me in my body. This often feels like I'm bouncing between 15 tabs. I don't know what I'm working on. I can't stay focused. I'm really fidgety. I'm pulling on my thumbs. I'm not hungry. I haven't eaten in days. You know, hyper arousal is just like, everything is at an 11.
And obviously when everything's at an 11, we're not in that window of optimal function. But you can also be below the window. And this is a state that we would call hype. Oh, arousal. This can feel like being shut down or frozen or withdrawn. This is all a sort of feeling of, I just can't get myself to do the things I want to for me this often feels like I'm moving through quicksand or through mud.
Or I often describe it as like working on 10 X difficulty. That normally, if it's only one X difficult for me to get out of bed, if I'm hypo aroused, it can feel like 10 X it's just like, everything takes more out of me. So in this experiment, I would love for you to track your window of tolerance and how you feel above it, below it, write in it, moving closer to one edge or the other throughout the day.
I'm obviously not a medical doctor and nothing that I'm giving here is medical advice, but I found that if you can kind of dial into and collect some data, you know, my favorite about how you're feeling in regards to that window of tolerance, it can give you some really useful insight. Into what kind of conditions you're asking yourself to work through.
So everyone's window looks and feels a little bit different. There are a lot of reasons why some people have a little bit more resilience and are able to bounce. Within that window a little bit more effectively, there are lots of. KA neurophysical reasons and chemical reasons and history reasons why you might jump more easily than somebody else into hyper or hypo arousal, or why you might even get stuck in one of those spaces. But the first step, like any good thrive PhD experiment is to just notice it.
Okay. The second experiment is to, if you notice that you're outside of that window of tolerance to bring yourself or invite yourself back into it. Going through the motion, not as something that you'll do when you finish, but literally is part of the work. This is something that I often refer to as dealing with your nervous system body first, rather than brain first.
I know that when I first started paying attention to my nervous system, I would try very hard to think my way into a better zone. Right. I'd be like, okay, I'm going to set my timer. I'm going to think to myself, it's time to get focused now. And my body would keep doing whatever it was already doing because my brain wasn't powerful enough.
No one's is to completely interrupt the complex system of chemicals and hormones that anxiety or hyper arousal can feel like in the body. So in this experiment, I would love to invite you. To think about some of these techniques as something that you can do. As part of the work, it counts as part of your writing time or part of your teaching time.
But paying attention to which of these actually help you get back into a place where your work is more effective and it feels more supportive. So if you tend to be on the hype arousal side of the window this can look again like anxiety or overwhelm or just sort of that feeling of being amped up. Here's some things that can be really helpful.
First square breathing. So deep breaths that involve the diaphragm. I will put a link in the show notes about how to do this kind of breathing, but any kind of deep breathing can work, but hopefully one that is a little bit slower than your normal breath pattern. Brisk walking can be really great for this any exercise, but especially anything that uses both sides of your body.
Like jumping jacks or yoga poses or warm water can be really, really helpful. So, including any of those things, when you notice. That you're a little bit above, a little bit hyper aroused to try and bring yourself back down. If you find it that you're hypo aroused, you're underneath a little bit, shut down a little bit, slow a little bit quick, Sandy.
Here's some things to try smaller movements turning into bigger ones. So wiggling your toes and maybe moving that into a slightly bigger gesture where you shake your legs or kind of bounce them up and down on the floor. Anything that stimulates the senses can be really good for this. So lighting a candle, smelling it.
A strongly scented thing. Chewy or crunchy food can be really effective. Cold water can be really effective and anything that sort of like bounces your body. So if you're hyper aroused, it's a lot more vigorous because you're trying to let out some of that extra arousal and hypoarousal is sort of introducing a little bit into the system to kind of warm you back off.
