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!