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!
referenced:
I am giving away one FREE 45 minute session with me a month to anyone who reviews this podcast on Apple Podcasts! Leave a review and I'll announce the winners in the last episode of the month, and in my newsletter! Thank you so much for helping to spread the word about the podcast!
Summer Camp has officially kicked off!! Learn more about it here - and don't forget to use the code PODCAST for 10% off any sliding scale level or payment plan!
-
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!
2.12 it'll bury you if you're not careful - staying on top of the reading
everyone says they're trying to stay on top of the reading - but is that possible? and if so, how do you do it???????????
this week's podcast is all about reading - how to manage it, how to plan for it, and how to think about it so it doesn't bury you alive!
resources mentioned:
AI tools for mapping citation networks
oliver burkeman on reading piles
his book four thousand weeks
I am giving away one FREE 45 minute session with me a month to anyone who reviews this podcast on Apple Podcasts! Leave a review and I'll announce the winners in the last episode of the month, and in my newsletter! Thank you so much for helping to spread the word about the podcast!
Summer Camp has officially kicked off!! Learn more about it here - and don't forget to use the code PODCAST for 10% off any sliding scale level or payment plan!
-
Everyone says they're trying to stay on top of the reading. But. Is that possible? And if it is, what does it look like? Let's get into it in 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 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.
One day I'll get on top of the reading is something that I've heard a thousand academics say, and I've said it myself too. I can even feel that way about the rest of the reading that I would do for fun. One day, I'll catch up with that series.
Let's be real, the amount of things that we need to read versus the amount of time that we have available to read them - it's one of the biggest mismatches in all of academic life. There's just simply too much to read and too little time to do it. So in this episode, let's talk about some strategies for how to make time for the reading, how to figure out what to actually read and how to organize it all so that you're not doing duplicate reading when you don't need to.
The first thing that I want to say about reading is that the goal of reading as a scholar, as a grad student, as a person who is working in a specific field is not to memorize everything and be able to spit it back word for word, anytime anybody asks you about it. That's often how we think about reading, even if it's unconsciously, because that's how we were taught to read as undergrads, read this, it'll be on the test. Read this. You'll need it for your paper. As a scholar though, you're going to read it and you might need to use it later and you might not, or you might need to use it for six different things. And you're probably going to have to reread it for each one of those use cases, because what you need out of it, it's going to change.
With all of that different context, how do we know what the goal of reading is? I am here to propose that the goal of reading is actually to make a system so that you know how to find that specific piece of scholarship again, when, and if you need it.
Let me say that again. The goal of reading is to know how to find whatever you're reading again. Now, the reason that I frame it this way is because so many of us are obviously working under the fear of not being able to memorize things- totally legitimate- and probably also beside the point. Most of us outside of very specific defense related situations are going to need to spit back word for word or even all that accurately the main details of pieces of writing. Most of the time, you're going to be able to go back to your notes, go back and actually reread it. And knowing that is going to set you free.
The goal of reading is to know what you're reading so that you can find it again. Find it, when you want to teach with it, find it when you want to cite it, find it when somebody is talking about something and you have the perfect paper for it. You don't need to read so that you never need to look at your notes again. You need to read and create a system to organize your reading so that when you need something, you know how to find it relatively efficiently.
So the goal of reading is to find it again, how practically speaking, and this is a practically speaking type of podcast. Are you going to be able to do that?
So the first thing I'm going to share with you. Is, I think you should lean into your citation manager. And I'm going to link in the show notes to the episode that I did all about citation managers. But if there's one place that I recommend that you organize your reading. I tag it. Keep notes it's with your citation manager, because it's going to help you in a lot of different contexts. I myself have in my citation manager, tags for taught with this; could teach with this; in this specific chapter; in this research project; this is a library that I share with a collaborator. And I need to be able to find all of those things again, and for the way that my brain is set up, it's useful for me to go back and be like, okay, what was that thing? That I thought I might want to teach with. If I ever needed to find an example for X media theory. You're going to want to set it up the way that your brain works. Maybe that's by year of publication or by lab group that does specific things. You might tag it by kinds of protein. I don't know your project and your brain are yours.
But your citation manager can do a lot of that heavy lifting for you and bonus, that means you don't need to print out or store a whole bunch of physical notes, books, print-outs of articles. You can imagine how quickly that stuff adds up.
Now, if you want to stay on top of your reading, you do at some level need to schedule some time for reading. And if you need a permission slip, I'm here to grant you one. I -Dr. Katy Peplin founder of Thrive PhD and host of this podcast- write a permission slip for you to schedule some amount of time. -An hour a week. An hour a week. A half day a month, your schedule is going to be your own - I give you permission to schedule time to do reading that isn't necessarily linked to any specific project writing piece that you're working on, class that you're teaching, et cetera.
A lot of us need to read more broadly than we have time to. And the only way to have time is to schedule it in and protect it. Now. For every three wide reading blocks that I schedule in, I probably worked through and did something specific for two of them. But that one where I sat down and I read that book, I was really interested in, or that article that everybody was talking about in variably enrich my scholarship.
Yes. I might not have directly cited it in the piece that was due in another week, but an informed, I thinking gave me something to talk about at conferences. It let me know where the conversations in my field were located and it was fun to read. In a way that reading for a specific paper or for a syllabus can often feel really purpose-driven and dry. This felt more like why I went to grad school in the first place to read cool ideas and have a little bit of time to sit with them.
Another way to stay on top of your reading is to follow the footnotes and see what other people who are writing things that you're interested in or citing themselves. Now I'm not an AI expert, but I will link in the show notes to a variety of different tools that might help you map this kind of footnote or citation.
Desk density. Footnote or citation density. This is more effective in some disciplines than others. It really depends on sort of the mechanism of how your various different journals of note organize and tag and make things searchable. But if you want to look for clusters really quickly, so that you're concentrating your more, expansive reading efforts into places where there's a lot of activity. Some of these AI tools are going to be really useful and helping you map that and locate really rich areas to read.
And my last tip for staying on top of the reading is to reduce the amount of effort that you need to. Put in when you're reading. Is to reduce the amount of labor that you're expecting of yourself. When you read in this sort of more broad, more expansive. More general way. If you have a system where every single PDF you read, you have to create a one page summary and outline all of the notes and color code it and tag it in six different ways and make sure that everything gets then re uploaded into the cloud.
Then, yeah, nobody's going to really want to sit down and do that with their quote unquote fun brain power on a random Friday afternoon. But if you build a note system, as you go. Where you download something, you store it in a folder in your citation manager. You read through it and add a couple of content tags after you skim it so that you can find it again when, and if you need it.
Now that's not zero labor, but it's also not so much that it's going to put you off the task. When you shift and think about the goal of reading is not to perfectly document every single idea in it so that you never have to reread it again, but to make it so that you can find it when, and if you do need it again, can really help you limit the amount of extra labor that you're putting in and give you a chance to read a little bit more quickly, a little bit more playfully and stay on top of that reading a little bit more easily than you might've when you were expecting yourself to do two hours of labor for every PDF that you touch.
The last thing that I'm going to leave you with in this podcast is an idea that I have taken from Oliver Burkeman, who wrote a very interesting and provocative time management book that I will link to in the show notes, but he talks about the reading pile and he's not specifically writing to academics here, but I think that there's a lot that's really useful for academics in that is to think about your reading list as a river, rather than a bucket. So, so many of us have carry around big buckets of things that we want to watch, do, read. We have huge bookmark folders. We have systems. We have lists. We have phone apps to keep track of everything that we want to consume information wise.
And when we think about it as a bucket, we think that we have to either empty that bucket before we can add new things into it. Or we have to, you know, always be dipping from that specific pool that we've preselected ahead of time. And if you're anything like me, the bucket only gets heavier. As you read new articles, read new books, explore new areas. There's just more and more things to read.
He instead, counsels people to think about these lists as a moving river that you're going to pop in and out of said river at various times in places. And the goal is to select things that feel relevant to the you in that river, in that moment. So say you're having a really big sort of interest level in a specific area in your field.
You dip into the river of literature available, you read a couple of things in it, and you don't worry so much about what you were interested in two weeks ago or what everybody else is interested in. You come in, you feel like the water is fine. You feel the current moving and then you step back out again.
That can give you the permission that you need to not feel like you have to catch up or even necessarily stay on top of the writing.
And that is how you know that this particular episode title was a bit of a bait and switch by me because I actually don't think that you can stay on top of the reading. I encourage you to think about reading as a type of professional development for yourself. And a little gift to that inner scholar, that little kid scholar inside of you that really just likes to read and likes to think about these things in the field and started this degree in the first place.
When we think about the reading as not something that we have to quote, stay on top of, or that is a to do list that never actually ends, but instead something that we engage in when we want to feel refreshed, when we want to think about new ideas, when we want to connect with the larger conversations happening around us.
Then reading gets a little bit more fun.
And if you like the idea of taking some of the regular scholarship labor that we all have to do and thinking about it in a way that increases fun and reduces guilt, and you're going to love summer camp. I invite you to click the link in the show notes and learn a little bit about the program that I have created.
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!
2.11 - don't fall into the traps! - summer planning strategies
what's like new year's eve, but even MORE if you're a scholar? the first day of summer - or any time when you're released from other jobs and "get to" focus on your writing!
however, summer can be a trap! and if aren't careful, you can end the summer even more exhausted than when you started - so listen in for my top three strategies for planning a summer that gets stuff done, but not at the expense of your health and well being.
plus find out about my new summer camp - and don't forget to use the code PODCAST for 10% off!
resources:
PS! if you are user "DakotaPlains" you won a free session with me! email at hello@thrive-phd.com to claim your free session!!
-
Nothing says summer, like great weather, endless blue skies and a completely unreasonable plan for how much work you'll get done to catch up and start the school year off right. Join me for some tips on summer planning 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 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.
If you're listening to this podcast, it's probably because you are having some sort of a schedule change in the next couple of weeks. For American and Canadian academics specifically. Although I'm sure that our colleagues around the globe and in various different hemispheres also have a similar situation.
The academic winter term is ending. The seniors are graduating, the campuses are emptying out. You can finally park again. And for most academics, that means that the drumbeat has started. Time to catch up on your writing. Time to catch up on your work. Time to get done. All of the things that you said you were going to do over the school year, and really didn't get a chance to.
So this week, I'm here to share a couple of my top tips for summer planning in the hopes that you won't make the mistakes that I did. And you'll set yourself up for a summer where you not only emerge having done the most important things that you wanted to do.
But you also arrive in September, not burned out, having pushed all summer with no thought about recovery. So let's get into it.
If there's one thing to academics, that's even more seductive than new year's energy. That belief that starting on January 1st, we're going to be a whole new person. It's the idea, belief, traditional system, near religion that almost all academics at some point have subscribed to. That as soon as the semester ends, as soon as the term is done.
You're going to be a whole new person. You're going to write in the morning, you're going to meal prep. You're going to get on top of your reading. You're going to finish all of those journal article drafts that have been languishing. Just everything about you is going to change. And what was hard will be easy again.
Now I have seen that happen. And psychologically speaking, we do know that anytime that you have a big schedule change, For example, like teaching full time during the semester, and then suddenly not teaching once the term ends.
Anytime that you have a big schedule change like that the conditions are ripe for some behavior modifications. It makes sense, right? If your schedule changes, then it means that you have new time cues during the day, perhaps new body cues, maybe new family routines, or rhythms that are going to help you support changes.
When one thing changes, it's easier to change other things too. But I am here to caution you as someone who has gone into many as summer believing that I would be radically different person. The instant that I walked out of class that last day before grades were due. I do have to counsel you that, unless you're really intentional about it, I've seen one or two things happen over the course of the summer.
Option one, that's pretty common and I'm here to normalize it in case it's ever happened to you is: you submit your final grades, yours schedule changes, and you take a well-deserved break. Maybe it lasts for a week, maybe it lasts for a little bit longer. You catch up with all of those friends, you take that family trip and I'm not here to knock any of that.
But very quickly, one week off, it turns into two and then the avoidance monster shows up. . And it starts to feel a little bit harder every day that goes by to get back into those routines and let's face it summer isn't going to throw you back into those routines. There will be places to go and pools to swim in, I hope! I'm an ex lifeguard, so I love pools.
Summer, isn't going to send you an engraved invitation that says, Hey, wouldn't it be great if you got back to your dissertation right now, it's just not in the nature of the season. If you come back, you're going to have to plan for it. So that's option one. Time drifts. And then all of the sudden it's maybe mid July or maybe even mid August, and you're really crunching to get everything done, including prep for the next semester.
Option two are people who hit the ground, running the instant that their final grades are in. They start their new schedule, their new exercise program. They have a rhythm for how, and when they check in with their friends, every moment is scheduled.
And they push, push, push. And in the beginning it feels amazing. Like those first couple of days of January where your resolutions feel really good and really supportive and you're like, yeah, I'm doing this.
What I see happening with these friends though in the option two category is that they push it a little bit hard, a little bit fast, and they ignore the fact that the school year is long.
That they are tired and they need a little bit of time to refresh and recharge and that just replacing one type of work, all consuming, overwhelming for another. Isn't going to get them that kind of sense of accomplishment and rest that they really need. Yeah, it does feel good to get that article draft submitted to get that syllabus done, to get back on top of your email or your reading list.
But all of those things in and of themselves, aren't going to make you any more rested or any less burned out. They're just going to mean that there are new things on your to-do list. Because if there's one academic truth that I know to be true, it's that doing things begets more things to do.
So whether or not you fallen into category a or category B in the past. Or maybe. A unique category. All of your own, here are my top three tips for planning a summer that's going to allow you to be flexible, to be spontaneous, but also give you enough structure so that you're not overwhelmed by all of the things that you could do.
Number one is to book your fun, your recovery, all of your human things in first. Most of us are drawn to this profession because in some way or another we're happier, we get a little bit more done. We enjoy the structure and the routine of the school year.
And while it can feel good initially to completely throw all of that routine and structure to the wind, eventually a little bit of structure can go a long way into making sure that you're the most supported, effective person that you can be. So why not build that structure in with things that are going to help you recharge recover, or maybe even dare? I say it have a little fun this summer.
Maybe you sign up for a yoga class that is a little bit earlier than you might want to, but it gets you out of the house two days a week and you then get to stay at your favorite library afterwards to work a little bit on your dissertation. Win-win it's a structure and it's a movement and it gets you out into the sunshine. We love to see it.