So one is going down and one is warming up. But. Experiment with it and see what happened. What helps maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but it's worth a try. And most importantly, thinking about this as something that you are fully permissioned and allowed to do as part of your workflow. A lot of these things are things that I do throughout the Workday. So I include them as part of the poms. I think about my time when I go for a walk around the park, that's near my house, or get up and get a glass of water or do a couple of jumping jacks as part of my work and not something that I have to wait to do until I hit a certain point.
And that should do list. It's that integration into the workflow. That's really the magic here.
And last but not least. The final experiment is something that a couple of researchers who I'll talk about more in a minute call completing the stress cycle. So this is an experiment that's been derived from a book that I really enjoyed called burnout.
Dr. Emily Nagoski and Dr. Amelia Nagoski they're twins. They wrote this book about a variety of research and compelling studies around how modern people deal with stress. And why so many of us. Find ourselves in a state of chronic stress, sometimes even burnout. As the book title suggests. So the way they describe it is thus.
If a lion was chasing you. You would have an immediate reaction in your body. Your nervous system would kick in. You'd get a huge burst of adrenaline and you'd feel a lot of stress because a lion is chasing you. But you would also use that nervous system response to respond to the fact that the line is chasing you. So you might run away from the lion. You might freeze, you might hide, but.
Either way your whole body is getting involved in responding to the stressor that created a body event for you. So once the threat of that lion is resolved, you ran away from it, you hid from it, it left, you would feel a huge sort of burst of release. And this is something that we see in. In all sorts of mammals. If you see a zebra that's been chasing and it manages to get away.
It will literally kind of like shake on the ground to sort of release all of that extra stress. So that's the way that physiologically the stress cycle has evolved to work. However, if you're an academic and you submit a manuscript, which to our bodies can feel exactly the same. I have this thing it's so important. I have to get it done. It's due at five, but when you submit it, when you're done.
With it, you, you click the button. You really don't have that same sense of, wow. I survived a lion. Because you don't have a lot of sensory reinforcement that the threat is gone. It was just a couple of clicks and an email. And then all of a sudden, your body's just supposed to know that this thing you've been working on for months, or maybe years is completed.
So you really have to go out of your way to complete the stress cycle because we're not getting enough sensory inputs to know that it's done on our own. So some ways to complete the stress cycle.
Physical activity is one of the most effective and time efficient ones. So anything that raises your heart rate, but you can also use laughter. Deep breathing patterns can do it positive social interactions with friends, or even with strangers. Affection of all types, crying can be an effective release of the stress cycle and creativity.
So all of these things will help your body be like, okay, there was a wave of adrenaline and now I can release it. It completes that stress cycle. Instead of leaving you at that aroused state, even if the threat or the accomplishment has been completed. So in this experiment, think about building in some of those things to your natural workflow, whether that's daily or weekly, maybe it's twice daily, depending on how things are going.
But to regularly build in a release valve for this kind of stress cycle that we're all in, just because of what we do. And who we are and the world that we live in.
So in this experiment, you add one in, you see if anything changes, if it helps to kind of bring you back down into a place where you're closer to, if not in that optimum window, that window of tolerance.
I know this is a little bit different than some of the other. More scholarly focused episodes, but I thought it was really important to bring up because I've had just so many different clients come to me in the last couple of weeks saying, you know, I really wanted to feel more rested after break. I thought I was going to feel so much better. My anxiety is back. I am so shut down. It's I'm avoiding everything. And sometimes we can't think or use our, our scholarly tools out of that. We kind of have to go body first.
So I am right there with you incorporating a bunch of things to help support my nervous system. As I work through this bananas thing that we all call life, and I'm hoping that this week feels just a tiny bit more supportive. 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. 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!
12 - Why is it so hard to stop for the day?
episode 12 - Why is it so hard to stop for the day?
Why is it so hard to stop for the day (or the week)? One of the big benefits of academia is setting your own schedule so.....why do so many of us end up with a "feel like I should be working all the time, crash on the couch" schedule? This week's episode is all about figuring out how to stop for the day so that you can break (or at least, soften) the push/crash cycle that we all get caught in sometimes! Enjoy!
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. 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.
But first a special announcement. My writing groups are some of the most popular things that I do all year long. And if you're looking for a supportive place where you can both learn how to write more efficiently, more effectively and more persuasively as a scholar and also keep your projects on track, then my writing groups are for you.
Enrollment is open now and the groups are starting to fill in advance of our kickoff on January 11th.
If you'd like more information, especially about our payment plans or sliding scale, please check the link in the show notes. We'd love to have you join us for some of the most powerful work that you can do all year.
Welcome back to another episode of grad school is hard. And one thing that I know for certain is hard. Actually stopping, stopping at the end of the day, stopping at the end of the week, maybe at the end of the semester or the end of the year. But stopping is harder than it sounds like because most of the time grad school encourages you to crash. And a crash is not really a choice. A crash is something that happens when your body decides that you're ready to take a break.
So, what would it look like to stop before? The crash. Let's get into it.
So one of the reasons that the crash is so normalized, not just in grad school, but everywhere. Is because there's always more to do. Every episode of his podcast could be a critique of grind culture, but grad school is one of those places where grind culture runs rampant. Because there is something legitimately more that you always could be doing.
You could get ahead on your grading. You could read that extra article that came out. You could. Procrast to clean your apartment. You could answer those emails. You could send those networking requests. The list goes on and on because there are so many things that we're encouraged to do to get ahead. It's really hard to know when to stop for the day because there's no natural. Uh, yes, I finished my to-do list. It's time to take a break. And kick back.
It's also then really hard to know. What needs to get done today? What things would be great to get done today? And what are just some things that you should do? I don't know about you, but nobody sat me down in my first year of grad school or in any of my seminars and said, okay, here's how you manage your time.
Here's how you make it to do list. Here's how you parcel out projects. They just sort of assume that you know how to do that already, that wherever you came from before your PhD or M a program taught you how to do that. And let's be real many places. Didn't so it's so easy to not really know how to manage your time or manage long-term multi-month multi-year projects because nobody ever showed you how to do it, or even how they do it.
And it's really easy to get off of a normal nine to five or work five days a week and two days off or a work four days and three days rhythm. It's really easy to get off some of the more traditional work schedules. Because one of the things that actually is really valuable about academic life is the flexibility.
But with that flexibility means that there can really be a tendency to switch into a push push push, and then crash cycle. It happens to all of us. And in some ways it's baked in. What is the end of semester finals and grading crush, if not a push and then a crash. And when so much of our work actually ends up being deadline driven.
And it makes sense that there is a place and a reason that we're culturally called to push and then crash. But it does mean that if you happen to be an academic with a non-academic partner or children who are not yet in academia, or. Anyone in your life. Who's not necessarily an academic. There can be the sense that everyone else is stopping for the day and you don't get to because there's so much else that you need to do.
So let's dig into. Some of the questions that might make this a little bit more specific for you and give you a sense of where you might want to experiment with the strategies that are coming up.
First question. What is your normal sign that it's time to stop at the end of the day? Do you have a time in absolute cutoff time? Does it go by your to-do list? Does it go by one, you fall asleep on your desk or when you have a yoga class?
What's the normal reason that you stopped working for the day. If you do.
What stories do you tell yourself, or are you hearing out in about, in the world about how long other people are working? If I had to have you guess, how many hours do you think the other people in your cohort are doing? What about that random person on Twitter that you look up to? How about your professors? How about your colleagues? How much do you think other people are working?
And then lastly, what stories do you have floating around about rest at the end of the day or the week? Or the, between semesters. Do you have to earn rest? Or is it that your brain tells you that if I just get more stuff done, my break will be better. So it's worth it to cut into the end of the night routine to get just that little bit extra done. What stories do you have that are floating around about rest? What activates it and how you earn it?
Now the good stuff, let's get into three different experiments that you can try in the next week, two weeks. These are all, some pretty clear data-driven strategies that might give you a sense of what it would look like to incorporate a stop sign into your days or your weeks, both in an effort to get more rest, but also in an effort to counteract the narrative that any minute where you're not legitimately crashed out asleep on the couch.