Maybe you set up time to visit your family and take that long lost vacation that you've been talking about. Maybe you set up a schedule where you don't work on Fridays, where you take every Monday off this summer. Work will expand to fit the container that you give it. And so the first step in summer planning that I've seen be really effective is to limit the container of time available for work. If you wait until the perfect moment presents itself, to go on that vacation, to go camping, to do any of your other COVID safe, public health friendly activities this summer, it's never really going to present itself.
There's always going to be something more that you could be doing. So book those things in first and let the rest of it settle in around those blocks of fun and care.
My tool number two is actually to break the summer down into smaller, more comprehensible parts. I'm a big fan of splitting it into two weeks sprints. And I'll tell you a little bit more about that at the end of this podcast, but splitting the summer up into chunks, whether that is an initial phase of recovery after a really tough term, it could be two weeks where every two weeks you focus on a different section of the chapter that's due.
Or maybe you structure it around something like Wendy, Belcher's how to write a journal article book. There's thousands of ways to structure it, but breaking it down so that it's not just summer one giant monolith can really help you because a, it means that you have smaller chunks to plan for. And planning is always more effective and more accurate the smaller the chunk and the closer we are in time to it, just by nature of the unpredictability of life. So go ahead and break it down. This also has the added benefit of giving you a lot of different chances to restart. Say you have one, two weeks sprint this summer that doesn't really work out as planned.
Okay. You've still got a bunch more that you can try, but if you don't really break that summer plan down into different pieces, it's really hard to find that natural reset and evaluation point because it's not built in. You're going to have to wait until there's some sort of anxiety manifested crisis, like a late deadline or a meeting that you didn't expect to force that evaluation.
Better the evaluation, you know about and can do willingly, then the stuff that comes at the bottom of the oh man. I'm so behind valley.
And the third tool that I'm going to suggest is having a tiered system for your goals. It is really easy to say that you're going to do everything this summer and maybe you personally will get everything done this summer. In that case, I applaud you. I'm excited for you. Please tell us all how you did it.
But most of us will anxiety dump a huge long list of things that we even under the best of conditions don't have time and energy to do. At least not in the sport. At least not in the space of that ever shortening time between terms so. Rank that list, maybe it's most important to you that you get this dissertation chapter done so that you can apply for fellowships in the fall.
Second tier of importance is getting a syllabus. Prepped and third tier is starting to work on that collaboration that isn't really doing until the end of the year. Meaning December, but could be helpful if you get a jumpstart on it this summer. It's not that all of those things aren't important. They are. It's just that if you are finding yourself in the middle of a summer push and you know that you've only got two hours, it's going to be so much more beneficial for you to work on the top tier goals. Than it is to sort of spend the first couple of weeks, maybe even months. Either straight up avoiding your work or working on all of the things that are great, but they're ultimately nice to haves. They're not going to be those real powerhouses that make a difference and move you forward in a tangible way.
As I mentioned up top, these tips are coming from my multiple summers of experience where I have really great intentions and it just don't have the structure to support me in making all of those dreams come true. At least not at the expense of my own rest and recovery, that almost all of us need after long draining academic years.
If any of this sounds good to you. I invite you to click the link in the show notes and check out summer camp because summer camp is built on these three and a couple more of my key summer tenets.. There's two weeks sprints so that you can sign up for the weeks that you're going to be working and not feel like you have to pay for the weeks that you aren't.
There's sprint planning and check-in and evaluation courses that you can do on your own time to help you get clear about your goals, small groups, that we're calling cabins, that you can meet friends, hang out with and all of the fun and silliness, that's tied to the theme, which changes every camp session. I would love to have you there. So please use the code podcast for 10% off. You can book a four pack of sessions and get one free. Maybe you book for the whole summer and get two free or just sign up week by week as you feel like you need it.
I'm offering summer camp on a sliding scale, and you can learn all about it at the link in the show notes. Don't forget to use the code podcast for 10% off. Thank you so much. And I can't wait to 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. Every month, I'll select one reviewer for a free 45 minute session with me. So please subscribe, rate, and review to help spread the word about the show. Thanks so much and I'll see you again soon!
2.10 shape the future - outlines as a writing tool
outlines can be frustrating - how do i know how to structure an argument that i haven't written yet? this week's episode talks about the two things i think an outline ACTUALLY does for a scholarly writer, and how to use them alongside drafting for more support. these aren't your high school roman numeral outlines!!
resources:
workshop with dr. henry on may 10
I am giving away one FREE 45 minute session with me a month to anyone who reviews this podcast on Apple Podcasts! Leave a review and I'll announce the winners in the last episode of the month, and in my newsletter! Thank you so much for helping to spread the word about the podcast!
I am so excited to be hosting Structure as a Path to Sustainability with Dr. Kate Henry on May 10 - a one stop shop for overcoming overwhelm and lighting the way towards completing your next self-directed writing project. Enrollment is open now! My newsletter subscribers are the first to hear about all the new stuff (and the sales) so hop on the list here!
-
But Katy. How can I write an outline if I don't know what I'm going to say yet? And other existential thoughts 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 if you rate and review this podcast, by the end of the month, you'll be entered to win a free session from me. More details at the end of the episode. Now let's get into the good stuff. .
There are so many things in graduate school that I find people just gloss right over. Of course, you know how to do an outline. Of course, you know how to build out your citation manager.
But what's the point of this podcast. If I don't go deep on some of the things that people assume, you know, and you might not.
And an underrated tool in that stable is the outline. An outline is simply put a roadmap of a piece of writing that you make at some stage during the writing process. Now to be clear. This isn't something that I think you have to do. But it can be an excellent scaffold around which to build a longer writing project.
Most of us are familiar with outlines that we take from writing that's already been done. So you might've been taught to outline as a reading and notation tool in primary or secondary school. You know, the really formal thing with the Roman numerals and the different subheadings, they look really impressive.
And there are a way to sort of organize information. And to many. Writers. Or are given the advice to make an outline for a piece of writing that they're working on to help them see the structure. The content ahead of time. Now. This is great advice, but it's only great advice. If you really think about what the outline is doing for you inside of the writing process.
And that's going to be a different job than the outline that you did of your AP us history textbook in high school.
So to my mind, an outline is a tool that helps you do two things.
Number one, it helps you decide what content is going to be included and crucially what content is going to be excluded. At least on a tentative basis. This is harder than it sounds. Many of us have so many ideas. And when we sit down to do things like draft a chapter, work on a conference paper more often than not, you have more ideas than you can explain fully in the container that you have.
It is more common than I can tell you that people sit down to start to write a dissertation chapter. And that first chapter one of five planned turns out to be the whole thing, because the information is so rich and you have so much to say, and you just don't know how much content fills a dissertation chapter until you start to write it.
So an outline is a preliminary step. Where you say, okay, here's what I think I'm going to cover. I am going to include this part of my experiment, but not this. I'm going to focus on these tables, but not those I'm going to use these two case studies and leave those for a future project.
The first step of an outline is that it helps you decide what's in and what's out of the current writing project. And the second function of an outline is to give you a sense, again, a tentative sense, but a sense of the structure and ordering of the ideas inside of set writing container.
Once you figure out what content is in and what content is out, an outline will also help you make some choices about what things to introduce. First, second, and third. For many of us, the writing process isn't particularly linear. We don't start at the beginning and we don't stop at the end. So an outline can help you see.
Like a quick map. Where you are in the space of the overall writing project to help you keep your bearings.
If you like me have trouble starting at the beginning of a document, then an outline can be really helpful because you can start where it feels the easiest. Maybe the first case study is something that you already typed up for a guest lecture that you gave. Great. An outline will help you see, okay. Here are the things that need to go before it, and here are the things that need to go after it.
Now that you've pitched you on the concept of outlines. I want to introduce a couple of ideas. About how you might be able to use them that aren't quite as formal and as detailed. Because the real problem with an outline is how do I know how to structure the chapter when I don't know what I'm going to say in it yet?
And I also just want to normalize that as we write, many of us do change our minds. We go on tangents, we bring things down. And an outline can also help you see where you've deviated and decide. This is good enough to make it into the overall plan, or is this something that I want to set aside for another project?
Your outline might be as simple and schematic as five key themes on post-it notes that are up on the wall that you shuffled the order of as you start to write. It might be as detailed as a multi page document with headings, subheadings, and the quotes from your literature and research sources embedded right in so that when you sit down to write, all you really have to do is fill in the prepositions around all of that information.
But no matter how detailed or not the outline is, hanging on to those two criteria, --that it's a tool that helps you decide what's in and what's out. And what order things can go in-- helps you see the outline doesn't need to sit at the beginning of the process only. In fact, I often like to think about outlines as sitting, if not literally, but metaphorically in a separate dual window with your writing. So that even if you've zoomed in to a specific section, you have the zoomed out version to help you stay oriented.
Outlines actually act a lot more like a living document. They are something that you keep updated so that you can tell how the writing process is going. For example. Maybe you made a really detailed outline and you sat down to write out the first section of it in a first draft. Amazing. In your head, you thought that section of the outline would take you two to three pages to write on paper.
And by the time you're done drafting, you actually have 10 pages. That's an excellent point at which you can check in with your outline and say, okay, If this has 10 pages of content in it. And I have five more sections. Then I'm going to have a 60 page chapter. And maybe that's totally okay for you and your advisor.
Or maybe they're expecting something along the lines of 30 pages. That outlines going to help you say, okay, which of these parts do I need to stay together? How can I rearrange the structure? Can I move some of this to chapter two or chapter three? It's like an architect's plans that are changing as you encounter the construction.
There are always bumps and hiccups. And having that updating blueprint can make it a lot easier to not lose your footing and make sure that you're keeping an eye on your time and energy budget.
If this is the kind of advice that's demystifying some of the writing process for you, then I really encourage you to click on the link in the show notes about the workshop that I'm doing with Dr. Kate Henry, next week, May 10th. 2023. I am really excited because one of the things that we're going to be doing is going into the process of making template documents.
And roadmaps for the specific thing that you're trying to write. These are skills that don't get taught very often. And I find that tools like this make a huge difference when you're working on longterm independently, guided writing projects. But whether you join us or not, I hope that this gave you a few ideas for thinking about. Maybe brushing off those Roman numerals, get your post-it notes out and start thinking about an outline as a responsive, Rather than predictive, Tool.
📍 Thank you for listening to Grad School is Hard, but... You can find more information and resources in the show notes and at thrive-phd.com. Every month, I'll select one reviewer for a free 45 minute session with me. So please subscribe, rate, and review to help spread the word about the show. Thanks so much and I'll see you again soon!
2.9 don't let the title fool you: my fave book on academic writing
if there was a pantheon of academic how to books, this one would be at the top - but the reasons i love it so much might not be the ones you think! tune into this week's episode to hear which book basically acted as the seminar in academic writing i never got in graduate school!
resources:
the book i recommend (no spoilers!)
my colleague dr. lisa munro teaches a seminar based on the book that's enrolling for this summer!
downloadable guide to running your own writing group
join the community for just $5 a month!
I am giving away one FREE 45 minute session with me a month to anyone who reviews this podcast on Apple Podcasts! Leave a review and I'll announce the winners in the last episode of the month, and in my newsletter! Thank you so much for helping to spread the word about the podcast!
I am so excited to be hosting Structure as a Path to Sustainability with Dr. Kate Henry on May 10 - a one stop shop for overcoming overwhelm and lighting the way towards completing your next self-directed writing project. Enrollment is open now! My newsletter subscribers are the first to hear about all the new stuff (and the sales) so hop on the list here!
-
Part workbook, part writing seminar, part demystifying the academic publishing process. Let's talk about the one book that I recommend to most scholars in this week's episode.
📍 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 rate and review this podcast, by the end of the month, you'll be entered to win a free session from me. More details at the end of the episode. Now let's get into the good stuff. .
I imagine that if you are listening to this podcast, some part of you likes to read books. One of the genres of books that I can not get enough of are the kind of, how to manuals of whatever thing I'm into. So if I am into knitting, I want to read every book about how to do knitting. Gardening you name it. But this interest was really kicked up a notch when I was in grad school, partially because I was one of the first people in my family to go to graduate school. Therefore I didn't understand a lot about it.
And the book that more than anything gave me the foundation to better understand the academic writing and the academic publishing process. And that book..dun dun dun dun... Is: Writing your Journal Article in 12 weeks: a Guide to Academic Publishing Success by Dr. Wendy Laura Belcher.
If there's a Pantheon of academic, how to books, this one sits right at the top level. Most people have heard about it. And that's one of the reasons why I'm recommending it, because I try to mostly talk about things that are free or easy to get your hands on. And the writing your journal article book has been come out in a couple of different editions. It was revised recently. There are copies a plenty in libraries in your fellow graduate students, bookcases. So I'm very confident that you'll be able to get your hands on this, if not for free than for very close to it. So that's step one. This is a popular book.
I want to dispel a misconception, but at least I had, when I was going into this book,
I looked at the title and I thought, cool, this is a book that will let me write a journal article. From zero, no research done to published or sent off to a journal in 12 weeks.
Actually this book starts from the premise that you already have a draft of a journal article. So in case you were thinking that you would be able to research, outline, edit, revise, and then submit an article in 12 weeks, you might be able to, but this book walks you through it. At a slower pace.
And that's one of the biggest misconceptions about this book. It's not a start from zero to publishable article in 12 weeks. It start from draft, but that isn't to say that it's not really useful because it is. So if you're an early career graduate student, then this might be a book that you use to take a seminar paper into your first article draft or a conference paper, or maybe parts of your master's thesis or an undergraduate thesis. Any draft that you have laying around is going to be useful for this book, but make sure you have that draft before you start.
Other things to know about this book, you can do it by yourself. It's also written and gives you tips for doing this book with a group. I know lots of groups of graduate students that have met over the summer and worked through this book together. A group accountability, definitely aids in the process, but there's nothing that you can't do by yourself.
And it has different chapters. So it starts with things like setting up your writing schedule, figuring out the time maybe going through and selecting the presses that you want to submit to. It walks you through all of the steps that you would need to take that draft of rough writing and get it ready to submit to her journal.
Including the choosing of the journal, the submission process, writing a letter to the editor response letters. Et cetera.
So you will have to make some adjustments for various disciplines. The book is probably best geared toward people who are writing in the humanities or social science disciplines. And a lot of the examples draw from that. It's a little bit harder with some of the STEM disciplines.