There is a minute that you should be working on your grad school stuff.
Okay, first experiment. Attempt to set an end of the day quitting time. No, I don't have time to get into the historical and cultural context between the nine to five day. And I'm not even suggesting that you've worked eight hours, but instead of having a regular schedule, you set a quitting time where. Unless there is the world is literally on fire or my dissertation is due tomorrow. I stopped working. Or I put my computer away or however you want to define it to yourself. At say 8:00 PM. For many times in my PhD program, my quitting time was actually seven o'clock. It didn't matter. What wasn't done. It didn't matter what things were off track. I stopped at seven o'clock and I either went to yoga or I made dinner. Yes. I eat dinner really late. It's a problem. We're working on it.
But having that stopping time was helpful for my non-academic partner to know that I would eventually be stopped doing things for the end of the day, but it was also really helpful for me because when I thought about what I was going to get done in a day or a week, it wasn't that I thought I had 18 available hours. I just had, you know, until seven o'clock.
It made it easier to schedule things with friends to call my parents, to get workouts in, to go to the grocery store, to do laundry because I had a quitting time. That was more or less non-negotiable. You can experiment with it and it doesn't need to be seven o'clock or eight o'clock. Maybe you try it for just one night or two nights a week or the nights before you're teaching.
Or the days where you have a really bad pain flare experiment with it, but see what happens when you set a definite quitting time.
Experiment number two. Use an ABC list to get a clearer sense about what you must do on any given day.
I love it to do list. I'm always going to love it to do list, but what can be really difficult about it is that. There are some things that are really small start laundry, make a dentist appointment, read an article. Maybe now there are some things that are very big. Like great. All of the papers or write that chapter or revise.
Where it's not really clear if you're going to finish it today. Or tomorrow and setting up a task list that has more manageable tasks is a subject of a whole other podcast episode. But if you have just one long list with really big things, really urgent things, things that are coming up, things aren't due for months.
It can be really frustrating because you literally never get to the bottom of it. And that sense of crossing things off is multiplied when it's the last thing that you're crossing off for the day. An ABC list is a tool that actually gives you a way to parcel out the various different tasks into the, a column things that you must do in order.
To avoid serious and immediate consequences. Say your grades are due from the university tomorrow. You have finished your grades and get them processed. There will be severe and immediate consequences. If you don't get that done. But that consequences bit really could help an anxious brain determine the difference between this really does need to happen tomorrow. And.
That would be great if this could happen today, but it's not going to completely collapse my world. If it doesn't.
That second category. The bees are exactly that latter type of task. It would be really great to get the stone today. It would open up some flexibility for me. I would feel really good about it, but if it doesn't happen, the world won't collapse. It might graduate to an, a task tomorrow, but for right now, I have a little bit of flexibility.
And then the C task column. Is. Everything that you know, you need to do, but you are giving yourself a pass right there right then to not do it today. I talk extensively about how to manage this in a YouTube video that I will link, but why I like it and why I've included it here. It's because if you have all of your AI tasks, all of those things with severe and immediate consequences checked off.
You can stop for the day. Yeah, sure. Maybe if you have a couple of hours before your quitting time, you do a couple of BS or a couple of T C tasks. But if everything that has immediate consequences is checked off, then it helps give that little bit of an anxious brain. A chance to say. Yeah. Okay. All of the immediate stuff has done.
I can take a deep breath. I can watch some Riverdale. Get myself a little bit of rest.
And last, but not least is one of the things that I think is an underrated tool and strategy for anyone, but especially people who are working on ongoing projects. It's creating a shutdown routine. Now. The whole world, the internet is a blaze with techniques and different things that you can do in a start up routine.
Start with your morning pages, get your coffee, sit down with your journal, sit down with your planner, clean your desk. There's a thousand things that you can do. And morning routines definitely have a place, but shutdown routine can really, really make a difference. And it's something that a lot of us aren't really coached into doing.