That isn't to say that there aren't useful things in this book for scholars of any type, just that other disciplines that aren't fitting as neatly into the kind of example, pool might have to work a little bit harder to adapt it. Now.
I want to share with you. What I actually think is the real magic of this book, which is the fact that it is for my money. Some of the most concise. Actionable. Practical writing advice that you can get about academic argumentation anywhere.
And that is a hill that I'm more than happy to defend.
I never took a graduate seminar on academic writing. And it seemed like something that everyone just assumed that I had had before I arrived at my PhD program. And so when people were saying things like, oh, you know, this needs to be restructured, or I wish that the argument were a little bit clear, a baby PhD me had no idea what that meant. And this book was the first and most important step in me learning what people meant.
It has excellent chapters around revising, thinking through various structures. Editing on a sentence level, working with the literature, sharpening up your argument. All things that were talked about around me and I never fully understood until I read this book.
It's also a really useful starting point for understanding the academic writing process. If you come in with less background knowledge about how say a journal article is born, then this book has really useful practical strategies, exercises, and explanations of what it means to actually be peer reviewed or how you pick a journal or what things you need to prepare in order to submit to the journal or how you find out what their requirements for publishing are.
There are so many things that are hidden in the academic graduate school curriculum. We just assume that you know, what a peer reviewed article is, how to find a top journal and how to get published in it.
And this book has a lot of easy to read. Easier to understand, plain-spoken explanations about the academic writing process.
I think anyone who likes a little bit of structure to move projects forward would absolutely benefit from at least leafing through this book. Even if they don't necessarily follow the exact strict 12 week model. I know that one of the things that I miss the most when I started working on my dissertation was the fact that I didn't have like a syllabus like this week do this, this week, do this. And this book gave me a syllabus of sorts that I could follow. And I ended up adapting a lot of it as I worked on the longer pieces, like my dissertation.
So if you've been missing that kind of weekly assignment energy from your seminars, This book can be a good replacement for it.
So many of us actually need structure. And it's really hard. To know how to, for example, break things down into smaller steps if you've never done those steps before. And what I appreciate the most about a book, like writing your journal article in 12 weeks is that it gives you a template for figuring out what the various steps are in a project that can be as abstract and difficult and intimidating as writing an academic article.
And if the idea of making sustainable repeatable structures for long-term writing projects sounds like something that you could use some support in. Then please check out the workshop that I am running with dr. Kate Henry in early may. All of the details are in the show notes, and I would love to have you consider it.
But either way. I hope that you have a great week and thank you so much for listening.
📍 Thank you for listening to Grad School is Hard, but... You can find more information and resources in the show notes and at thrive-phd.com. Every month, I'll select one reviewer for a free 45 minute session with me. So please subscribe, rate, and review to help spread the word about the show. Thanks so much and I'll see you again soon!
2.8 decision fatigue will get you: menus for planning with flexibility
making decisions can be really hard - and when you're a scholar, a lot of your choices are important, and they all have the same level of urgency. menus are one of the best ways i have found to reduce overwhelm, and provide structure with flexibility - learn all about how i use them in this week's episode!
resources:
a blog post on menus
information about decision fatigue
I am giving away one FREE 45 minute session with me a month to anyone who reviews this podcast on Apple Podcasts! Leave a review and I'll announce the winners in the last episode of the month, and in my newsletter! Thank you so much for helping to spread the word about the podcast!
I am so excited to be hosting Structure as a Path to Sustainability with Dr. Kate Henry on May 10 - a one stop shop for overcoming overwhelm and lighting the way towards completing your next self-directed writing project. Enrollment opens soon, and my newsletter subscribers are the first to hear about all the new stuff (and the sales) so hop on the list here!
-
If you're on team decision fatigue, if you can't figure out what to do. If you default to the easiest or most urgent thing, today's episode has strategies just for you.
📍 Welcome to Grad School is Hard, But... A Thrive PhD podcast. I'm Dr. Katy Peplin and this is a show for everyone who's doing the hard work of being a human and a scholar. And in season two, I'll introduce you to various tools that might make the hard stuff from writing to managing your time to taking care of your brain just a little bit easier.
And if you rate and review this podcast, by the end of the month, you'll be entered to win a free session from me. More details at the end of the episode. Now let's get into the good stuff. .
Today's episode is focused on a tool that I myself use every single day. And I have found that it is one of the most flexible and dare I say fun things that I or my clients have introduced into their day-to-day workflow. As you might've guessed from the title, it's about creating menus. So first let's talk about what a menu is and how you might implement it.
If you have ever. I had that feeling at the end of the day. Where you were like, I don't know what to make for dinner. My fridge is full of just raw ingredients and the amount of effort that it would take for me to decide and implement dinner is simply overwhelming then, you know the power of a menu.
Where instead of standing in front of that refrigerator, wondering. , Questioning, second guessing yourself. You walk into a restaurant, you look at the menu and you pick from those preselected options.
It is imperfect. Obviously, if you really want pizza and it's a diner, you might not be able to get what you want if it's not on the menu, but it does take away that stress of trying to figure out what your options are, ranking those options, and then choosing from them. The options are preselected and you then simply choose from between them.
I also love that menus have categories and here's why. The categories of different types of food. And obviously these categories were vary from restaurant to restaurant, but the categories help separate out the options by their qualities: could be by size, it could be by main protein. It could be by the role that it plays in the meal. But when you look at those different categories, say, at a diner. For instance, you might have omelets and sweet treats sides, combos.
That categorization helps you be a little bit more intentional. If you want something sweet, you immediately jump to that category. No need to go looking through the omelettes. If you know that you want pancakes, for example, And also it helps you bring a little bit more awareness into the kinds of things you're selecting and why.
So if you go through and you only ever eat from the sides menu, Then you know that, Hey, I'm going to either have to eat a few of these and be pretty conscious about what they contain or I'm going to need to add something more substantial to get a full meal.
Okay, now that everybody's hungry for pancakes. Let's talk about how we can use the concept of menus and the way that they shape and make our choices more intentional in our day-to-day work lives. Here are some ways that you can use menus. And all of these have been tested and approved by me and clients all around the world. So I really stand by these.
You might create a menu of work tasks for the day. Maybe you have different categories for teaching research, administration, life stuff, and you list out all of the options that you could work on during the day. And then when you sit down at your desk, you say, okay, what do I feel like teaching tasks, research tasks, and all of those options are laid out for you.
This can be particularly effective if you are working in a state where everything is important, but the urgency level is about the same across all of those categories. If you're in a state of it all needs to get done, a menu can help you see which things feel more possible and reduce a little bit of that decision fatigue so that you don't default into whatever tasks are in your email, which is what I normally do without a menu.
You could also use them for rest tasks almost even more effectively. Maybe you have, as I often do a menu of things that you could do on the weekend. And there are cleaning tasks. There are books you could read, there are shows you could catch up on, you have a list of things that might feel good to move your body. You maybe have a list of people that you want to text or catch up with. Maybe you even have a section of just pure fun.
Dance party, nap, whatever feels fun to you, but listing out all of those things is more flexible than saying, okay, from Saturday, I will do all of these cleaning things. And then I will do these work things. Instead of scheduling them out, it's more like walking into a brunch place and saying, oh, what feels good for me today?
It won't guarantee that you pick things that you might otherwise avoid. Just like you might not pick arugula on a menu if you absolutely hate it, but at least you offered yourself the chance.
The third way to use menus that I find is really, really effective is to think about menu-izing. If that's a word, making a menu out of various routines during your day. So I am a person who aspires to a morning routine. I think they look so good on Instagram. I want mine to be aesthetic A F, but the reality is that I have a chronic illness. My schedule is very variable and I'm just not going to do the same seven things every morning, every day. It's just not going to happen for me.
So instead I have a morning routine menu where I know that broadly speaking, I want to do something that settles my mind. I want to eat some food and I want to do something that moves my body a little bit. So in my menu, I have things for my mind, which could be a meditation. It could be journaling, it could be doing morning pages. It could be sitting down with my planner and I don't need to commit in advance to which one of those I'm going to do.
I just pick one from one of those categories. And the same goes with breakfast ideas and with the moving my body, it could be a walk around the block. It could be a 15 minute dance workout. It could be a lot of different things, but I know that I want to hit each one of those three categories and having a menu means that my routine might look different every single day, because there are so many different combinations.
But I'm going to hit my three main food groups, so to speak. Now. If you're listening and wondering will menus work for me? I'm not sure, but here are the patterns that I have noticed in when these are particularly effective tools for people.
If you're a person with decision fatigue, then I really have seen menus work wonders. All of us have to make literally thousands of decisions every single day. And one of the hardest things about being a PhD student. Is that there are so many things that you could be doing. And often we only keep say five or six of them, right at the top of our mind. And even though you might like to read that book, that's been on your shelf or go through and clean out your downloads folder or reach out to that person after a conference.
If it's not one of your like main six go-to tasks, it's going to be harder for you to remember to do it. So decision fatigue. Makes it so much easier for us to default into those top six or so tasks. And it really makes it difficult to even remember what the other tasks are. So a menu is a place where all of those options are written out. You might not remember that you liked this thing or that you wanted to do it until you see it written out.
If you find yourself staring at your desk at your planner, completely overwhelmed, and then you can definitely show you your choices and make it easier to pick.
As I mentioned before, I think that people underneath the broad umbrella of variable energy also really benefit from menus. I know that as a person with chronic illness, I'm never sure which energy version of myself is going to show up at any given hour of the day,
And so a menu lets me pick which things sounds the best to the brain and body that I have in that moment. It doesn't guarantee that I'm going to do the hard stuff, but if I'm in a situation where I say, okay, I need to do this incredibly difficult thing. And either I do that, or I don't a menu helps me see that. Yes, I could do that thing, but if I don't have the energy or the stamina for it, or I'm in too much pain or it just, isn't what I feel like in that particular moment, there are also five other things that I could do that would move me forward.
These menus can really help people who want a plan and want some sort of structure, but need some flexibility in it. And if you're a variable energy person or a variable attention, variable focus, if there's some variation and this is most of us, most of the time. Then menus can help you give yourself that structure, reduce some of the decisions and also allow for some flexibility from day to day, and hour to hour.
If you think that the idea of menus or something more flexible than just a, to do list that you must execute every single day sounds really appealing, then I have a workshop for you. I'm so excited to be collaborating with Dr. Kate Henry of The Tending Year on a workshop about structuring in a sustainable way. More details are available in the show notes and registration is going to be opening at the end of April. Thank you so much for joining me today. And I hope that whatever your menu contains, it has tasks that feel tasty for you and your future self. See you next week.
📍 Thank you for listening to Grad School is Hard, but... You can find more information and resources in the show notes and at thrive-phd.com. Every month, I'll select one reviewer for a free 45 minute session with me. So please subscribe, rate, and review to help spread the word about the show. Thanks so much and I'll see you again soon!
2.7 it doesn't have to be cute! - dance parties, and other body-focused breaks
in no universe do i want to be perceived while i do this, but....my dance party breaks are one of my best kept secrets. and if you tend to live brain first, and not notice until much too late that your body could use some care, body focused breaks might just be the tool for you! listen to this week's episode for more on this fun way to break up your day.
mentioned in this week's podcast:
I am giving away one FREE 45 minute session with me a month to anyone who reviews this podcast on Apple Podcasts! Leave a review and I'll announce the winners in the last episode of the month, and in my newsletter! Thank you so much for helping to spread the word about the podcast!
Thrive PhD Summer Camp is coming - and if you want to learn more about it, sign up for the waitlist here! My newsletter subscribers are the first to hear about all the new stuff (and the sales) so hop on the list here!
-
Grab your favorite playlist, put on your comfiest dancing shoes and let's get into the most fun tool I've talked about yet on this podcast.
📍 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 rate and review this podcast, by the end of the month, you'll be entered to win a free session from me. More details at the end of the episode. Now let's get into the good stuff. .
As the title of this episode suggests today, I'm here to talk about dance parties. Or more generally speaking, a break that you take during the day that moves your body. Dance parties just happen to be my favorite version of this. So in case you have never heard of a dance party, let's be clear about what I mean when I talk about them.
It's just, you put on your favorite song. And you move your body. You don't have to dance or dance well, it can look more like a wiggle or a shake, but the idea is that this is a time that's boundaried, you know, the start of the song, the end of the song. And you get up out of your chair? You loosen up your hands, you move your body as a way of taking a break. The reason that I feel so strongly about body focused breaks. Or because we as scholars spend so much time in our heads.
For me, I can sit down at my desk at eight 30 or nine o'clock and literal hours can go by. I'm talking five, six hours before I realize that I might be thirsty or hungry. Or maybe I need a break or use the bathroom. For example, I live most of my scholarly life and let's be honest, some of my human life too, very much brain focused. It's hard for me to remember that I have a body when I am in the middle of a juicy research question.
Or if I'm in the middle of an anxiety fueled writing session. It's really hard for me to zoom out of whatever it is that I'm focused on and pay attention to my body. But the problem with that is that eventually my body will make its needs known. And it's really hard for me to get back to whatever I was doing after I do that.
When I'm in these really intense brain heavy sessions, the likelihood that I'm going to crash out of them and need some recovery time, very high. Body focused breaks are my way of helping forestall that a little bit so that I have a little bit more control over how and when my focus sessions end instead of just having them end whenever I collapsed at my desk.
So if you're going to try using a body focused break, Let's talk about when and how you might employ them during your day. I especially love them as a transition point. . If you are switching between teaching and writing or research and outlining, or your emails and something else, a dance party in between that can really help loosen up the energy and give your brain and body a chance to sync back up again.
I often will have a dance party before or after I eat lunch during the day. Depending on how big the lunch was, of course. But that also helps me mark that transition. It's a way of kind of getting my body involved so that it's not just next task, next task, next task, all up in my head.
This also is an extremely effective energy bump during the day. If you like me have a lull at various points in the day, I have one around 11 o'clock and another one, probably between three and four. A dance party is a perfect insertion inside of that lull to get some energy back. You wiggle it out, you shake it out, you dance it, you pump it up. And you don't get sure, full energy stores back after that, but you might get the five or 10% back that you need in order to focus just a little bit more effectively and get one or two more things checked off your list.
There is absolutely no way to do this kind of a break incorrectly as long as your body's involved. The way that you can compare it is take, for example, a standard Twitter break. I know that when I first started using Pomodoros and see last week's episode for more about how Pomodoro has worked for me.
I'm gonna be like, great, okay. 25 minutes of focus and then five minutes of Twitter. And those five minutes would be really stimulating for my brain, but the timer would start again and it would feel like my body was stuck in the same position sometimes for two, three, even more hours at a time that would make me sore, cranky, tired, hungry, . It would be really difficult to feel the sense of the time passing when my breaks were having my body stay in the same position that it was during my focus sessions.
The people that I find who especially benefit from body first breaks are what I lovingly refer to as brain in a jar folks. I once told a therapist that it was my most sincere desire to become a brain in a jar that somehow was able to type so that I wouldn't need to sleep or eat or rest or do anything. I would just be a brain offloading all of my intellectual capacity into the computer. Things would be great.
And she was like, well, brains in a jar can't really go for hikes or enjoy the sunshine or a really good piece of cake. And I was like, touché Dr. Nancy, there are some benefits to a body. But those people who are focused and really have a hard time getting into their bodies can really benefit from breaks like this because it's a chance to sync back up again.
If you think about your body and your brain being on two separate tracks during the day, sometimes they're pretty far apart and a body focused break is a chance for them to sync back up again and be like, oh, Hey body. Oh, Hey brain, are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Do you need to switch gears? Do you want to go outside for a second?
It's a chance to sync up and ask those questions. When if those two pieces of you, your body and your brain are on separate tracks all day long, it's really hard to tune in and see what you might need.
I also think the breaks like this are especially good for people who have the, just one more thing, tendency. The just one more thing tendency is that voice in your head- it's like, okay, I will take a break or I'll eat lunch or I'll get some water as soon as I finish this next thing. Just one more thing before I'm done for the day. Just one more thing. Just one more thing.
A, body focused break gives you a chance to say, okay. Do I still want to do that thing? Is it important, is it better for me to switch? Is it better for me to change gears? If you tend to hyper-focus or just be really relentless, getting your to-do list done no matter what. These breaks can give you a chance to kind of back away from the computer or the laptop or wherever it is that you're working. And wait for the body and brain to sync up and decide if just one more thing is what you actually need.
These don't need to be dance party breaks.
Although for my money, that's the most fun and a fun way to, you know, really shake it up and get in some of that music listening that you might not have otherwise done. You can also take body focused breaks by starting your laundry. There's nothing better than going down to the basement where your laundry machines are getting some laundry going during a break. It gives you a chance to kind of catch back up on some household chores and also move your body.
This doesn't need to look like dancing either. I would generously call what I do during dance parties as a "Wiggle plus." It's not dancing in any way that I would perhaps want to broadcast on the internet. So just shaking my arms and my legs, moving my feet around a little bit. It could also be stimming if you're a person who has a lot of stimming behaviors these breaks to physically do those, maybe you jump up and down. Maybe you move your arms in a certain way. Maybe you pace in circles. These can be an excellent way to kind of get some of that tension out during the day during those sessions and check back in with your body at the same time.
The only thing to think about is, is more of my body moving than not moving during these breaks. So is more of me wiggling moving, going up and down the stairs, going outside, going for a walk around the block, maybe doing a couple of forward folds or some sideways stretches. There's no way to do it wrong.
Like I said, as long as your body and brain are kind of giving a chance to stop working, even if it's just for two and a half or three minutes, but maybe a little bit longer. It gives you a chance to say, okay, Let's sync back in. Let's get the parts of me back together and make sure that I'm moving forward with intention.
And if you're the kind of person who really benefits from periodic reminders to move your body, just as much as you're moving your mind during the day. You might want to check out my community for just $5 a month. You can join us, have access to weekly coaching calls, daily accountability threads, and lots and lots of reminders that you are human and a scholar too..
More in the show notes. Thank you so much and see you next week.
📍 Thank you for listening to Grad School is Hard, but... You can find more information and resources in the show notes and at thrive-phd.com. Every month, I'll select one reviewer for a free 45 minute session with me. So please subscribe, rate, and review to help spread the word about the show. Thanks so much and I'll see you again soon!
2.6 a controversial classic - pomodoro timers
everyone loves to recommend a pomodoro timer (including me!) but this deceptively simple tool actually does NOT work for a lot of people, tasks, and brains. let's get into this controversial classic - and some alternatives - in this week's episode!
resources:
congratulations to rmeaso for your review of the podcast! reach out on my website to claim your free session - and if you want a chance to win one next month, please rate and review the podcast!! thank you so much, it really helps!
I am giving away one FREE 45 minute session with me a month to anyone who reviews this podcast on Apple Podcasts! Leave a review and I'll announce the winners in the last episode of the month, and in my newsletter! Thank you so much for helping to spread the word about the podcast!
Thrive PhD Summer Camp is coming - and if you want to learn more about it, sign up for the waitlist here! My newsletter subscribers are the first to hear about all the new stuff (and the sales) so hop on the list here!
-
If you've got a phone. If you've got a clock. If you've got a microwave, you can use this week's tool. Let's talk about timers.
📍 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 rate and review this podcast, by the end of the month, you'll be entered to win a free session from me. More details at the end of the episode. Now let's get into the good stuff. .
Timers are some of the most frequent advice given to anyone who's looking to manage their time a little bit more effectively. But in my experience, they're also some of the most nuanced tools. And some of the ways that many of our neurodivergent brethren also get left behind. So let's talk today about timers: when they work, how they work, how you might want to use them. And a couple of variations because having a sense of how much time is passing and what you're spending your time on can be really helpful.
And just because the first thing you try doesn't work for you doesn't mean that nothing will.
So first a definition. You might have, if you've ever hung out with me in the community or read any time management blog ever been introduced to something called the Pomodoro timer. The Pomodoro timer, which I'll link to it's full history in the show notes. It's basically a time management system where you have a timer that goes off for a set amount of time.
This usually is 25 minutes. You set a timer for 25 minutes, you've work in a focused way. Then you break, you have five minutes to do whatever you want, then you repeat it three or four times with a 15 minute break at the end of the sequence. This came into being, because somebody was trying to keep themselves on task in their kitchen. All they had was a tomato shaped timer that went up to 25 minutes. So the legend goes anyway. And so that's what they used. They would work for 25, break for five and then come back.
So Pomodoro timer is, are great. And the idea of a focus time, and then a break from that time, can be really effective. But if you think about the idea that this was invented in a kitchen, and the only reason that it's 25 minutes is because that's how long the timer was. Well, then you can kind of see why this maybe isn't an all purpose tool for everybody to use.
The traditional pom is 25 minutes. And I will be honest with you and say that I find that most of the time, 25 minutes is too short for me. And I often will do what I call long poms or long Pomodoros, which are 50 minutes of time to work. And then a longer break, a 10 minute break. These are great for writing.
I use them to record this podcast for instance, but I think that if you have experimented with poms and felt that the time was too short, try going longer. I don't recommend going much longer than 50 minutes because every hour you're going to want to rest your eyes. Get a sip of water, maybe walk around a little bit.
But something longer than 25 minutes, will help you get a little bit more into the flow for a deep focus task.
But I also want to share that Pomodoros don't work for me all of the time. I love them in the community. They are often a tool that I use to help myself get started during the day. There are certain tasks that truly would not get done without Pomodoros like admin tasks or scheduling appointments. They're a great container which is why I do continue to recommend them. But I do get burned out on them, just like everybody else. I have seasons where they're really helpful for me. And I have seasons whether or not. And that's a good note for all of the tools in this podcast. Sometimes they work for you and sometimes they don't.
And it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you or anything wrong with the tool. It's just like, sometimes you need a flat head screwdriver and sometimes you need a Phillips head. It might be the right solution for the task at hand, but it also might not be.
But I also want to be clear that there are definitely some patterns about what clients I noticed really do respond to Pomodoros and which ones really don't.
So let's talk about who I find the Pomodoros usually do not work for. I will be honest and say that the idea for this episode came from a thread that I saw on Twitter somewhere. That was like, what is the one piece of advice that has just never worked for you?
And it was just streams and streams of people in the comments saying Pomodoro timers have never worked for me. And you know what? I get it. If you are a person who is neurodivergent and I'm speaking, especially here to anyone who drops into flow. Or has trouble or challenges managing their attention.
This is my ADHD folks. This could be my AuDHD folks, my autistic folks. There are all kinds of brains that once they get stuck into a task, really respond negatively to being dragged back out of it. And there's perhaps nothing more arbitrary than a 25 minute timer going off and dragging you out of whatever it is that you've managed to be focused on.
So if you find that you really don't like being interrupted, pomodoro timers might not be for you. And in that situation, I would suggest that you experiment with something called FlowMadoro instead which has you set the timer more like a stopwatch instead of a countdown clock. You start at 0.0 seconds. And then you notice how long it takes you until you've either finished the task where you've gotten distracted. It could be 10 minutes. It could be five minutes, but you divide that by four and then you take that length of break. So maybe you work on your paper for an hour. You notice that you've drifted off into Twitter. You say, okay, I've reached the edge of my attention cliff. I'm going to take a break for 15 minutes and then come right back to it.
Repeating that same setting the timer and then taking a quarter long break again. This is a great way to notice how your attention waxes and wanes over the course of the day. And it's a great way to not artificially stop yourself in the middle of a thought just because the timer said t o.
But you might be a person that a Pomodoro timer could be really effective for. If you notice that you have a really hard time getting started. This could be getting started in the morning or after a lunch break or after teaching. A timer can be an excellent tool. Especially if you respond really well to time to based appointments. So if you are feeling relatively good at getting up, getting to your teaching, getting to your appointments on time, but then once you have some unstructured time, everything sort of goes to pot. Then I would recommend experimenting with a timer.
If not a traditional 25 minute, five minute Pomodoro, you experiment with at a smaller or longer piece of time as needed. But the idea is that you set a timer and that timer acts almost like a little mini appointment where you say, okay,
For the next 25 minutes, I'm going to try and work on this. And I find that that brain tantrum that's like, Ugh, I am so tired from teaching. And now I have to write for the next four hours that setting a smaller timer. Lets you say, I don't have to write for the next four hours. I just have to try writing for the next 25 minutes.
And it adds that time-based activation energy that'll help get you a little bit over the hump of I don't want to do this, or, oh, I'm tired. And into the flow. My brain is a championship tantrum-er, or it does not like to get started, but I find that even my most epic tantrums don't last longer than 25 minutes.
So if I set a timer for 25 minutes, and even if I free write my little heart out and I'm like, I hate writing. Writing is terrible. I never want to do it. My brain eventually gets that out of its system. And by the time that 25 minutes is up, I've either gotten stuck into the writing amazing or. Or I've pivoted to something else that probably also needs to get done. And that timer acts as a chance for me to check in and say, okay, is this actually what I want to be focusing on right now? Or do I want to move on and do something else?
The timer is just another tool to help you work intentionally. So, whether you're having it count up to measure how much you are actually focusing, noticing your trends and making sure that you take breaks to have food and drink and have water. Or you're using it to help you get started to help you jump into that cold pool timers, add boundaries around what can be a really overwhelming unstructured sense of responsibility and time and tasks for scholars everywhere. We all have too much to do and not enough time to do it. And a timer is just a concrete way to take that too muchness. And move it into smaller and smaller containers. To help you see which tasks might fit into the containers that you have.
And last but not least a special shout out to our review leaver. rmeaso. So which I will put into the show notes. You have won this months free session. So make sure that you email me or contact me on my website and we'll get that all set up for you. Thank you so much, everybody for listening, and I'm going to keep this giveaway going. Everybody who's already reviewed will still be entered. And thank you so much for spreading the word about this podcast.
📍 Thank you for listening to Grad School is Hard, but... You can find more information and resources in the show notes and at thrive-phd.com. Every month, I'll select one reviewer for a free 45 minute session with me. So please subscribe, rate, and review to help spread the word about the show. Thanks so much and I'll see you again soon!
2.5 email your advisor more?? - regular email updates
okay before you flee this podcast, hear me out: emailing your supervisor more regularly actually reduces anxiety most of the time. listen on for my best tips on how, when, and why you would want to do such a thing!
and if you want to answer those kinds of questions in a community of people who get it AND will cheer you on (plus lots lots more) for $5 a month, check out the community!
I am giving away one FREE 45 minute session with me a month to anyone who reviews this podcast on Apple Podcasts! Leave a review and I'll announce the winners in the last episode of the month, and in my newsletter! Thank you so much for helping to spread the word about the podcast!
If you want to spend March making sustainable progress on your writing, with the added excitement of challenges, fun, and prizes, then March Madness is for you! Sign up for FREE here, and you'll also be on my newsletter list for weekly pep talks and all the latest news in the Thrive PhD universe!
-
Today's episode has a tool that has helped more people finish with the less structure and costs $0. Let's talk about sending regular update emails!
📍 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 rate and review this podcast, by the end of the month, you'll be entered to win a free session for me. More details at the end of the episode. Now let's get into the good stuff. .
Now not everything from the business world is worth emulating. I don't think we need to have required work hours or complex organizational structures or. Mid-year confusing performance review cycles, but there are a couple of things that can be really useful for you, especially if you're in a place where you feel like you are throwing your day-to-day work into a void. No one sees it. No one cares.
Sending a regular update email is basically a mechanism that lets you quickly update your status to in business, speak your stakeholders. But in reality, your advisors, maybe your co-authors. Now. Why would I recommend an email when so many people are like, I love the fact that I can hide from my supervisor for months at a time?
Or I love the fact that my coauthors don't bother me until I've passed a deadline. Yeah, for sure. It can be a benefit to have so much autonomy and flexibility, but after years and years of coaching, and also seeing this behavior in myself, I know that sending those regular update emails actually reduces anxiety in most cases, rather than adding to it.
So let's talk about how to use this magical tool or email updates, how often to use it, who can really benefit from it and what you can do if sending these emails to supervisors, it feels a little bit out of reach.
So the first thing to decide is how often you'd like to send your update emails. There is a type of meeting in some companies called a standup meeting where everyone gathers around and updates the rest of the team on their progress. These happen usually every day, sometimes a little bit less frequently. In no universe am I suggesting that you send a email to your advisor every day to let them know what you've done and what you're going to do the next day.
It would be a lot of email for you to send and a lot of email for your supervisor to receive. But sending an email like that on a regular basis can help for a variety of reasons. I think that sending an email every two weeks is the sweet spot for most people. Two weeks is enough time to kind of smooth the edges of the really high highs and the really low lows. It's not so long that you can close your eyes, wake up and wow. A whole semester has gone.