I know that for me, my brain, as soon as I can feel the sort of like. Oh, cliff coming at the end of the day, I want to slam my laptop closed and run out the door and it doesn't matter. What mess I've left for myself. There could be a million different coffee mugs on my desk. It doesn't matter when I'm done, I'm done and I just quit. So what has been really helpful for me is instituting a shutdown routine.
Were about 15 or 20 minutes before I want to stop for the day. I do some of the following things. I get all of the coffee mugs. And I've been building up over the day. And I take them down to the sink. I check my emails for any last things that have come in that I want to address. I take a look at my task manager and make sure it's set up for the next day.
I cleaned my desk off of all of the sort of extraneous papers. Sometimes I unload the trash can not always, sometimes I fold up the blanket in my office, but not always, basically I try and reset everything to where I want it to be when I arrived the next morning. This gives my brain a chance to kind of decompress. I don't have a commute. Right.
And you maybe don't have a commute. and even if you do have a commute, those couple of extra minutes before you leave. Whatever your workspace, whether that's physical or mental before you leave for the day makes a signal to your body that says, okay, we're winding down. It's time to transition.
It's okay to stop working. And it also does future you a favor because when you get back to your desk or wherever that workspace is, It's not going to be covered with crusty old coffee mugs. A ton of post-it notes that don't make any sense to you anymore. And whole bunch of fires that you pretended didn't exist so that you could run out of the office.
It's really hard to stop. But in my experience, clients that learn how to stop well, Stop before they crash or at least stop before they crash some of the time. Have a shutdown routine that helps make it easier to not avoid their desk, have a lot more success working in a sustainable way. And like I mentioned up top, there's always going to be a little bit of a push and crash in academia. That's the nature of self-paced flexible work schedules that are majority deadline driven.
But if you can soften some of those pushes and especially softened some of those crashes, so that every time you come into the office, it's not an absolute sprint until your body collapses. And every time you sit down to work, you know that, yes, you're going to sit down and you're going to show up, but there will be an end.
It really helps ease some of that Sisyphean feeling of pushing that rock up the hill and never quite getting to the top. I hope that this episode finds you well and finds you stopping well, and I'll 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. 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!
11 - Why is it so hard to set goals as a scholar?
episode 11 - Why is it so hard to set goals as a scholar?
Oh wow - the first and only podcast episode about goals to be released in January! But, for real - scholarly goals are NOT like other, more concrete goals. Learn more about why, reflect on how goals have helped (or NOT) you in the past, and then stay tuned for three of my most popular strategies for setting goals that actually move you forward without destroying your will to live.
Mentioned in the episode:
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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.
But first a special announcement. My writing groups are some of the most popular things that I do all year long. And if you're looking for a supportive place where you can both learn how to write more efficiently, more effectively and more persuasively as a scholar and also keep your projects on track, then my writing groups are for you.
Enrollment is open now and the groups are starting to fill in advance of our kickoff on January 11th.
If you'd like more information, especially about our payment plans or sliding scale, please check the link in the show notes. We'd love to have you join us for some of the most powerful work that you can do all year.
I'm just going to get this out of the way right now. I'm a little basic and I also love new year energy. I love a fresh start. I love a new month and I especially love January. So I make no apologies for this episode about goals, setting goals, experimenting with your goals and figuring out what kinds of goals actually work for you as a scholar, because 'tis the season for goals, people so buckle up and let's get into why setting goals can be so difficult.
First off, there are a lot of goals that you could set and time is a finite resource. I made a draft, dump it out list of all of the things that I wanted to accomplish in 2023. And when I hit the bottom of page three, I thought, Hmm, I probably need a better system. Because I simply do not have enough time to do all of the things that I want to do that I could do that other people think I should do.