Every two weeks, you know, twice a month is an excellent cadence. And since it's not tied to the term deadline, It can make it feel a little bit less stressful because you're updating sometime other than the first week of classes or the last week of classes, which is when I find that most supervisors remember that they have advisees and email them in some state of panic, low to high about where their progress is, which can be some of the worst weeks to get those emails as a student, because you're either really busy kicking off your class or winding it down.
Or having some sort of feeling about the next term beginning or ending.
If you wait for your advisor to email you, you don't get to control the timing. If you email them with the updates, then you get to control it. So two weeks works really well for most people. You might want to speed it up and do once a week on Fridays or on Mondays if you are in a really high production season, like say getting close to your defense or prospectus defense. And you might slow it down if you are say in the field and really busy, and there aren't that many updates, but the first step is to pick that cadence.
The second step is to pick the format. So I really enjoy having a format for these emails so that you don't have to sit down and create a whole new document every single time. I like these questions, which I have borrowed from the standup meeting that inspired this particular tool.
Here's what I've done since the last time that you've updated is the first question. It's basically your done list. Here are all of my accomplishments, big and small. It's also a place to put anything that you've done that was maybe unexpected. Like, oh, I dropped everything to get a CFP ready that I just found out about, or my revisions came back from the journal and I did those. Great time to say, here's what I've actually done.
Second question is here's where I'm blocked. This can be a really powerful question to share with your advisor because it helps you name what feels so sticky right now. Like I'm blocked because I feel like there's so much reading that I need to do before I can get done, or I'm blocked because this important piece of lab equipment broke and now I'm two weeks behind on my experimental schedule. Or I'm blocked because I'm having some health issues or mental health issues.
You can be as honest or as transparent as you'd like to be, but naming those things helps you. And it also gives your advisor more of a clear picture so that they don't think that the reason that you're not working is just because you chose not to. I've never seen any graduate student who is repeatedly just choosing not to work and ignoring the stakes. It just doesn't happen.
So you might as well share the reasons if you know them and if you feel comfortable.
And then the last, the third question that I love to include in these updates is what you plan to do next. I plan to finish the outline or I plan to have the first section drafted by my next check-in. It gives that sense of kind of moving forward accountability. It's a little bit of a deadline.
Those three questions. Here's what I've done. Here's where I'm blocked. And here's what I'm going to do next are simple enough that you can remember them, but you could also put them in a document if you want. I know people who make Gmail templates and then just fill them out. But that formula, it means that you aren't sort of inventing what to share. You just open up the email, you answer your three questions, you send it off. That gives your advisor the information that they need to know. And it forces you into a little bit of a moment of reflection and adjustment, which is so helpful, especially if you're doing it regularly.
So the last tip that I have about the actual email itself is that to the extent to which you feel comfortable and supported in doing so: be honest. So many supervisors are wanting to help, but not really having transparency into the workflow of their advisees. Most supervisors, most of the time, want you to finish and want you to finish well and they want you to do so in a supported way. But the more information that you give them about what's actually happening day to day, the more that they can support you. There's less that they can do when they chase you down after a draft is overdue by two or three months, right?
That would be a difficult situation for anyone. So if you share with them more regularly, What you're getting done, what things are easy and what things are hard. You might have more access to their expertise and their mentorship than you might've otherwise had. So. If you can, if you feel supported and if it feels safe, be honest.
And because you send them regularly, it smooths out over time. Here's one email where I didn't get anything done, but next two weeks. I did. And that can help you feel a little bit more confident, too.
I find that people who have what I call set it and forget it, advisors or collaborators really benefit from this. So if you have an advisor who's extremely hands-off or they kind of meet with you once a term, and then they say, go forth and do it. They might not offer this tool to you, but if you ask them like, Hey, I think it would really benefit me if I sent this email, even if you don't reply.
That can be really helpful. Just so that they have a little bit more visibility into your process. They can intervene when they want to, but you get what is the second and honestly, most important benefit of this tool, which is that you get that sense of like a mini deadline.
So every two weeks, when it's your Friday email day, it forces you to kind of like push to get to that next level. Or it gives you a gentle bit of encouragement. So when you get close to email day, knowing that you have to report your progress gives you the opportunity to do a little bit of a mini deadline push, which can feel really motivating for a lot of us. Deadlines work for a reason. So giving yourself a lower stakes, but regularly occurring deadline to update on your progress can be really helpful. It increases communication and increases for you the sense that somebody cares about your work, which honestly is so much more motivating.
Last idea. If it sounds too intense or your advisor is on sabbatical or there's a variety of other reasons why your official supervisor or chair or advisor isn't open to, or isn't a great place to send these updates.
There's lots of other people that you can send them to instead. I love sending them to friends or to colleagues or to other peer supports, maybe other people in your lab you could do this with. I know people who have been emailing their accountability buddies every day or every week for years.
There's a reason why so many coaching communities are built on this kind of update structure. And there are a lot of people that you can email if your advisor or supervisor isn't the best fit for this tool.
We talk a lot about accountability in the coaching world, in the grad student world. Like you must be accountable to your own deadlines. And if it's helpful, this is my definition of accountability. I define accountability, not as doing what you said you were going to do, when you said you were going to do it, no matter what.
I actually define it is making your work and the decisions that shape your work, what you did when you did and how visible. First to yourself and then to other people.
Accountability means bringing that visibility for yourself and for other people. And the more that you know, what you're doing and why more regularly, instead of waiting until a crisis point, like a missed deadline or a funding crunch to do that sort of reflection, only benefits you. Whether you send it to your advisor, your friends, or just out into the void, like Bella sent those emails to Edward in the second Twilight movie. So thanks so much for listening. I am so excited about a couple of the things that are upcoming.
Please make sure that you have signed up for the toolkit at the bottom of these posts. That's going to get you on my newsletter and I'm about to announce some really cool things for summer that you won't want to miss. If you like summer camp, you're going to like what we're doing this summer. Thanks so much and 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. Every month, I'll select one reviewer for a free 45 minute session with me. So please subscribe, rate, and review to help spread the word about the show. Thanks so much and I'll see you again soon!
2.4 the default need not be work: cut off times
a tool that costs zero money, but is rarely encouraged, and can have radical benefits if you implement it....it's a cut off time at the end of the day. this was one of the hardest things i did as a grad student, and it can still be a tricky thing, but nothing has made a bigger difference for my sustainability. listen to learn all about it!
and if you're looking for a routine to help support your cut off time, i have your back on the blog!
-
On today's episode, a tool that will cost you zero money, but might take a little bit of practice. Let's talk about why I think most people need to cut off time.
📍 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 rate and review this podcast, by the end of the month, you'll be entered to win a free session for me. More details at the end of the episode. Now let's get into the good stuff. .
In this season of grad school is hard, but I'm presenting various different tools that I think could really help you with some of the things that you guessed. It are so hard about grad school. And in today's episode, I am going to introduce you to the single biggest thing that I did as a grad student that changed the way that I worked and the way that I lived, and it was designating a hard stop at the end of the day. You might call it a cutoff time or you might celebrate it by ringing a dinner bell, but this is basically just a time of the day where you say, okay, No matter what I'm going to be done by X time.
And if things are undone, they're undone. If things have to get moved to tomorrow, they get moved to tomorrow, but I am officially done working for the day at this specific time. I encourage you to set this time for weekdays. And at least take some time off on the weekends. But here's some of the reasons why I think that this is such a useful tool.
Number one. It creates a boundary. For so many of us, especially if you are still working in a hybrid situation or are not fully comfortable being back completely in the world. I get it. Me too. Your work life spaces are probably a little bit confused. Even me, I have full control over my time and my schedule. I have a dedicated office to work.
And I still work on the couch. I still work sometimes in bed and I still do life things in my office. So for me, even though there's some sense of a boundary spatially, the cutoff time is what really makes a difference for me switching between work and the rest of my life. Yeah.
If you have never had a cutoff time before. Then this can be a bit of a revolutionary concept. And this is one of those ideas that comes from me from the folder of life experience I like to call being partners with a person who has a quote, regular job. In this person's regular job, there were certain hours where they were expected to be there. And then at the end of the day, they were done. They left the office. And I felt like I was never done as a grad student. There were always more emails to check more grading to do, more books that I could be reading and it really started to bleed into the rest of the time.
So having somebody that lived in the house with me that had a hard cutoff time made me think: wow, I could do that too. And when I did it made such a difference.
Now, maybe you've already tried to do this, and you've said, Katy. For the last couple of weeks, I have tried to stop at 7:00 PM or 5:00 PM if you're really a go getter and it really has not worked. Maybe I have told myself that I was stopping, but I kept going and I stayed on my computer and I scrolled through things or I checked my email a million times on my phone and I never felt like I was done, even though I said the word done.
And for those of us on team busy brain. I'm the captain, of course. You might need to get your body involved to make this boundary stick.
I know that I physically have to leave a certain area. I have to leave my desk in my office. At various other times, I've had to leave campus. I've needed to switch from the working side of my couch, to the relaxing side of my couch, but getting my body involved sometimes even with a shower or a workout or a walk or a meal has really helped me get that sense that there was work time and then there was other time and there was a boundary between them.
And this is so useful because it teaches you that the default for time doesn't have to be work. I know that whether I was conscious of it or not, I felt that any hour that I was awake, I needed to be working. And even if I wasn't working at the same intensity, they didn't all need to be writing, but they needed to at least be thinking about my project or able to think about my project or at the barest of minimums, able to respond to an email that might be sent to me at any day or time.
I "didn't feel like I had the professional standing or quite honestly the amount of clout to be able to take time off and say, Hey. I did not respond to that email because it was sent to me at 10:00 PM. And I responded to it when I got into the morning." That was an unthinkable boundary for me. And by not having that boundary, I really taught myself and my body that it needed to be ready for working no matter what.
When I switched to a model, aided by this cutoff time where I worked on purpose, and then I stopped on purpose, things got a lot easier. Because even though it didn't happen immediately - it took me a couple of weeks to settle into this new routine - once it felt a little bit more solid. I realized that I was not only working on purpose and feeling like, the end of the day felt like mini deadline energy, where I was doing my best to catch up with all of those loose ends to be done at the end of the clock. I've never been a basketball player, but you know, those real good buzzer beater shots where you've finished that last email and shut it down, felt great.
I was working on purpose and I was stopping on purpose. I was watching TV and my computer wasn't open. I was cooking dinner and actually talking to said person who had a real job catching up about our days without having my phone, literally in my hand. That rest at the end of the day felt so much more satisfying and I didn't know how much it was going to help my focus, my relationships, my ability to get laundry done by just having a cutoff time.
Your brain is always going to probably creep in. So I know that even in my best and most beautifully tended boundaries between work and other things, I still will get ideas for projects I want to do. I'll get flashes about that sticky thing I was working on in the draft. So, you know, keep, keep a notebook and bring yourself back if you've noticed that you've drifted into work during that work time. But that cutoff time, once it really feels habitual can absolutely help your brain sort of flip that switch between. Okay. in certain times I'm working in certain times, I'm not.
This tool is going to be really good for anyone who is flirting with, or maybe already in burnout. I reached for this tool for the first time when I was absolutely burned out, I was working a bunch of jobs, couldn't focus, and I felt like I was working all day and getting nothing done. Working for less hours and resting more intentionally at the end of the day. It wasn't an immediate fix for burnout, but it absolutely set me on the path.
Paradoxically. If you're a person who feels like they're not getting enough done, I encourage you to set a cutoff time. Because, like I mentioned a little bit earlier that deadline of, okay, it's almost five o'clock or it's almost seven o'clock can really help you give a little bit more momentum to the tasks that you're working on. And I find that that little bit of extra focus absolutely makes a difference.
Plus, if you are getting a little bit more rest, a little bit more recovery, I can make a solid bet that you might have more improved focus during the hours that you do work, which might help you get enough done.
And the last, but not least if you're in a deadline season and you're listening to this thinking, Katy, I have to work every minute of every day. And that's the only way that my dissertation is going to be submitted on time. I first of all applaud you. Way to go for getting so close. But I am going to double down and say you more than almost anyone needed a cutoff time. The tendency that we all have when we're getting close to big projects is to clear the schedule and work every single minute.
And while that can feel really productive for the first couple of days, you might get a lot of things done. Eventually your body will need a break. And if you're not taking those breaks intentionally, your body will decide when to take those breaks for you. So if you've really been pushing in the last couple of weeks, or maybe months, I encourage you to check in with, reimplement or maybe implement for the first time a cutoff time. All of us deserve to do something else during the day, whether that is for your body or your brain or your family, or a book or a silly show on Netflix or a great podcast. You choose the other thing, but if you have a cut off time, it makes it so much easier to give yourself permission to do whatever that other thing is. Maybe even a couple of other things. Thanks so much and I will see you next. next week.
📍 Thank you for listening to Grad School is Hard, but... You can find more information and resources in the show notes and at thrive-phd.com. Every month, I'll select one reviewer for a free 45 minute session with me. So please subscribe, rate, and review to help spread the word about the show. Thanks so much and I'll see you again soon!
2.3 help out your short term memory: task managers
whether you put all your tasks in a notebook, app, or on the back of various receipts, many of us want some sort of system to capture all that we need to do. task managers will do you one better by storing that information, and sending it back to you when you can actually take action on it. simply put, your brain cannot hold it all - so why not give it some help??
learn all about task managers in this week's episode!
mentioned in the show:
-
Whether you scribble them on a notebook, whether you shout reminders into your phone or invest in a piece of software to help you manage it. I think that there is one thing that can save so much brain power and energy, and that is a system for containing your tasks. So in this week's episode, let's talk about task managers.
📍 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.
March madness is a month of free writing resources, trackers, dash boards, and prizes. Sign up for free at the link in the show notes.
The task manager is exactly what it sounds like. It's a system that helps you manage what things you need to do. And the secret about a task manager is that while it also tells you what things you need to do, and when, it really helps you get into the habit of estimating your time and energy and various other resources that you need in order to do those tasks.
It's when everything's in one place -and it doesn't really matter what that place is, but we'll talk about some of the pros and cons of various different ones in a minute - but when everything's in one place, you can start to see, okay, this is too much for one day or, I have a little bit of space here. What can I do? It's the first step in gaining some visibility into how you're working and then maybe making some changes that might be more sustainable in the long run.
So a task manager can be very simple. It can be a notebook. The bullet journal is a task management system, for example, which is just a notebook that you keep a running list of moving tasks from day to day, as you need to, or want to. It can be a system that's even more chaotic than that, which is various notepads or receipts, and jotted down notes in your phone.
But it can also be a very complicated system that you invest a lot of time and maybe even some money in setting up. Something like Asana or Trello or click up, which has projects and boards and recurring features that help you do a little bit more advanced things, but no matter which tool you use to do it, I do think that test managers have a lot of benefits.
And here are the ways that I think you can think about using them. And if any of these appeal to you, then it might be time for you to invest in a task manager. So the first is maybe the most simple, but can be the most revolutionary: it's capturing tasks. I don't know about you, but my brain likes to spit up reminders of things that I need to do or could do or should do at the most inconvenient times. I'll be in the shower and thinking about how it's somebody's birthday next week. I could be writing, thinking about how I need to schedule that dentist appointment.
But if I have a task manager, then I have a central place to send all of those random brain injections of things I need to do. And I can deal with them in a time and place of my choosing. So that might look like quickly opening up my task manager or yelling into my phone "buy birthday present" or "go to the dentist" and then dealing with it afterwards.
But capturing tasks as a regular part of your workflow really starts to pay off, not just for the random life things that you also need to keep doing while you are a grad student, but for the things that are so easy to slip your mind. You see a CFP in your email. And so you send it into your task manager and say, okay, remind me to work on this in three weeks when I'm going to have a little bit more time and then boom.
You remember it and not just because they send you a 12 hours left to submit email. So if all of your tasks are going to the same place, it's easier to see them and then have a system for scheduling them in a way that makes sense for your rhythm.
You can also remind yourself to do the tasks that might not occur to you. So in my task manager, every Friday, it reminds me to clean up my office and especially clean out my downloads folder because I am notorious for leaving everything in my downloads folder. So every task manager that I set up has this recurring task on Friday, that reminds me to do this thing that's important, but would honestly never occur to me. And honestly, doesn't seem that fun most of the time, but if it's there, I can sometimes snooze it. I can move it to Monday or I can do it on Thursday if I'm feeling really motivated, but it regularly reminds me to do these kinds of tasks that would have otherwise slipped my mind.
Task managers are really great for the non urgent, but important tasks that really never seem to rise to the top of your anxiety stack. So. If you know that you have to grade five papers by tomorrow or else there will be severe consequences. You probably don't need a task manager to remind you of that. But if you have things like, don't forget to double check that my paperwork was submitted on time. That's the kind of task that a task manager is really going to excel at because it wouldn't have otherwise occurred to you, but it's still really important to do.
So I think that most people, most of the time are going to benefit from some sort of a task management system. I don't think that everyone needs a piece of software. I don't think that everyone needs a special app on their phone. A notebook can be just fine for some people. But if you do have a little bit more capacity in your workflow points, like if you have a little bit of an interest using a piece of software, especially one that links with your phone can be really useful.
So ToDoIst is one of my favorites. It has a pretty generous free plan, but it's basically just a to-do list. You can separate things out into categories, but it's just a running to-do list. There aren't a lot of bells and whistles, so you can't create too complicated a system. If you're working on a team, something like a sauna can be great because you can have shared work boards. You can collaborate, you can assign tasks to different people. It might be a little bit high-powered for one person, but if you've liked the way it looks and the way it functions also has a group, a great free program.
Trello is along the same lines, especially a great for people who like a Kanban style board of task managers, where you have categories for not started, in progress and done, which can be really motivating. And you can get as fancy as something like ClickUp or monday.com, which has all kinds of automations and trigger functions that are cool to play with, but maybe a little bit high powered for what you need to do.
But no matter what task manager you pick, I do think that having some sort of integration between your phone and your computer can be really helpful if only because your brain will spit out reminders about your dissertation and vice versa. When you're at your desk or when you're not. So a phone integration, whether that's an app or a web clipper can be really useful to help you integrate those things no matter where you are at your desk or not.
The bottom line is that a task manager saves you, brainpower. Your short-term memory can't hold all of this information at once. So outsource a little bit of that work to a task manager, so that the entire responsibility of remembering to do all of the details for all of your jobs and all of your human responsibilities, every single day has a backup plan. Thank you so much and I'll see you next week.
📍 Thank you for listening to Grad School is Hard, but... You can find more information and resources in the show notes and at thrive-phd.com. Every month, I'll select one reviewer for a free 45 minute session with me. So please subscribe, rate, and review to help spread the word about the show. Thanks so much and I'll see you again soon!
2.2 - there are so many pdfs: citation managers save lives
i make very few recommendations about things i think all scholars should be doing.......but citation managers are one. listen to this episode to find out my reasons why - and learn my favorite piece of software to use (hint, it's free!!) for this. you truly cannot imagine the amount of information you will need to keep organized as a scholar - citation managers are a key part in dealing with that, and can really help you out!
resources mentioned:
step by step tutorial for zotero
I am giving away one FREE 45 minute session with me a month to anyone who reviews this podcast on Apple Podcasts! Leave a review and I'll announce the winners in the last episode of the month, and in my newsletter! Thank you so much for helping to spread the word about the podcast!
If you want to spend March making sustainable progress on your writing, with the added excitement of challenges, fun, and prizes, then March Madness is for you! Sign up for FREE here, and you'll also be on my newsletter list for weekly pep talks and all the latest news in the Thrive PhD universe!
-
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.
March madness is a month of free writing resources, trackers, dash boards, and prizes. Sign up for free at the link in the show notes.
All I have is anecdotal evidence, but I'm pretty sure that one of the main sources of guilt for academics when it comes to their workflow is how they are or are not using the citation manager.
In fact, the angst goes so deep that I have often joked about making a t-shirt that says the best time to start a citation manager was birth. And the second best time is today. Because so many people feel so locked up about how they are using the software, how they're not using it to its full potential or maybe how they're not using it at all. So let's get into citation managers, how and why you might want to use them. And some of the lesser known features that I think are even more valuable.
Now I make very few universal recommendations as a coach, as in, I think that most people, if not everyone should be using this tool or doing this technique. But citation managers come pretty close. I think that most people, most of the time should be using a citation manager simply because you will encounter so much literature, pieces of research, primary sources, all sorts of things. The material that you accumulate as an academic scholar is mountainous. You can't, you truly can not conceive of how many PDFs you will encounter over the course of a PhD program, or goodness knows a multi-year multi-decade academic career.
So citation manager is simply put a piece of software that stores all of the citeable information about the pieces of information that you have, like title and DOI, And publisher in one place so that you can find them. It's like a list of everything you've checked out from the library, although you control it and you put it in and you don't have to read everything that's in there .
The other thing that citation managers do really well and their first and primary function was to export and automate your citations. So you will interface this piece of software and the most common ones are Zotero, Mendeley, and Endnote. You'll interface a piece of software with your word processor, like Word.
You'll click a button and then it'll automatically insert a properly formatted citation, whether that's a footnote or a work cited, whatever the style demands. Super useful, Right? If all you ever use a citation manager for is to help format your citations, and even if you're inconsistent about what you put into the citation manager, I still think they're a good use of time. They are not perfect for sure. You do often have to adjust a few things. You might have to double check the formatting. But it really helps save both the records of all of the pieces of information that you've come into contact with. And saves you a lot of time when it comes to the actual formatting work.
But there are so many other features of these citation managers that I think deserve some consideration in your reading and research and maybe even writing workflows.
I love the ability to create collections inside of a citation manager. You might create a collection that you share with your department called best texts to teach this topic with, and everybody can update it and it automatically syncs between devices.
I love creating collections for special interests or reading groups or keeping things organized. I love nothing more than organizing bits of information on my computer. Please don't ask me to organize anything in my real physical life. I won't do it, but I will noodle around in my citation manager, making collections.
But the fact that you can share some of these create libraries and keep them updated. So, so useful.
I have what many people would refer to as shiny object syndrome. So I need to keep as much of the information about whatever I'm doing in one program, because the instant that I click out of said program, the more likely it is that I'm going to end up in some wild corner of the internet, where I didn't intend to be.
And I love that citation managers will let me store my notes with them. It's sometimes we'll let you append PDFs. Although the storage of that can get tricky. Storage management is a whole other episode of this podcast, but you can keep your notes right with the citation. So you can remember, oh, that was this edition of the book that had these page numbers, or it was this publication that I was encountering at a conference or whatever.
Your notes can be as detailed or as scant as you want, but having them right by the citation information makes it so much easier to trace your steps back later on. You can also in many of these software programs, Create tags, which can really increase searchability. So I have tags in my citation manager for actually read this or skimmed this, or decided not to read this.
I have tags that refer to different methodologies. I have tags about the decade that something was published in and I have tags about clusters of researchers that published together. So I can see the different schools and it's so useful to then go through and filter and say, okay, show me all of the things that were published in the eighties with this method that came out of this lab.
Boom. It's so hard to do that in any other piece of software and that ability to sort of keep things, add information, add rich metadata can really pay off the more you invest inside of that citation manager, and the bigger that collection is.
This can help you keep track of all of the things that you could and have already read. And as any academic will tell you, managing your reading pile is one of the most daunting and ongoing tasks. You literally never finish it. So having a piece of software that helps you keep track of what you've read, what you've cited, that thing that somebody mentioned to you down the hallway, all really helpful because you can't keep it all in your brain.
Some of it will escape. So the more of it that lands in the citation manager, the more likely it is that you won't have to duplicate that work when you have to go back and say, what was the name of that paper that somebody mentioned in our symposium last week or two weeks ago, or that I taught with a year ago? It'll all be right there.
So I recommend that you store literally everything in your citation manager, the things that you teach with tag them with the syllabis tag them with the semester that you taught at, or the institution that you did. The things that you read in your own courses, the things you read for exams web sources that you come across, book reviews, put it all in there.
It doesn't mean you're going to read it all, but it means it's a central place to go looking when you're trying to piece back your research path.
I really recommend that people use a citation manager, especially if you have a lot of sources, if you are someone who really only has a handful of things and you can keep them all easy in your finger tips, and you really enjoy the process of constructing a citation, go for it. But I really recommend that if you're going to be working with say more than 25 or 30 sources over the course of your scholarly lifetime - And spoiler alert, you will be! - Use the citation manager. Help yourself keep track of some of it.
Now a question that I often get is Katy. I haven't really used my citation manager or I started using it. Do I need to stop everything that I'm doing and spend the next two weeks, putting everything in there and tagging it and note taking it so that it's all there. And my answer is as fun as that sounds, it's actually probably not a good use of your time.
The best thing that I have found is to build it organically, as opposed to trying to create a very elaborate schema. And then putting everything into that citation manager. All of the big three come with a web clipper which goes right into your internet browser. It lets you push a button when you're surfing on a page that, you know, Google scholar or J STOR or wherever you're getting your information and it automatically sends it to your citation manager. You might have to do a little bit of cleanup and tagging to make sure that it's good, but you can with a click of a button automatically import those things. So wherever you are right now, get in the habit of starting to do that. Tag, when you need to use tags, add folders when you need to use folders, but start to build it wherever you are. Because like I said up top the best time to have done this is when you were born and just kept track of everything that you've ever read for your entire life Always. But the second best time is to start investing in it now.
Last, but not least, a software recommendation. I recommend Zotero to everybody because it's free. You don't pay for it. It's a piece of open-source software. It is regularly updated. There's a very robust online support community. I've linked to a bunch of things in the show notes to help you out there.
I also think Zotero is the easiest to use. And I think it's one of the ones that has the most flexibility with what things it pairs with, what word processors, it plays the nicest with other pieces of software that you might use. But you can also check your university library and software showcase because oftentimes they have resources, guides and discounts on software. So it might be that your university really supports EndNote and they give you a great discount on it. That's a good reason to start using it, if that's what makes sense to you.
But definitely look for something that has a web clipper, that has the ability to tag and sort, and you'll be well on your way to having more organized citations . Not just when you're ready to press publish on that paper, but also you're organizing the work and the material of the research process across your many, many projects.
Thanks 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!
2.1 - get a tool actually built for drafting: non-linear word processors
Welcome to Season 2 of Grad School is Hard, But...where I give you all my best tools to make things a little less hard. To kick things off, we're talking about non-linear word processors. If you've ever done any of the following: completely lost where you were in the document; scrolled up and down for seeming minutes, trying to find where you left off; got completely confused; duplicated text; moved things around that you shouldn't have; gotten really overwhelmed, trying to start at the beginning; mixed up versions; mixed up drafts; then maybe a non-linear word processor is the way to go.
Mentioned in the episode:
I am giving away one FREE 45 minute session with me a month to anyone who reviews this podcast on Apple Podcasts! Leave a review and I'll announce the winners in the last episode of the month, and in my newsletter! Thank you so much for helping to spread the word about the podcast!
If you want to spend March making sustainable progress on your writing, with the added excitement of challenges, fun, and prizes, then March Madness is for you! Sign up for FREE here, and you'll also be on my newsletter list for weekly pep talks and all the latest news in the Thrive PhD universe!
-
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.
March madness is a month of free writing resources, trackers, dash boards, and prizes. Sign up for free at the link in the show notes.
In this week's episode, I am going to let you in on one of the biggest secrets that I have about writing long, complicated academic projects. Don't do it in Word. Or Pages or Libre Office or any of your more standard word processors. Now, if it's working for you and you feel like it's fine. There's no bumps at all. Feel free to skip the rest of this episode, and catch me back next week.
But if you have ever done any of the following: completely lost where you were in the document; scrolled up and down for seeming minutes, trying to find where you left off; got completely confused; duplicated text; moved things around that you shouldn't have; gotten really overwhelmed, trying to start at the beginning; Mixed up versions; mixed up drafts; then maybe a non-linear word processor is the way to go. Now by nonlinear word processor, what I mean is a piece of software that makes it easy for you to create collections of smaller bits of text that you then assemble into a longer, more linear draft.
Word and all of its other competitors are pieces of software that in my opinion are really great for things like formatting, sharing your work back and forth, once you have a draft that's all in a straight line. That has a beginning, a middle and an end. And you feel like the order is more or less locked in.
Other pieces of software can help you so much in the earlier drafting phases. Because they let you do things like create smaller documents that you remix and shuffle around to create new organizational schema. It might let you see more than one document open at a time so that you can compare or write directly from your notes or your outline. They might let you put all of your notes, outlines, research, sources, everything all in one place to minimize, clicking out, and therefore getting stuck in whatever sticky parts of the internet or your computer you tend to get stuck in.