And goal setting can really feed into that "must do all the things. If it's important to you set a goal" frenzy that so many of us can feel at this time of the year or at the beginning of the semester, or any time that you kind of decide to make a fresh start. But as a grad student specifically, So much of the work of being a scholar is what I would call a vaguely defined output.
Sure you want towrite. So you set a goal that says, I want to write more this year, but what does that mean? Do you want to write more blog posts? Do you want to write more lesson plans? Do you want to write more chapters? Do you want to write more notes? Do you want to do more conference papers? What does it mean to write more? How much were you already writing?
So on and so forth. It is less clear than a goal like run a 5k in under 45 minutes, I have no idea if that's fast or not, but you know what I mean? It's a vaguely defined output. And so these goals can feel less achievable, less measurable. And let's be honest, a lot of things in academia do not stay done. So you might have a goal for the week or for the year to finish all of your grading on time.
Great you do that. You do it once. It feels good. And then like clockwork, more grading arrives. Or you have a goal to finish a chapter. You send it maybe even exactly on time to your advisor and they say, this is great, but now it's time for you to completely redo everything based on instructions that I should've given you the first time. So what you thought was an accomplished goal is actually just stage one in a potentially infinite number of steps.
So it's a little bit more difficult than I want to read 55 books this year, which is a noble and important goal. If that's what calls to you, but some of the tasks in academia just don't suit themselves. To the same kind of goal setting that you might see on an Instagram meme. So let's dig into some of your previous history with goals.
First question in our questions to consider section. What kinds of goals do you find most motivating? Are they external ones? Internal ones. Do you like to accomplish goals in a group? Do you like to do them all by yourself? Do you like personal goals or hobby goals or professional goals? What kinds of goals naturally?
Draw you in. Which ones have that sparkle right off the shelf.
Second question. What is one goal that you recently achieved? What helped you achieve it?
What did it cost you to do it? Did you have to spend all of your time and energy and maybe even a little bit of money. To get that done on time. Or was it relatively easeful. And what would you do differently if you had to repeat the process of accomplishing that goal over again?
And our third question, which for my money is the most important one, because it can give us some of the most clear data. What is one goal that you recently abandoned, changed or avoided altogether? Once you S you said it. How do you feel about it now? What benefits did you gain from changing your mind about accomplishing that goal?
And what did you learn about the goals that you might make in the process?
So hopefully that gave you some food for journaling food, for your walk food for thinking. Now let's dive in to what you're all here for some actual practical strategies that I find to be really useful when it comes to making goals, especially in the scholarly sphere. These are three things that you can experiment with.
To see if they make your process of setting goals a little bit more easeful, a little bit more practical, a little bit more actionable.
The first is to focus on what I call good, better, best spread for goals rather than an all or nothing goal. So here's an example of what I mean by this. It good, better, best goal spread could look something like, okay, I want to write every day that I am not teaching this semester. And so, instead of saying, I want to write for hours every day.
Okay. You instead say, okay, baseline. I want to write for one pom 25 minutes. A better case scenario. I write for two poms. And a best case scenario. I write for four poms. Instead of, I write for two hours either I do it or I don't do it. For all of my perfectionistic, all our, nothing thinkers out there. You know who you are. This can be such a powerful tool because if you're anything like me, You might have this goal, like, Ooh, I want to write two hours a day. And then you arrive on the first Thursday where a magical two hour block. It does not appear. You're busy. You have a dentist appointment.
You know, a myriad of things eat into your time. And you're like, well, if I can't write for two hours, I might as well not write at all. Boom. And then you've already kind of lost this every day goal. This big time structure. If you can define the spread. And instead say, okay, anywhere between one pom and four poms is going to be great for me to do today.
Then it makes it a lot easier to say, okay. woof. Today. I do not have two uninterrupted hours to write. So instead, I'm going to focus on just getting this one block in and it's going to be a good pom. I'm going to show up for it. I'm going to do what I can. I'm going to keep my chain. I love doing this and you don't need to use the good, better, best language. I sometimes use baseline stretch or challenge or best case scenario to worst case scenario. Your language can really shift around.