These tools are meant to support the earlier messier non-linear phases of drafting. Where you might have a project that could turn into a conference paper and also a dissertation chapter and maybe a guest lecture. And instead of having 15 different word documents labeled: early draft, crappy draft, final draft, final, final draft, final draft for lecture. You get what I mean! You have everything all in one place that you can export and move around as you want to.
The first and most popular version of this software is something called Scrivener, which is definitely paid software. You do have to pay to use it. However it has some of the most generous trial policies that I've ever seen. But other pieces of software that would fall under this umbrella of non-linear word processors are Evernote, Notion, Obsidian could be used this way. Even Google docs has some pretty cool hyperlink functions and folder structures that you can use to replicate.
These tools are good for a couple of things, and I'm going to list them out now. Number one, I think they're good for projects that have a lot of possible formats. Whether that's possible organizational structures, whether you're going to start with this case study or that case study.
Or, you know, this is a body of research that might have four or five different related, but distinct outputs, like a conference paper, a chapter, so on and so forth. It lets you shuffle and see all of these things, keep them together and keep them with the research that they belong to so that you're not trying to manage a thousand different files with slight but meaningful differences.
Number two. I think that this kind of software is particularly awesome for people who want to create really dense links between their research notes, outlines, primary sources to help them see and work with these things more completely. So if you're a scientist and you have A paper that you're supposed to be doing. And it has the same seven sections every time - this might not be necessary for you.
But if you are an anthropologist or historian or an archivist or a person who works with interviews that you're coding, it can be really helpful to have a piece of software that organizes itself around all of the different things that feed into your writing for those early draft stages. So for example, when I was using Scrivener, I would have four panes open at any one time, all within the same document window.
I would have the draft I was actually working on. A scratch pad so that I could capture any notes and things that come up because my brain is very busy while I'm writing. It would have the original source that I was thinking about. And also the long outline that I was working from. And I didn't have to have those in four different Word documents. They were all there in one thing so that I could see them and bounce between them.
This is great. If you, like I mentioned, tend to get stuck when you click out of a document and then suddenly you're in the rest of your life and not doing your writing.
The other function that these are really, really good for are when you are feeling completely overwhelmed about where to start.
The worst thing about opening up a blank document, calling it dissertation proposal, and then trying to start writing is that naturally you're going to start writing at the beginning. And beginnings are some of the hardest parts. I never recommend that people start with the beginning unless they have a really good reason to, I always say write from whatever feels the clearest to you.
It might be the subsection three quarters of the way into the chapter, or it could be the conclusion, or it could be, you know, the second paragraph or the 15th. But nonlinear word processors, let you open up a file easily quickly say, Hey, this is this case study. I write it out there and then shuffle or reshuffle it, depending on how your structure and organization end up being through various revision processes.
Okay, last bit a caveat. If you try one of these pieces of software, whether it's Scrivener or Evernote or Notion, any of these nonlinear word processors, and immediately you feel overwhelmed, discombobulated if it doesn't really click with your brain, it feel free to bounce on out of there.
There is no need to use a non-linear word processor. If it doesn't immediately strike you as something that would be really beneficial. But if you've been really struggling to keep track of various drafts, and want a little bit more flexibility and support and options to play in the earlier drafting stages. There's no better place to do it than a non-linear word processor.
Thanks so much for being here 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!
17 - Watch me do it: when making the podcast got hard (and what I did about it)
episode 17 - Watch me do it: when making the podcast got hard (and what I did about it)
Okay, okay - I've given you 16 episodes (so far) of things that are hard, questions to help you dig deeper, and experiments to try....but now, you can watch me walk the walk and actually take myself through the process.
That's right - this podcast has been feeling HARD for me the last few weeks - and I use my own system to get to the bottom of that stickiness, and do something about it. If you have ever wanted to see the tools in action, this is the episode for you. I get vulnerable, I get honest, and I talk about what I do when I start to avoid things, and how I have learned to stop before it goes full on shame spiral.
Plus I let you in on what this podcast will look like when I get back on February 28!
Mentioned:
-
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.
If you liked AcWriMo, then you're going to love March madness. Sign up for a free month of writing resources, trackers, dashboards, and prizes at the link in the show notes.
All right. After 16 episodes of walking you through all of the things that can be really hard about grad school. I'm excited to offer this episode, which I'm calling "Watch me do it" as I walked through my own particular season of stickiness. I'll let you know how I use various tools. What's so hard about the sticky season that I'm feeling in. And a couple of experiments that I myself have done.
So that you can see not only what I'm suggesting that you do, but how I do it when I am feeling like something is really hard. Let's get into it.
So. I am here to admit to you that I have been feeling a little bit off about this podcast. Not about its mission, not about what it's doing. All of those things are working so well. I've met so many new people. I've had even a few new clients book through this podcast. And most importantly, I feel like it's really doing its job.
Which is to share some important, useful, valuable advice, strategies, and tools For grad school for free on the internet. Because grad school's hard enough without all of the good stuff being tucked behind various paywalls and expensive coaches and heaven forbid your advisors. So the podcast itself feels like it's been working really well.
But the format has been feeling sticky. So, how did I know it was feeling sticky? I will fess up to you that the first sign for me was that I was avoiding it. At first, it was a gentle avoidance. I really liked to record these on Thursday or at the latest on Friday, the week before they were supposed to go out so that I would have time to edit them and polish the transcripts and make sure that everything was ready to go so that I wasn't stressed about it. But that's been drifting a little bit. At first, I was just snoozing those tasks from Wednesday to Thursday to Friday. But the last couple of weeks. I'll be honest. I've been recording them Monday the day before they go live. But that is something that for me was different and it was a piece of data to notice.
The other piece of data that came in, that was very different from what I'd been experiencing before was I felt like I had no new ideas for the podcast. Now, when I got started on the podcast, I made a list of no joke, 40 different things that I could talk about. So I had 40 things on this list and I've only done 16 of them. But I looked at it and I just didn't feel inspired. All of that stuff that felt so important to share. I just felt like it wasn't exciting. It wasn't sparkly. I was really digging into the corners of the old brain purse to see if there was anything in there that got me a little bit more excited to record. And there just wasn't. I didn't feel like I had any ideas. And in fact, that's what I wrote in my journal this morning.
So when I am feeling sticky like this, as evidenced by my avoidance and some of my negative brain thoughts about it. There are two main questions that I consider before I jump to any conclusions about what that data could or should mean. And I'm going to share them with you now so that you get to see not just the questions, but how a real life human might answer them. So the first question that I ask myself that I ask clients that I ask anyone who's going through a sticky situation is I say, okay, is there something else that's going on that could be impacting?
And for me, 100%, the answer is yes. I've mentioned before that I have a chronic illness. I live with endometriosis, which depending on the day can cause me anything from back pain to brain fog, to fatigue, all sorts of fun and exciting symptoms that wax and wane throughout the month, but for the last two ish months, I've been taking a new medication for it. And that new medication it's been kicking my butt a little bit.
And the details of that aren't specifically important to this podcast. But the outcome is, and I'm in more pain than I usually am. My brain fog is more intense than it usually is. And it makes sense that if I feel like my brain isn't firing on all cylinders. Of course, a big project that I do by myself; that's creative and has high stakes. It feels more challenging than it might otherwise.
Now the reason, this question is so important for me is because it gives me a sense that it might not just be the podcast. There might be things about the podcast that feel a little bit sticky, but it could also be that just creative work in general feels harder than normal right now. And that's important to differentiate.
It's not that the podcast is a hundred percent broken or that my brain is a hundred percent broken, but the combination of the stickiness in the podcast and the pain that I'm in means that it feels harder on both sides.
The second question that I use when I'm feeling really sticky especially when I'm having strong negative thoughts that feel really true. Like "I have no new ideas" or "the podcast is over." The question that I use is, are you sure? It's a gentle question that I've inherited from Martha Beck. And her book, the way of integrity, and it's been really effective for me to be like, okay,
Brain says I have no new ideas. Question. Am I sure about that? And I'm actually not sure about that. Because I have all kinds of new ideas. I have new ideas for March madness, the free month of writing resources. I have ideas for new courses that I want to run a new download program that I want to start. I have ideas coming out of my ears.
It's just that none of them. And even the ideas that I had listed in my possible podcast topic list. Those ideas don't seem to fit as well into the format that I've used for the last couple of episodes where I talk about a little bit of an intro, I give you questions and then some experiments. So it's not that I don't have ideas. It's just that they don't fit as well into the formula that I've been using.
So, I'm not sure that I have no ideas and I'm not sure that the podcast is over and I should just hang it up. And this'll be a fun thing that I did for a couple of months. So.
What experiments did I try? Gentle listeners? I would love to tell you. I did three things this week to help me get to the bottom of what felt so sticky about the podcast.
The first thing I did was make a list of what works and what feels hard about it. Now. When I sat down to make this list, I expected that what I would write down in the, what works column was nothing and what feels hard about it, everything end of list. And actually lots of things feel like they're working about it. I mentioned a lot of them up top.
That I'm meeting new people, that I'm spreading information that doesn't have a good place to be found in other places, that it's a short, accessible format that people can listen to it on the go. There's lots of things that are working about it. And actually the thing that feels so hard about the podcast in specific is this format.
Which brings me to experiment number two, which is what I call blank page imagination. I use this experiment when I feel stuck. Because I've been doing something a certain way. Maybe I've been writing a chapter a certain way. I've used a certain task manager or planner system. I just feel stuck because what I'm doing, it works a little bit, but not all the way. And I can't imagine a new way forward using what I've been using before. There's no real clear pivot to me. So I get out a blank page of paper and I say, okay, if there was no podcast,
If there were no previous episodes, what would you do right now? What format would you use? There's no rules. What would it be if you had a blank page and all of the time and space and resources in the universe to do it? And when I did that blank page exercise, I had so many new ideas.
And you spoiler alert, might hear a little bit about them in a couple of minutes. But it really helped me see that. Okay. I do have ideas. I now just need to figure out how to move from point A where I'm at right now to point B or C or D or E. Any of the other places that I outlined on that blank page.
Now there's some work and this episode is part of that work, tracing that journey, but it's so much easier to say, okay, how do I get from point A to point E if you delineate them than it is to just sit in the stickiness and think, Ugh, I'm stuck. I'm stuck. I'm stuck on a loop. And. The third experiment.
Potentially the most important experiment. I'm just going to try it. Now. This one is very scary for me. Hi, I am recording this in the quiet of my office. I feel as supported as I possibly can. And I'm still terrified. My heart is beating like a lion is chasing me. And all because I'm announcing to you that Imma change the podcast a little bit.
It feels so scary because I feel like. You're going to be disappointed. You're going to be upset, maybe you'll stop listening and you know, maybe you will. But I think that if I pay attention to when things feel a little bit off, then I can avoid what I know is the end of this particular feelings, behavior cycle for me.
I know that if I don't pay attention in the beginning, when things feel sticky, what I start to do is I avoid it and I avoid it and I avoid it until I become so locked up that I don't do it at all. And I was really nervous that I would just not record this week's episode. And then feel so bad about missing a week that I would miss another week. And then all of a sudden there would be three or four weeks where the podcast went dark. And I just didn't tell you about it. And I would live in constant fear that someone would email me and say, Hey, what's happening with the podcast?
Or even worse that no one would notice. All of those outcomes are bad. All of those outcomes are things that I've done and lived through before. And that's why I know to pay attention to the data of, I feel a little bit sticky about this. I'm avoiding it a little.
So. The result of my, try it experiment is that I'm happy to announce that after a one week break, the podcast will be back for season two, starting on February 28th. And in season two, I'm going to introduce tools, books, thoughts, ideas, experiments, pieces of software, all kinds of things that I found in my journey --preference, for things that you can get free or very low cost or at your library-- and things that make grad school less hard.
Those things are important. I want to talk about them and I'm going to try doing it in a different format. I'm nervous about it, but I'm hopeful that you will stick around to see what season two feels like. And maybe season three or season four, when invariably I reach the end of that particular iteration, want a little bit of sparkle and shake things up again.
Now I feel very vulnerable having recorded this. I feel a little bit nervous about sending it out into the world, but my hope is that by watching me narrate, or I guess listening to me, narrate my way through some of these sticky patches. You can see, not just how you could do it, but what it looks like when somebody does it.
And my biggest deepest hope is that it gives you just a little bit more courage, a little bit more bravery to try a pivot yourself. Not because there's a crisis, not because you are locked up, but because it's important to notice your data as the patterns start to emerge. Thank you so much for listening.
I can't wait to see you back here on February 28th for season two. Grad school is hard, but. See you then.
📍 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!
16 - Why can't we focus as long as we want?
episode 16 - Why can't we focus as long as we want?
One of the most common requests from new clients: Katy! Help me focus more! I want to be able to work for more hours a day!
This podcast episode is all about the hard truth around whether or not we have limits (spoiler: we do) and how to work with them, not against them. If you want to stave off burnout - this is the episode for you!
Mentioned:
historical context for time limited days
-
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.
If you liked AcWriMo, then you're going to love March madness. Sign up for a free month of writing resources, trackers, dashboards, and prizes at the link in the show notes.
One of the most common things that people ask for my help with as a coach is focusing for more hours. They want to be able to do more work every day and they want my help to do it.
And while there are definitely some strategies, tools, and books, a lot of which I've already mentioned on this podcast that can help you focus. There is something that we're not always talking about. And that is that we have a limit for how much creative, deep focus work that we can do during the day.
Now close your eyes. And imagine how many hours do you feel that you should be able to do during the day? Do you think it's eight? Do you think generously it's a little bit less than that. But what do you assume that you'll be able to set as a baseline standard for how much work that you can get done on the deeply draining intellectual tasks, like writing or taking notes or synthesizing or processing data?
Now. How does it feel if I tell you that most people that I work with, that I know of and research supports that most people have a three to four hour hard limit for creative work during the day.
I'll link in the show notes to a great historical contextualization of that and why the three or four hours that say Charles Dickens has, might not be the same that you do. But the reason that I think that that three to four hour limit is so freeing to hear and also kind of scary is. Most of us are expecting ourselves to do a lot more than that.
We're expecting to do three to four hours of writing. Plus three to four hours of reading, plus, you know, Two hours of admin. Each and every day to get to that eight hour Workday. And we know that that's the standard. And I've mentioned on this podcast that that's as much of a historical Relic is it's an actual supported neuroscientific reality, but.
Knowing that there's, that limit both gives us some constraints to say, okay, my hardest thing, I can probably only do it for three or four hours and probably not all in a row. And also, how am I supposed to get everything done? If my brain has a tap out point that is much lower than I think it is.