But the idea is that anywhere in that zone is good, as opposed to I either do the hard thing or I do nothing at all.
The second experiment that I would love to offer you. If you are looking for a new way forward with your goals is a time limited goal or challenge. I have long been using this idea that I got from Sarah Faith Gottesdiener about instead of setting goals for the entire year setting goals for a season.
I love this because I honestly have no idea what's going to happen in three weeks, much less in eight months. And so it's a much more manageable chunk of time for me to wrap my head around. Okay. These are the goals for the first three months of the year. This is what I'm going to focus on. This is what I'm going to practice.
This is what I'm going to experiment with. And I'll reevaluate when the next season comes, but for now, these are my resolutions. Maybe your way of time limiting your goals is to say, okay, for 30 days, I am going to try and write at least one Pomodoro on my dissertation chapter, no matter what. Just like a 30 day yoga challenge, all of the rage right now in January.
Or maybe you say, okay, for the next two weeks, I am going to set a goal of trying to walk for 10 minutes before I sit down and write, because it helps my brain. Focused so much better. If I get some of those wiggles out. And I'm not committing to do that forever, but for the next two weeks, when the weather is relatively reasonable, that's what I'm going to do.
These time limited challenges can really help you get out of this sense of, well, I set a goal for the year and it didn't happen by January 15th. Therefore I just have to wait the rest of the year to figure it out. It gives you natural places to reset. And it also acknowledges that lots can change in a day.
Much less than a year. So these regular check-in points give you a chance to experiment with adjust, adapt based on the data of what's happening and how things are actually going.
And last but not least. You could try and focus your goals on a practice or a habit or a routine, something that you do versus an achievement.
Here's what I mean by this. I have long desired to run a 5k. It's one of those things that I think I heard about it when I was 12 and I was like, Ooh, that sounds like something. That fun people, sporty people do and I want to do it. And so every so often I set a goal. That's like, okay, I'm going to run a 5k. And I download the apps and I start the training program.
And invariably by week two or three, I remember that I hate running and my body hates running. And we just never get there. So despite having this goal for more than half of my life, I have never accomplished it. But when I rearranged how I was thinking about that goal away from the achievement of running a 5k and into a practice, I instead had so much more success with a goal that said, I want to get at least 30 minutes of moving my body in no matter how that looks.
Every day that I work or every day that's possible or every day, that makes sense for me. And sometimes that 30 minutes was a yoga class and sometimes it was a nice long walk in the park. Sometimes it was a quick run on the treadmill. Sometimes it was a bounce on my trampoline and sometimes it was just gentle, stretching.
I did it in three, 10 minute bursts throughout the rest of the day, because I was too overwhelmed or sore or in pain to do anything else. But focusing on the practice, the thing that I consistently did and not so much the achievement got me, what I actually wanted to accomplish by running a 5k, which was moving my body more often for all of the physical and mental benefits that, that brings me.
It might look like for you that you, instead of saying, okay, I want to write a chapter every three months this year. You instead say, okay, I want to make writing a priority. And I want to write for at least 25 minutes before I do anything else during the day. Or I want to write for at least an hour on the days where I have childcare or I'm not teaching.
This could look like saying I want to read for 25% of the overall time that I allocate to my writing versus I want to finish all of the books in my, to read pile this year. It's about focusing on the practice. And letting that ground you, as opposed to the achievement, because the practice often gets you the achievement through showing up regularly and being committed to it.
There is so much pressure. And if you are like me gentle listener, you're arriving at this threshold of 2023. Excited for some new energy, but also a little trepidatious about all the things you want to do and how much pressure that can feel like.
I encourage you, no matter what experiment you try, or if you add a couple of your own that you approach, however, you structure your goals less as an evaluation of who you are as a person or as a scholar, but more a container to help you do more of what you want to do on purpose. I'm wishing you the happiest of new years and thank you so much for listening.
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!