I think this is important to discuss because a lot of us fall into routines and rhythms that we haven't really questioned. We work for eight hours because people work for eight hours or we get down and we start writing in the morning because that's what works for us. And the first few episodes of this podcast are dedicated to busting those myths with your own data.
But this limit one of the most pernicious. Longstanding hard to get rid of myths that we should be able to work on deeply draining creative work for more hours than we actually can.
So some questions to consider that might help you dig a little bit deeper. What does it feel like for you when you reach your personal brain limit? Do you even know what full or tired or drained or just at the end of the line feels like on your brain?
Question two. What does an ideal Workday look like? And where does that idea come from? Where does that fantasy originate? What are the parameters and limits that you've inherited or that you've put on yourself?
And last but not least what are the hard limits in your life? Maybe their schedules, maybe there's tasks. Maybe you're a parent, you know, that you have certain things that you have to do at a certain time. Maybe it's a full-time job. Maybe it's a fellowship that gives you huge amounts of free time, but very tight deadlines.
But it's useful to think about. Okay. Where do you have some flexibility? And where do you need to just work with what you have in terms of the balance between your time and your brain?
Now, of course, I'm not just going to tell you that everybody has three hours, hard-stop good luck with that without giving you some experiments to try. So let's dig into those.
First experiment. A bold one. A fun one. I call it. Stop before you're ready.
The way this looks is that for a week, maybe two weeks or maybe forever you stop before the point of collapse you stop before you are ready. To stop for the day. So I know that for myself, I have gotten to learn what like 80% done feels like and in moments where I'm trying to reset away from. You know, unsustainable work habits. I will stop at 80% rather than a hundred percent collapsed.
I will get out from my desk a little bit earlier. I'll go for a walk over for that, that workout, but I've stopped before. I'm ready to see if that help. Me run over. Some of that energy into the next day. It's a lot easier to get back to my desk on Tuesday morning. If I didn't end Monday completely.
Utterly face down at my desk. Tired exhausted. Still behind. So, if you are used to working until the very last minute that you have, based on your schedule or the very last ounce of brain energy that you have based on your to-do list. Experiment with what it feels like to stop before you're ready. Some of us don't even know that we have this limit because we're so used to working past it. We're so used to just barreling right through.
Limits suggestions from our body. Be damned. We're just going to get done what we need to get done. No questions asked. So this is an experiment to see. Okay. Maybe if I don't just assume. That I need to keep going, no matter what. I'll be able to get a more fine tuned sense of what feels good in terms of the balance between various tasks, various brain energies throughout the day or the week.
Experiment two is to keep a research journal or work log or done list to challenge your ideas about productivity. One of the things that blows my client's minds and blows my mind on the regular is that when I rest more and actually don't go through every limit and I stop when I'm ready. I stopped when my brain is gone. I actually get more down over the course of the week, but you could not have convinced me of that.
Based on what I feel during the day. I still have a voice that says, keep going, don't stop. You're not done yet. You said you would. And I know that if I don't listen to that voice and I actually stop. When I'm tired when I'm hungry, when I need a break that I get more done
because I don't get stuck in this cycle of push until I crash. And then crashed until I'm ready to start again. Or more accurately stay crashed until my anxiety builds back up. And then I have to start working. So, if you know that that voice in your head is pretty strong and it encourages you to do things like stay at that desk until way later, or skipped dinner with your family, cancel plans with your friends. Don't go on that workout.
It can be useful to keep a research journal or a work log and say, okay. Is it actually true that I don't get as much done when I stop at four. Rather than eight 30 or is it possible that my perception of the data and the actual data are two different things.
And the last experiment. Is one that can be a little bit tricky, but incredibly useful in terms of your discernment and scheduling, planning, all of it. This is one of those experiments that if you get good at it, you really see benefits all throughout. Your scholarly human ecosystem.
And this experiment, I want you to pay attention to what kinds of work needed, what kind of brainpower. So for example, I have what I lovingly refer to. Is it three to 5:00 PM. Brain? Between the hours of three to 5:00 PM, depending a little bit on my body, the rhythms, how much sun I've had, but it's a solid bet that 90% of the time from three to 5:00 PM. I'm not getting any solid work done. I can respond to some lightweight emails. I can sort things out. I can do research about the next face cream that I want to buy, but those three to 5:00 PM hours are not going to be good for drafting this podcast, recording it.
Making progress on my own writing, doing any deep focus things, really sort of getting into that creative work, that early projects demand. It's just not happening between three and five. Your times and rhythms might be body-based. They might be based on your kids' schedules. They might be based on your work schedule. But if you know that, Hey.
I don't do great work between three to 5:00 PM. If it's very intensive brain heavy work, then you can say, okay. What times are available for that? For me, there's a magic window between like 10 and noon, where all of a sudden the caffeine for my morning coffee kicks in and I'm ready to write. So what's important is for me not to spend those magic hours doing the things that I could do during my three to five window.
I try and spend my most sparkly brain hours on the tasks that really needed the most. Lots of people told me for years and years that I was going to be a great early morning writer. And please know that I am not, my brain will riot and tantrum if I ask it to do any of this creative, deep focus work before 10:00 AM.
So your hours might vary, but knowing what kinds of work on your to-do list need, what kind of brain power? Can unlock a level of scheduling that makes so much more sense. For your body, for your brain, for the rhythms that you're working with.
I feel like at the end of most of these episodes, I say this is so hard because there's only so much time in the day. And there are so many more things that you could possibly get done. Then you can actually achieve in any 1 24 hour period. And I stand by that. But one of the things that I do see almost all of my clients who are coming to me, working through burnout, just generally feeling tired, exhausted, dissatisfied, and like they can't focus enough.
They're regularly habitually, sometimes gleefully exceeding the limits of what their brain is really able to do in a sustainable supported way. And it could be a really hard thing. For me to say, Hey, stop. Before you're done. Experiment with changing up the times of the day that you work on different things.
I keep a journal and actually see if that extra effort that extra hour pays off. These are confronting truths, but if you can get just a little bit more comfortable with looking at the actual data, I promise you that it will point you in the direction of a more supported and sustainable workflow. And let's face it. Grad school is not a two week sprint.
It's a multi-year marathon people. So the more sustainable and supported, you can be the more you're going to be able to do what you want to do when you want to do it and not have to have those breakes put on by a bad case of burnout that will really make this even harder than it already is.
📍 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!
15 - Why is staying on top of your to-do's so hard?
episode 15 - Why is staying on top of your to-do's so hard?
I used to live a nice, peaceful life where I made a cute little to-do list in the morning, and then I spent the day checking things off, and then once it was empty, I felt so good! Maybe I never had that - but it sounds great, doesn't it?? Staying on top of what you need to do and when is so hard as a grad student, but this episode has some comfort that you're not alone, and importantly, three things you could try today to help with that overwhelming feeling of a list that keeps getting longer, no matter what you do...
Mentioned:
-
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.
If there's one thing I know for certain it's that if you're listening to this right now, There are things on your to-do list. If I'm lucky listening to the new episode is right at the top, but I'm sure that there are important things, urgent things, things from two weeks ago. Things your boss put on there that all need to get done soon.
Now. Before. So why is it so hard to manage it, to do list? Let's talk about that. On today's episode.
One of the reasons that I think it's so hard to manage it, to do list both as a person, as a scholar and both of those things as a grad student, is that you truly can never get to the bottom. Just like we've talked about in other episodes, there's so much scope creep in academia. So even if you did theoretically finish everything that you wanted to do for the day,
You could work ahead. You could get started on something else. You could pick up a project from the not right now file. There's so many things to do that it's really hard to be like, yes, I'm caught up or yes, I have everything checked off. It also can be really hard as a grad student because other people can add to that, to do list.
Your students can add to it. The professor that you TA for can add to it. Your boss can add to it. Maybe your spouse or your colleagues or your co-authors. It's not as if we all go to our own special scholar room, we work on the tasks ahead of us, and then we leave that room.
We're working in busy, collaborative, interactive environments. And that means that sometimes other people put stuff on your list. Even if it's not the most important thing to you. I know that one thing that would drive me bananas as a grad student would be that I would have the whole day planned out.
I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I would sit down at my desk and suddenly there was an email from the professor I was TA for, or my advisor or a conference committee or someone, and all of the sudden. My to-do list completely changed everything that I thought I needed to get done that day. Everything that I needed to get done that day had to be put on hold.
You just don't have full control over your to-do list and that's just with your work stuff. Because you probably also have a few lists going. I know that if I look at my task manager right now, I have work tasks. I have home tasks. I have family tasks. I have things for my hobbies. I have things for my projects. It's wild. How many different things I have going.
And unfortunately, I don't also have different versions of myself with their own 24 hours and their own set of spoons and energy. To do all of those things. I wish that there was one version of me for every list that needed to get done. You probably have a few lists going, but you've only got one body, one brain.
1 24 hours to get things done.
Let's dig into some of those questions to consider, to see how you feel about your to-do lists. What's working, what isn't, before we get into those experiments, that might just help you get a little bit of a handle on what's going on. Let's get into it.
What feels good for you in terms of to-do lists, do you love checking everything off and being done at the end of the day?
Do you love estimating correctly and having a certain amount of time and energy that you can allocate, but what are the behaviors that really make that brain chemical sparkle explosion go off in your head? When it comes to getting things done?
A question to consider. Where do you keep your to-do list? Is it an app that syncs between all of your devices and you can access at any time. Is it an app plus also wherever you manage to jot things down when you're in the kitchen, whatever scrap of napkin or grocery list that is.
Is it in a bunch of different places. Do you have shared lists with other people? But where do you keep your to-do list?
And then last but not least. How do you manage tasks that are in the not right now category? You know, those things that, you know, you need to get done, but not in the next hour or maybe not in the next day.
In other words, how do you capture all of those to do's that you'll need to get to eventually, but you're definitely not going to be doing right now.
Okay. Let's dig into these experiments because if there are anything like me, you're constantly looking for new ways, new programs, new systems to help manage just the onslaught of things that you need to do.
The first experiment to try is to, if you never have experiment with the to-do list manager. So I'm not necessarily going to go on the record as to which to do list manager, I think is best. A dirty little secret that I have is I think that most of them share about 80% of the same functions. And the other 20 are things that you probably won't use anyway.
But. If you've never had a, to do list manager that allows you to separate tasks, set tasks to repeat. Or filter tasks out so that you can only see some at a certain time. Then you might be ready for a level up. One of the things that I love about task managers is being able to automate a certain number of the tasks, the things that I do regularly, but I can also forget to do like.
Sending a newsletter or cleaning out my downloads folder or the conference paper that needs to be submitted in three months. But I don't need to think about for three months minus one week. That to-do list manager can help you store some of those. To do's that you don't have the space or the energy to deal with right now and show them to you at a time and space where you might.
You can do this in to-do list, click up notion. There's all sorts of different apps, but if you are working in a place where it's basically a list and you hope that you've got everything. Then I'm sorry to tell you, or maybe I'm excited to tell you that grad school is hard enough without trying to keep all of those tasks all in your brain at the same time.
Offload a little bit of it into the computer. It might just help you.
Experiment number two comes to you by way of one of my darling dearest clients. This is something that they mentioned to me that is a tool that they used when they're feeling particularly overwhelmed.
I thought, Hey, that sounds great. And I've been using it ever since, just for myself and recommending it everywhere I can. It's pretty simple. You grab a post-it note or a piece of paper, if you're feeling particularly overwhelmed and you just write down one thing on it, one task, one post-it note.
I tend to write pretty small. So I'm a lot more like three tasks, one post-it note. But the idea is pretty simple. Everyone has too much to do too much to focus on. And if you're really drowning in that place where, oh, I can't pick, which is going to be the most efficient, I don't know what's going to be the most effective.
And this experiment might really help you just pick something.
Sure. There are some tasks that are dependent on each other. But usually, you know what those are and you know that you can't do one without starting the other. So this is for those moods. When you know that it might be a little bit more efficient, five, 10% maybe to start somewhere else, but you don't want to, you don't feel like it, or you simply can't decide this. You just pick three things, you put them on a post-it note. You do those three things. Repeat.
This is , a great experiment to use in conjunction with a task manager or a longer to do list. . It's a lot like zooming in. You focus the camera on just the first thing, maybe the second or third thing that you're going to do. And then you repeat, there's probably not going to be any end to the bucket of tasks that you're drawing from.
But this lets you just sort of say, yeah, there might be an infinite number of ways to do it, but I'm using this method. This post-it note to just do these one or two things.
And last, but not least might be a revolutionary experiment if you've never tried it. I challenge you in this experiment to clear out 10, 15, maybe even 20% of your tasks. This is a real stale task. Clean-out is what I call it. Basically it's about saying there are some things that I thought I was going to do.
But in the harsh light of today, I'm not doing them. Or it's no longer as useful for me to do them. Or it's just not what I want to do anymore. Uh, Two weeks ago, I thought I did. And now I don't a month ago. I thought I did. And now I don't. Part of what gets so overwhelming is that we have so many things that we could be doing that gets suggested things that we start and then life changes.
Our scholarship changes, our research changes, and we kind of have to say like, okay, This was a really good idea two months ago. And now I don't think it is anymore. I love a stale task clean-out because it helps you remember that you don't have to do everything just because you thought you might.
Of course. There are some tasks that you do need to do. There's some things. That you need to be accountable for. There are certainly some things that just saying, I'm not going to do this. We'll get you out of it. But for all of those things that are more in the should category, I should read that paper. I should catch up on this method. I should send that email. I should follow up on that connection.
put it in its own category and clean it out from time to time.
Like I said up top. There are only so many hours in a day and you don't have, as far as I know. Six different versions of yourself that are pursuing six different projects with six different to-do lists all simultaneously.
So, this is just acknowledging that you're allowed to change your mind. You're allowed to say this was a good idea. Back then. And now. It's not as good of an idea as these other 15 things that I want to do even more.
Unfortunately. We might never get to the place where we feel like everything is completely checked off. But that doesn't mean that you don't get to take a break. It doesn't mean that you don't get to stop for the night or stop for the weekend. And if you have a to-do list that lets you zoom in, zoom out, filter, no matter what the mechanism is, it can really help you get into the habit of saying I didn't do everything, but I did enough for today.
And that mindset switch is one of the things that's going to make grad school a lot less hard. 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!
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:
-
📍 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!
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
-
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:
-
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:
-
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!